The keyword in the proverb is ‘mother’. It means source or starting point.
All inventions or discoveries came into being because of their immediate demand or necessity. For when there is an urgent pressing need we try hard to satisfy it. We devote all our energies to fulfill the demand and succeed in our efforts.
If one reads the story of discoveries and inventions one will come across numerous examples to prove the truth of this saying. The primitive man must have felt the need to keep himself warm and protect himself from wild animals. These needs must have driven him to discover fire and invent weapons. Similarly he would have invented the wheel to make he task of dragging huge weights easier.
It is only when we need something badly that we bend all our energies and channelise all our resources for finding, tracing or inventing. Radio, television, railway, aeroplane and telephone were all thought of when necessity for recreation, quick transport and immediate communication was felt.
When the Turks captured Constantinople (now Turkey) the land route to India was closed. The necessity to continue trade links with India arose and it resulted in the discovery of a sea route to India via Cape of Good Hope by Vasco-Da-Gama.
Man needed medicines to cure ailments and he found and made miraculous drugs like penicillin and streptomycin. Today man is busy finding alternate fuels to overcome oil shortage. He is using Genetics to discover ways and means to make life better.
In any field whenever need arises, man uses all his faculties to fulfill the necessity. The result is an invention or a discovery. Hence the proverb ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’.