#5,524,641

That's Arthur Battaglia's patent number. He applied for it eight years ago, got it six years ago, and has been pushing his idea ever since. So far, no takers.

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With his wife, Sharon, trailing him, Arthur Battaglia snakes through a congested Sportmart in Santa Rosa, Calif. The affable 42-year-old knows the floor plan well, as the store is located in a newish strip mall two blocks west of his apartment complex. He darts past a round of ski jackets, then by a rack of 49ers sweatshirts. He jokingly strokes with his arms as though he were swimming. "More than once, Sharon has followed me daydreaming through the sports store," Battaglia says.

"I think it's cool," she replies.

Battaglia cuts around a bend and down an aisle stocked with new sneakers. He inspects them quickly, then heads for a gulch of in-line-skating gear. He stops and surveys the products reverently. Elbow pads, knee pads, wrist guards, and helmets. "There it is," he says. "My future, hanging on a shelf."

Battaglia's destiny, he believes, is the next great advance in athletic-equipment technology, an industry with $17.3 billion in yearly sales. His concept is this: A geodesic dome bears a great deal of weight over a light frame. Therefore, little webs of geodesic triangles inside a helmet or a knee pad should absorb and redistribute the impact of a tackle on a gridiron or a fall from a bike. In 1994, Battaglia applied for a utility patent for his concept. Eighteen months later the application resulted in the award of U.S. patent #5,524,641. Battaglia recalls being thrilled when he opened the letter from the bureaucrats granting his claim. But in the six years since then Battaglia has gotten no further than having just one crude prototype to show people, despite his personal investment of $8,000 on the project.

As the youthful inventor's temples start to gray, he is coming to the conclusion that getting a patent is only the first of many milestones. "American business is all about the stories of people who didn't give up, like Fred Smith and Ross Perot," he says with a sigh. "I'm a guy trying to make it, and trying hard."

Yet sadly, the tale of Battaglia's languishing invention is certainly more commonplace than the triumphal biographies of the heroes he cites. Many entrepreneurial efforts just stall, and they often stall for reasons that are hard to pinpoint. Diligent entrepreneurs rarely know if and when they should let go. The clichés fill an inventor's mind as tools and sketches clutter his workbench: Persistence pays. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Except, doesn't that kind of optimistic conditioning contradict the capitalistic premise that resources and talent should flow constantly across an open market to the most lucrative and rewarding projects? Is Battaglia's patent just a dud? Is his exceptional entrepreneurial stick-to-itiveness blinding him to reality? Or is next year the year his invention will take the sports world by storm?

Such questions feed a maddening debate -- and not just an existential one. Battaglia believes his invention offers his best chance to make it big, if only he can figure out how. But the eight years since he first sketched his idea on the back of a Pete's Wicked Ale coaster have been frustrating. As he and Sharon emerge from the Sportmart, a lurid orange sun sets behind a ridge on the western side of Sonoma Valley -- and with it Battaglia's confidence wanes. "I wonder if the people here get tired of my coming in," he says sheepishly. " 'Here comes Art to squeeze the shoes again.' "

Battaglia's peers have encouraged him to entice skater punks to embrace the aesthetic of the geodesic design

Inventors have always been recognized as a significant subset of the entrepreneurial population of this country, from Ben Franklin to Thomas Edison to Ron Popeil. Aside from such folk heroes, however, the popular imagining is that most inventors are brilliant, yes, but also misanthropic, reclusive, and paranoid. So entrenched is the stereotype that Dashiell Hammett used it to anchor one his famous mysteries, The Thin Man, in which he depicts a rich inventor who is cruel to his family, "full of screwy notions," and "batty as hell." When the man's corpse is discovered, the sleuths have their choice of suspects.

In more recent times, our perceptions of inventors have softened. Art Battaglia is part of this new breed that is altogether less ornery, less eccentric, and more sympathetic to the needs of the outside world. Perhaps the most distinctive trait of the current crop is that they are much less secretive than the old school. Today's tinkerers are increasingly likely to organize themselves into small societies that operate like Rotary Clubs of invention. They typically gather once a month to share stories, glad-hand, and applaud one another. Groups in Houston and Minneapolis have become community institutions, running science fairs in the schools and hosting large conventions. "I don't have a precise number because there's no central source for these groups, but I estimate that there are about 100 or more across the country," says Richard J. Apley, the recently retired director of the patent office's independent-inventor programs.

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