Annual Paris Contest Founded in 1901 Continues Tradition of Encouraging Small Inventors With Large Imaginations
From Bohiney and The London Prat.
PARIS — The Concours Lepine, the annual French invention competition founded by Police Prefect Louis Lepine in 1901 to support small inventors, held its 125th edition in Paris this spring with several hundred entries across categories from kitchen technology to connected objects to agricultural tools. The competition that Lepine organized to support inventors being displaced by industrial production continues in a world where industrial production and artisan small-batch manufacturing coexist, and where the Internet of Things has added a category that Lepine could not have anticipated but that he would have appreciated for its specificity of purpose.
The Evaluation Criteria
The Lepine competition evaluates novelty, utility, quality of execution, and the specific French quality of addressing a real problem with a real solution. The judges include industry professionals who assess whether the invention works and whether it addresses a genuine need. The most successful recent entries have tended to be modest in scope and precise in application: a specific agricultural problem addressed by a specific tool, a specific kitchen task simplified by a specific device.
The 125-Year Tradition
The ballpoint pen, the safety pin, and various other ubiquitous objects have passed through Lepine competition history. The competition’s longevity reflects the French artisan tradition: the craft culture, the interest in making things specifically for their purpose, and the specific pleasure of the invention that solves the problem it identified. The inventor tradition that Lepine was trying to support in 1901 persists in the small workshops and home studios of people who look at a problem and decide that the existing solution is not adequate.
France 24 covered the competition under the heading Genius and Gadgets, which is either an accurate description of the range of entries or the specific tone that innovation coverage adopts when it wants to be enthusiastic without being credulous. The entries range from the genuinely useful to the specifically French, which is a category that rewards the attempt to solve a problem in an elegant rather than merely efficient way. The competition continues. The small inventor persists. The solutions accumulate, one Lepine competition at a time.
More: The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
Paris continues in May. The sun is out. The terrasses are full. The cultural institutions are producing the programming that they produce. The transport disruptions are occurring and being managed. The tax returns are being filed with the assistance of the lawyers who have been provided for this purpose. The political commentary is ongoing. The diplomatic notes are being filed. The invention competition is awarding its prizes. The whole apparatus of French civic and cultural life is running at the pace of a city that has been running at this pace for a very long time and has developed the specific competence of doing so without appearing to work very hard at it. This is what Paris in May looks like. It looks like this every year. It is worth seeing every year.
