Critics delight in denigrating it as a poor substitute for invention.
They received a patent in 1952, but because scanning technology was poor then, their invention went largely unused.
Yet the art critic Brian Sewell, recalling the period more recently in the same paper, wrote that his LSD visions had "made the paintings of Salvador Dali in his prime seem the poor, pale, pedestrian inventions of a plodding mind".
So I applied that to actually trying to help the poor with my inventions," he said in an interview on YouTube.
Certainly the poor marking, lack of invention and dwindling confidence had all the trademarks of 35 miles over the Pennines.
The steel band originated on the Caribbean island of Trinidad about 1940, an invention of poor people in Port of Spain who played music during Carnival to represent their neighbourhoods and to compete with rival bands.
Semiretired at 80, he was in his office last week and said he "would strongly support" any student campaign to push down the price of his invention in poor countries.
This quality loss includes long-term losses related for instance to poor reliability of an invention, customer dissatisfaction, and eventual loss of market share.
His accuracy with the boot, vision and invention in poor conditions at Kingsholm ensured Gloucester's lead was never in danger.
Why should anyone be interested in the birth of something that never dies?" McGowan, at the center of the novel, is a showpiece of self-invention, a poor French Canadian kid from Massachusetts who made up a name and background -- a man who, like television, had wrested himself from history.
