What is a Prototype?

Every facet of industry, from machines, to the tools that are needed to build machines and other equipment, use prototypes.  In fact, everything that now exists from the creation of the hands of man, with the exception of art, was a prototype at some point in history.  

Prototypes are the physical point where ideas, necessity, and drawings come together.  They are born out of the desire or need to make something that already exists better, or to create something that someone envisions could exist.  Of course, creating a prototype to improve upon something that already exists is easier because there is more information available for a developer.  Creating a prototype for an idea of something that doesn’t exist requires far more imagination.  

In either case, prototypes are rarely large in size.  Creating anything costs money, labor and time.  Few things that exist today were created successfully straight from imagination.  Instead they are usually the culmination to trial and error, or in other words the first working version of something as a result of changes and corrections to previously failed versions or attempts of the same thing.  Many inventors report having failed hundreds and even thousands of times before they succeeded in creating something.  

Once a prototype is created that successfully addresses the problem it was intended to solve or performs the job it was intended to perform, a larger version of the prototype is built.  Usually this will be a full size model of the prototype.  If the scale version of the prototype works and appears to be something that can be duplicated in a practical manner it is put into manufacturing and production.