Victoria 2 Invention Cheat
Aquilino Neadstine
As you research new technologies, they will open up possible inventions which can add still more effects to your country's advantages in combat, economics etc. When you click on a specific technology in the technology interface, you can see all the inventions it unlocks in the bottom right corner.
Once you have researched the technology there is a small chance each month that one of the inventions it unlocked will trigger. All the inventions that your technologies have unlocked but which haven't triggered yet can be found in the "possible inventions" panel at the bottom left corner of the Technology Interface. This will show you the inventions names as well as the percentage chance that they will trigger each month.
You can often affect the chance by researching other technologies. Hover the mouse over the inventions' percentage number and the tooltip will show the base chance as well as how to increase/decrease it.
This is a hat with 3 solar powered cooling fans in it, which I made for the National Archives' exhibition: "The Spirit of Invention" in June 2023. It was inspired by at record of an invention (an old design registration kept by the National Archives) that was submitted in 1823 by John Fuller & Company, as a solution to the problem of one's head getting hot whilst out an about at social gatherings wearing a hop hat. My task was to create an 'modern response' to this inspiration...and to 'trust the process of invention' to also inspire me along the way!
Anyway, as is often the case with ideas - even 'bad' ones - they often trigger something else. And to come full-circle here, this is why I think kid ideas, which are often 'crazy' in the eyes of adults need a longer look, as often there is a kernel of something of value. In my opinion, it'd be easy to laugh this victorian hat off as a dumb idea, but the *insight* was not wrong at all - hats most certainly do get hot and sweaty. So in fairness I'm only 'building' upon a good insight and making it better with technology which was not available back then (despite what Steampunk enthusiasts may tell you - hehe!).
Because of these 'tensions', I was thinking about how to have a better 'icebreaker' in a party (be it now, or in Victorian times). Having read Dale Carnegie's How To Make Friend & Influence People, and just recommended it to a somewhat engineer friend who was anxious about networking and public speaking, it felt apt to realise most inventors I knew were not great at starting up a conversation in a room of strangers - but they are pretty good at talking about what they are excited about, which is usually their inventions! This was an interesting insight, focussed by Carnegie's book.
I realised this had a nice double function: as in Inventor for a few decades, I could draw some of my inventions on the hat, as a fun range of things kids could associate with being an inventor, but also then encourage them to do the same. Each hat would be individual to the wearer, and an "Ice Breaker"...
Debates around creativity have raged online so much, I will not bother judging them here, but my personal perspective is that you do get 'garbage in - garbage out'. You have to learn how to prompt it to get close to what you want. Secondly, 'close' is the operative word. It will not easily give you what is 'in your head', so my advice is to consider it like a 'buddy' that reacts to things you throw at it, much is junk, but some stuff make you think differently and that might be valuable. AI is not a 'shortcut' and does not 'do the work for you', so National Archives can rest assured I didn't cheat - haha!
What I did take did take from this 'diversion' into AI imaging - was to consider the blueprint technique throughly. And indeed, when looking at the history of blueprints - or their proper name - Cyanotypes, this too was a Victorian invention. Not gonna lie, I got 'lucky' there, but looks very clever to tell my client that of course ;o)
So there you have it. The Super Cool Social Networking Hat, inspired by Victorian's inventions, blueprints, and social interactions, with a modern twist of green energy and tech to keep your cool, with a novel use of psychology and fashion to also broach the subject on online safety with parents and kids.
However, the centenary of the Great War provides an occasion to explore the ways in which the truth is rather subtler than the conventional wisdom. With a few notable exceptions, most of the iconic technologies of the First World War were not in fact invented during or because of the war. Rather, they were modifications of existing civilian technologies developed during peacetime. Nor did the war effort engender many truly transformative technological innovations, even those for which the war is most famous. In this sense, World War I was not the mother of invention.
Key Takeaway: Any invention that is designed to reduce sleep, is not really a long-term productivity hack. It might be a temporary fix to help burn the midnight oil on occasion, but we categorically need sleep.
The invention started out very well. However, there was a serious drawback in that the wet cell battery was messy and difficult for the average office worker to maintain. As less demanding stencil-making methods emerged and the typewriter began to grow in popularity, the Electric Pen soon fell by the wayside.
Unfortunately, the reception this innovation received was anything but calming. The media was quick to point out that the pods resembled coffins and were like something out of a dystopic horror film. Amazon was also fiercely criticized for creating an unnecessary invention rather than trying to improve the working conditions that were causing stress in the first place.
The story is best told working backwards. Therefore, we start with Professor Hoffmann who credited the invention of the thumbtip to British magician Joseph Hartz (sometimes written as Hertz). In Later Magic (1904), Hoffmann wrote that an "Appliance of Hertz's for handkerchief production (invented, by the way, long before the false fingers came into use) was a sort of thimble, made of very thin copper, and arranged to fit over the end of the thumb, which it was modelled and coloured to resemble exactly."
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