The American Rvolution was supported by independent American inventors, who invented guns and other needed devices. And the America that followed was built up by independent inventors. (You can read about this in the only book I know treating this subject, Yankee Science in the Making, by Dutch-American mathematician, Dirk Struik.)

But 20th century corporations adopted the "plantation style" of the Pre-Civil War South, in collecting inventors and scientists, putting their patents under corporation control.

Two related activities seem to have enforced this collectivism:

• Independent inventors who tried to defend their rights in courts found that corporate lawyers could drag out proceedings until it became too expensive and time-consuming for individual defense, so the corporation won by default.
• By using their influence with banks to deny individual inventors entrepeneurial support, corporations made themselves, more and more, "the only game in town". So inventors had to give up their individuality or give up experimenting.

American has been a place of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for so many, but no longer for independent American inventors!

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EVIDENCE

Up to 2002, it has been 57 years since the end of WWII. How do the number of citations for independent inventors for this period compare with 57 years up to end of WWII?

The 2002 World Almanac, pp. 614-6, lists 151 for the first period, 37 for the second period.

A drop of approximately 80% after WWII.

Where are these lost creators?