Learning by Selling and Invention: The Case of the Sewing Machine

Ross Thomson

The Journal of Economic History, 1987, vol. 47, issue 2, 433-445

Abstract: For techniques diffusing as commodities, sales form a critical medium of technological communication which facilitates secondary invention. While sales may also influence the incentives to invent, I argue that the technical learning associated with selling provides a fuller account of invention for the case of the sewing machine in the United States. A study of some 3,500 patents and forty-eight city directories shows that as sales expanded in extent and location, so did patenting by first-time inventors. Moreover, patent use generated a flow of information back to inventors which increased the likelihood and extent of repeat patenting. In these ways, sales sustained technological change as a cumulative process.

Date: 1987
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