Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/300

266 the task; and in cases of great complexity and extent of machinery it is almost impossible. It has been estimated roughly, that the first individual of any newly-invented machine, will cost about five times as much as the construction of the second, an estimate which is, perhaps, sufficiently near the truth. If the second machine is to be precisely like the first, the same drawings, and the same patterns will answer for it; but if, as usually happens, some improvements have been suggested by the experience of the first, these must be more or less altered. When, however, two or three machines have been completed, and many more are wanted, they can usually be produced at much less than one-fifth of the expense of the original invention.

(327.) The arts of contriving, of drawing, and of executing, do not usually reside in their greatest perfection in one individual; and in this, as in other arts, the division of labour must be applied. The best advice which can be offered to a projector of any mechanical invention, is to employ a respectable draughtsman; who, if he has had a large experience in his profession, will assist in finding out whether the contrivance is new, and can then make working drawings of it. The first step, however, the ascertaining whether the contrivance has the merit of novelty, is most important; for it is a maxim equally just in all the arts, and in every science, that the man who aspires to fortune or to fame by new discoveries, must be content to examine with care the knowledge of his contemporaries, or to exhaust his efforts in inventing again, what he will most probably find has been better executed before.