Have Fun Inventing: Learn to Think Up Products and Imagine Future Inventions

In 1974, Steven M. Johnson worked as an urban planner in the San Francisco Bay Area while maintaining a sideline career as a cartoonist. That year, as he turned 36 he discovered by accident a latent interest and desire to create inventions. He had been assigned by the editor of Sierra magazine to imagine and satirize future recreation vehicles. Asked for 16 illustrations, he came up with 109! Since then, he has been creating whimsical products, inventions and predictions for magazines and online, as well as in two books published that were in the 1980s and early '90s. Have Fun Inventing describes the lessons he has learned in the past 40 years as a self-styled Whimsicalist and Possibilitist. He offers a clear description of his manner of thinking as he searches for invention ideas, and details the steps taken to come up with unique combinations and permutations of objects in almost any subject area. The book includes hundreds of his captioned illustrations, many published for the first time. For persons of any age who are curious about how an inventor thinks, this is the perfect book.