[skookumchuck]

Yes, necessarily. The "many practical details" are usually the key to it working. For example, the details are why the Wright bros. airplane flew, and the others didn't. The same with the light bulb, the telephone, the Xerox machine, rocket engines, etc.

Maybe the Patent Office accepts concepts, but that leads to nothing but trouble. The real work to inventing is getting something to actually work. Anybody can have an idea, ideas are a dime a dozen.

[tabtab]

Re: Maybe the Patent Office accepts concepts, but that leads to nothing but trouble.

Perhaps, but definitions don't have to be practical nor rational. Vocabulary is typically driven by common usage (language), not by logic. I'm just the messenger.

[skookumchuck]

If you want a dictionary definition, that's easy enough to find online.

[tabtab]

I'm not sure what your point is then, to be honest. Yes, final products often take a lot of experiments and tuning. But I'm not sure all of that is "inventing" any more than testing software and fixing bugs is "inventing". When is tuning inventing and when is it not?