Inventors & Inventions

Inventors & Inventions

·  The Direct Action Committee, a group pushing for nuclear disarmament, invented the peace symbol in 1958. The forked symbol is actually a composite of the semaphore signals "N" and "D," to stand for nuclear disarmament.

·  Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been over mixing the soap formula causing excess air bubbles that made it float.Customers wrote and told how much they loved that it floated,and it has floated ever since. [It floats in gasoline, too.]

·  Fortune cookies were invented in America in 1918 by Charles Jung.

·  The Frisbee originated in the 1950s, when Yale students started the practice of playing catch with the pie-tins put out by the Frisbie Baking Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut. The company went out of business in 1957, but a few of their "5 cent deposit"pie-tins remain and are being hoarded by avid Frisbee collectors.

·  Diet Coke was only invented in 1982.

·  Naugahyde, plastic "leather" was created in Naugatuck, Connecticut.

·  As of 1940, total of ninety patents had been taken out on shaving mugs.

·  It took three years of constant printing to complete Johann Gutenberg's famous Bible, which appeared in 1455 in two volumes, and had 1,284 pages. He reportedly printed 200 Bibles, of which 47 still exist.

·  Madame Alexander dolls were the creation of Beatrice Alexander Behrman, the daughter of Russian immigrants. Mrs. Behrman, whose father operated New York's first doll "hospital," started making dolls in 1923, and her creations soon became famous for their molded heads and limbs, lifelike eyes, rooted hair and elaborate costumes. Mrs. Behrman sold the company to several New York investors in 1988, two years before she died at age 95. But America's first and only remaining doll manufacturer has not compromised her high standard of quality and unique craftsmanship. Today, most of the company's manufacturing is still done in Harlem, New York, and more than 500,000 dolls a year are sold.

·  Dr. Samuel Langley was able to get many model airplanes to fly, but on December 8, 1903, Langley's "human carrying flying machine", the aerodrome plunged into the Potomac River near Washington D.C., in front of photographers who were assembled to witness the event. Reporters around the country made fun of the idea that people could fly and nine days later, Wilbur and Orville Wright proved them wrong.

·  The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.

·  Self-made millionaire Cyrus Field championed the idea of a telegraph from England to Newfoundland. Britain quickly agreed to subsidize. Congress went along by a one-vote margin. That was in 1856. Laying cable was tough. It kept breaking.

·  The first line - two years later - died almost immediately. But 10 years later, there were two working lines. Communications changed forever.

·  The first lightweight luggage designed for air travel was conceived by aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart.

·  Donald F. Duncan, the man who made the yo-yo an American tradition, is also credited with popularizing the parking meter and introducing Good Humor “ice cream on a stick.

·  Eastman Kodak's Brownie camera cost $1.00 when it was introduced in 1900.

·  Sylvan N. Goldman of Humpty Dumpty Stores and Standard Food Markets developed the shopping cart so that people could buy more in a single visit to the grocery store. He unveiled his creation in Oklahoma City on June 4, 1937.

·  Frederick Winthrop Thayer of Massachusetts and the captain of the Harvard University Baseball Club received a patent for his baseball catcher's mask on February 12, 1878.

·  The first coin operated machine ever designed was a holy-water dispenser that required a five-drachma piece to operate. It was the brainchild of the Greek scientist Hero in the first century AD.

·  Ornithologists often use Scotch tape to cover cracks in the soft shells of fertilized pigeon eggs, allowing the eggs to hatch. Scotch tape has also been used as an anti-corrosive shield on the Goodyear Blimp.

·  The power lawn mower was invented by Ransom E.  Olds (of Oldsmobile fame) in 1915.

·  The shoestring was invented in England in 1790,  Prior to this time all shoes were fastened with  buckles.

·  The single blade window cleaning squeegee was  invented in 1936 by Ettore Sceccone and is  still the most common form of commercial window  cleaning today.

·  The 'spot' on 7UP comes from its inventor who  had red eyes. He was albino.

·  Edison improved the incandescent lamp in 1879,  but he didn't actually invent it. Sir Humphrey  Davy is reputed to be the true inventor of the  electric light. He passed electricity through a  platinum wire and caused an arc lamp to glow as  early as 1802. However, Davy did not pursue the  discovery. By the time Edison entered the  scene, arc lamps had been burning for several  decades, but were limited by short life spans.  Edison developed a long-lasting filament light  in 1877, and in 1879 produced the first  long-lasting light bulb.

·  The man who invented shorthand, John Gregg, was  deaf.

·  Because he felt such an important tool should  be public property, English chemist John Walker  never patented his invention — matches.

·  The hypodermic needle was invented in 1853. It  was initially used for giving injections of  morphine as a painkiller. Physicians mistakenly  believed that morphine would not be addictive  if it by-passed the digestive tract.

·  Thomas Edison’s first major invention was the  quadruplex telegraph. Unlike other telegraphs  at the time, it could send four messages at the  same time over one wire.

·  Inventor Gail Borden, Jr. invented condensed  milk in the 1850's.

·  After his death in 1937, Guglielmo Marconi,  inventor of the wireless telegraph was honored  by broadcasters worldwide as they let the  airwaves fall silent for two minutes in his  memory.

·  Pez was invented in 1927 by Eduard Haas, an  Austrian anti-smoking fanatic, who marketed  peppermint-flavored PEZ as a cigarette  substitute. The candy gets its name from the  German word for peppermint, Pfefferminze. Haas  brought the candy to the U.S. in 1952. It  bombed, so he reintroduced it as a children's  toy, complete with cartoon heads and fruity  flavors. One of the most secretive companies in  the U.S., PEZ won't even disclose who currently  owns the company.

·  The Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in  the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to  be remembered after his death as a propagator  of violence - he invented dynamite.

·  Alfred Nobel used a cellulose adhesive (nitrocellulose) as the chemical binder for nitroglycerin, which he used in his invention of dynamite.

·  Germany holds the title for most independent  inventors to apply for patents.

·  Noxema, the skin cream invented in 1914 by  Baltimore pharmacist George Bunting, was  originally sold as "Dr. Bunting's Sunburn  Remedy." Mr. Bunting changed the name to Noxema  after a customer enthusiastically told him the  cream had "knocked out his eczema." Thus, the  cream that "knocks eczema" became "Noxema".

·  George Eastman, inventor of the Kodak camera,  hated having his picture taken.

·  Root Beer was invented in Biloxi, Mississippi,  in 1898 by Edward Adolf Barq, Sr.

·  Because Napoleon believed that armies marched  on their stomachs, he offered a prize in 1795  for a practical way of preserving food. The  prize was won by a French inventor, Nicholas  Appert. What he devised was canning. It was the  beginning of the canned food industry of today.

·  Bavarian immigrant Charles August Fey invented  the first three-reel automatic payout slot  machine, the Liberty Bell, in San Francisco in  1899.

·  More than 5,000 years ago, the Chinese discovered how to make silk from silkworm cocoons. For about 3,000 years, the Chinese kept this discovery a secret. Because poor people could not afford real silk, they tried to make other cloth look silky. Women would beat on cotton with sticks to soften the fibers. Then they rubbed it against a big stone to make it shiny. The shiny cotton was called "chintz." Because chintz was a cheaper copy of silk, calling something "chintzy" means it is cheap and not of good quality.

·  Incan soldiers invented the process of freeze-drying food. The process was primitive but effective — potatoes would be left outside to freeze overnight, then thawed and stomped on to remove excess water.

·  The first wooden shoe comes from the Netherlands. The Netherlands have many seas so people wanted a shoe that kept their feet dry while working outside. The shoes were called klompen and they had been cut of one single piece of wood.

·  Today the klompen are the favorite souvenir for people who visit the Netherlands.

·  When airplanes were still a novel invention, seat belts for pilots were installed only after the consequence of their absence was observed to be fatal - several pilots fell to their deaths while flying upside down.

·  The first Bowie knife was forged at Washington, Arkansas.

·  The supersonic Concorde jet made its first trial flight on January 1, 1969.

·  Duffel bags are named after a town of Duffel, Belgium, where they were first made.

·  The commercial wireless phone was first introduced in Chicago in 1982 by Ameritech.

·  The safety pin was patented in 1849 by Walter Hunt. He sold the patent rights for $400.

·  The first Fords used Dodge engines. Many ford vehicles now use Nissan engines, especially in Mini-vans.

·  The first portable calculator placed on sale by Texas Instruments weighed only 2-1/2 pounds and cost a mere $150. (1971)

·  In 1937 the emergency 999 telephone service was established in London. More than 13,000 genuine calls were made in the first month.

·  In 1889, the 1st coin-operated telephone, patented by Hartford, Connecticut inventor William Gray, was installed in the Hartford Bank.

·  In 1977, according to the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, there were 14.5 telephone calls made for every 100 people in the entire world.

·  Humphrey O'Sullivan invented the rubber heel because he was tired of pounding the pavements of Boston looking for a job.

·  Hungarian brothers George and L"szlo Biro invented the ball point pen in 1938.

·  Seating on the first scheduled inter-city commuter airplane flight consisted of moveable wicker chairs. There were 11 of them on the first Ford Tri-Motors. After several years, Ford replaced them with aluminum framed leather chairs.

·  The first man-made item to exceed the speed of sound is the bull whip or leather whip. When the whip is snapped, the knotted end makes a "crack" or popping noise. It is actually causing a mini sonic boom as it exceeds the speed of sound.

·  Cornelius van Drebel, a Dutch physician, built and successfully demonstrated the first submarine in 1620. It was a wooden framework covered with greased leather. The propulsion was provided by oars worked from the inside. It was tested in the Thames River in London.

·  Venetian blinds were invented in Japan.

·  Henry Waterman, of New York, invented the  elevator in 1850. He intended it to transport  barrels of flour.

·  John Greenwood, also of New York invented the  dental drill in 1790.

·  The corkscrew was invented by M.L. Bryn, also  of New York, in 1860.

·  Electrical hearing aids were invented in 1901  by Miller R. Hutchinson, who was (you guessed  it) from New York.

·  Dr. Jonas Salk developed the vaccine for polio  in 1952, in New York.

·  The first words that Thomas A. Edison spoke  into the phonograph were, "Mary had a little  lamb."

·  In the early 1800s, a French silk weaver called  Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented a way of  automatically controlling the warp and weft  threads on a silk loom by recording patterns of  holes in a string of cards.

·  Gutenburg invented the printing press in the  1450's, and the first book to ever be printed  was the Bible. It was, however, in Latin rather  than English.

·  The toothbrush was invented in 1498.

·  The waffle iron was invented August 24, 1869.

·  The alarm clock was not invented by the Marquis  de Sade, as some suspect, but rather by a man  named Levi Hutchins of Concord, New Hampshire,  in 1787. Perversity, though, characterized his  invention from the beginning. The alarm on his  clock could ring only at 4 am. Rumor has it  that Hutchins was murdered by his wife at 4:05  am on a very dark and deeply cold New England  morning.

·  Craven Walker invented the lava lamp, and its  contents are colored wax and water.

·  In 1916, Jones Wister of Philadelphia,  Pennsylvania invented a rifle for shooting  around corners. It had a curved barrel and  periscopic sights.

·  The same man who led the attack on the Alamo,  Mexican Military General, Antonio Lopez de  Santa Anna, is also credited with the invention  of chewing gum.

·  The parachute was invented by Leonardo da Vinci  in 1515.

·  Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

·  Lazy Susans are named after Thomas Edison's  daughter. He invented it to impress a gathering  of industrialists and inventors.

·  Cyano-acrylate glues (super glue) were invented  by accident. The researcher was trying to make  optical materials, and would test their  properties by putting them between two prisms  and shining light through them. When he tried  the cyano-acrylate, he couldn't get the prisms  apart.

·  A device invented as a primitive steam engine  by the Greek engineer Hero, about the time of  the birth of Christ, is used today as a  rotating lawn sprinkler.

·  A machine has been invented that can read  printed English books aloud to the blind, and  it can do so at speed half again as fast as  normal speech.

·  Games Slayter, a Purdue graduate, invented  fiberglass.

·  Teflon was discovered in 1938.

·  Alfred Nobel used a cellulose adhesive  (nitrocellulose) as the chemical binder for  nitroglycerin, which he used in his invention  of dynamite.

·  At the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, Richard  Blechyden, and Englishman, had a tea  concession. On a very hot day, none of the  fairgoers were interested in hot tea. Blechyden  served the tea cold—and invented iced tea.

·  The first known item made from aluminum was a rattle—made for Napoleon III in the 1850s. Napoleon also provided his most honored guests with knives and forks made of pure aluminum. At the time the newly discovered metal was so rare, it was considered more valuable than gold.

·  Hale's 100 inch lens built in the early 1900s was the largest solid piece of glass made until then. The lens was made by a French specialist who poured the equivalent of ten thousand melted champagne bottles into a mold packed with heat maintaining manure so that the glass would cool slowly and not crack.

·  When Alexander Graham Bell Was working on the telephone in 1876, he spilled battery acid on his pants and called out to his assistant, "Watson, please come here. I want you." Watson, who was on another floor, heard the call through the instrument he was hooking up, and ran to Bell's room. Bell's words became the first ever successfully communicated using a telephone.

·  Dutch engineers have developed a computerized  machine that allows a cow to milk itself. Each  cow in the herd has a computer chip in its  collar. If the computer senses that the cow has  not been milked in a given period of time, the  milk-laden animal is allowed to enter the  stall. The robot sensors locate the teats,  apply the vacuum devices, and the cow is  milked. The machine costs a mere $250,000 and  is said to boost milk production by 15%.

·  Out of the 11 original patents made by Nikola  Tessla, for the generation of hydroelectric  energy, 9 are still in use, (unchanged) today.

·  The windmill originated in Iran in AD 644. It  was used to grind grain.

·  Russian submarine designers are building  military submarines out of concrete. Because  concrete becomes stronger under high pressure,  (C-subs) could settle down to the bottom in  very deep water and wait for enemy ships to  pass overhead.

·  Concrete would not show up on  sonar displays (it looks just like sand or  rocks), so the passing ships would not see the  sub lurking below.

·  The first umbrella factory in the U.S. was  founded in 1928 in Baltimore, Maryland.

·  In the early 1950's, Denver architect Temple H.  Buell, often called the Father of the Mall,  conceived of and built one of the first  shopping malls in the U.S.: the Cherry Creek  Mall.

·  During one four-year period, Thomas Edison  obtained 300 patents, or one every five days.

·  The Wright Brothers spent time observing the  flight of the buzzard to help them solve the  mystery of flight. They realized that the bird  retained balance in the air by twisting the  tips of it's wings. By creating a wing warping  method based upon this observation, the  brothers were able to obtain a remarkable  degree of maneuverability.
In 1832 the Scottish surgeon Neil Arnott  devised water beds as a way of improving  patients' comfort.

·  In 1769 the British designer Edward Beran  enclosed wooden slats in a frame to adjust the  amount of light let into a room. These became  known as venetian blinds from their early use  over Italianate windows.

·  George Seldon received a patent in 1895 - for  the automobile. Four years later, George sold  the rights for $200,000.

·  Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878-1972), the mother  of 12 children, had good reason to improve the  efficiency and convenience of household items.  A pioneer in ergonomics, Gilbreth patented many  devices, including an electric food mixer, and  the trash can with step-on lid-opener that can  be found in most households today.

·  Direct-dial, coast-to-coast telephone service  began as Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood,  New Jersey, called his counterpart in Alameda,  California.

·  Kleenex tissues were originally used as filters  in gas masks.

·  G.I. Joe was introduced at the annual American International Toy Fair in New York on Feb. 9, 1964.

·  George Hancock invented a new game on November 30, 1887. It was played like baseball, except a broomstick was used for a bat and a boxing glove was the ball. Since the game was played indoors, it was originally called "indoor." Walter Hakanson later renamed it "softball."

·  The City and South London Railway opened the world's first deep-level electric railway on December 18th, 1890, from King William Street in the City of London under the River Thames to Stockwell.

·  Today, the London Underground Limited (LUL) is a major business with 2.5 million passenger journeys a day, nearly 500 trains, serving over 260 stations, around 16,000 staff and vast engineering assets.

·  Dr. Samuel Langley was able to get many model airplanes to fly, but on December 8, 1903, Langley's "human carrying flying machine", the aerodrome plunged into the Potomac River near Washington D.C., in front of photographers who were assembled to witness the event. Reporters around the country made fun of the idea that people could fly and nine days later, Wilbur and Orville Wright proved them wrong.

·  In the year 1886, Herman Hollerith had the idea of using punched cards to keep and transport information, a technology used up to the late 1970's. This device was constructed to allow the 1890 census to be tabulated. In 1896 the Tabulating Machine Company was founded by Hollerith. Twenty-eight years later, in 1924, after several take-overs the company became known as International Business Machines (IBM).

·  Spiral staircases in medieval castles are running clockwise. This is because all knights used to be right-handed. When the intruding army would climb the stairs they would not be able to use their right hand which was holding the sword because of the difficulties of climbing the stairs. Left-handed knights would have had no troubles, except left-handed people could never become knights because it was assumed that they were descendants of the devil.

·  In Japan, Western Electric first sold equipment in 1890, then in 1899 helped form the Nippon Electric Company (NEC). This was Japan's first joint venture with an American firm.

·  Northern Telecom, Alcatel N.V. and NEC all had roots in Western Electric.

·  In 1953, Sony Corporation obtained a transistor license from Western Electric Co. that led to its development of the world's first commercially successful transistor radio.

·  Just like today's computers, early telephones were very confusing to new users. Some became so frustrated with the new technology, they attacked the phone with an ax or ripped it out of the wall.

·  In the early 1880's some well-to-do telephone owners started the unusual trend of paying to have a theatre employee hold a telephone receiver backstage, transmitting live plays and operas into their living rooms.

·  The famous emergency hotline, whereby the President could have immediate contact with the Kremlin wasn't established until 1984. Prior to 1984, the only direct contact to the Kremlin was a cumbersome teleprinter link, supplying text messages that then had to be translated, responses drafted and sent back.

·  William Bourne, a British mathematician, drew plans for a submarine in 1578. But it was only in 1620 that Cornelius van Drebbel, a Dutch inventor, managed to build a submarine. He wrapped a wooden rowboat tightly in waterproofed leather and had air tubes with floats to the surface to provide oxygen. Of course, there were no engines yet, so the oars went through the hull at leather gaskets. He took the first trip with 12 oarsmen in the Thames River.

·  It has been determined that less than one patented invention in a hundred makes any money for the inventor.

·  It was Swiss chemist Jacques Edwin Brandenberger who invented cellophane, back in 1908.

·  James J. Ritty, owner of a tavern in Dayton, Ohio, invented the cash register in 1879 to stop his patrons from pilfering house profits.

·  The monkey wrench is named after its inventor, a London blacksmith named Charles Moncke.

·  The pop top can was invented in Kettering, Ohio by Ermal Fraze.

·  George Seldon received a patent in 1895 - for the automobile. Four years later, George sold the rights for $200,000.

·  You could milk about six cows per hour by hand, but with modern machinery, you can milk up to 100 cows per hour.

·  Direct-dial, coast-to-coast telephone service began as Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, New Jersey, called his counterpart in Alameda, California.

·  Kleenex tissues were originally used as filters in gas masks.

·  Bryan J. Patrie, a Stanford graduate student invented the Watercolor Intelligent Nightlight, which informs bleary-eyed midnight bathroom-goers whether the toilet seat is up or down... without turning on a blinding light. Patrie introduced the device in the early 1990's. He explained, "When you get within five feet of the dark commode, it will sense your motion. It looks to see if the room is dark. Then it looks upward by sending out an infrared beam. If it gets a reflection, it knows the seat is up. If it is, the red light comes on."

·  On the first neon sign, the word neon was spelled out in red by Dr. Perley G. Nutting, 15 years before neon signs became widely used commercially.

·  Out of the 11 original patents made by Nikola Tessla, for the generation of hydroelectric energy, 9 are still in use, (unchanged) today.

·  The first umbrella factory in the U.S. was founded in 1928 in Baltimore, Maryland.

·  In the early 1950's, Denver architect Temple H. Buell, often called the Father of the Mall, conceived of and built one of the first shopping malls in the U.S.: the Cherry Creek Mall.

·  Month after month, the little Bell Company lived from hand to mouth. No salaries were paid in full. Often, for weeks, they were not paid at all. In Watson's notebook there are such entries during this period as "Lent Bell fifty cents," "Lent Hubbard twenty cents," "Bought one bottle beer—too bad can't have beer every day."

·  When Bell's patent was sixteen months old, there were 778 telephones in use.

·  The first "Hello" badge used to identify guests and hosts at conventions, parties, etc. was traced back to September 1880. It was on that date that the first Telephone Operators Convention was held at Niagara Falls and the "Hello" badge was created for that event.

·  The first underground and underwater rail system  in the world, the New York City Subway, began  operating in 1904. Almost 8,000 men participated  in building the 21-mile (33.6 km) route. The  project's chief engineer was William Barclay  Parsons.

·  An Englishman invented Scotland's national dress  - the kilt. It was developed from the philamore -  a massive piece of tartan worn with a belt and  draped over the shoulder - by English  industrialist Thomas Rawlinson who ran a foundry  at Lochaber, Scotland in the early 1700s and  thought a detachable garment would make life more  comfortable for his workers.

·  It is recorded that the Babylonians were making  soap around 2800 B.C. and that it was known to  the Phoenicians around 600 B.C. These early  references to soap and soap making were for the  use of soap in the cleaning of textile fibers  such as wool and cotton in preparation for  weaving into cloth.

·  Disc Jockey Alan Freed popularized the term "Rock  and Roll."

·  The patent number of the telephone is 174465.

·  George Washington Carver invented peanut butter.

·  The Roman civilization invented the arch.

·  King Gilette spent 8 years trying to invent and  introduce his safety razor.

·  The Super Ball® was born in 1965, and it became America's most popular plaything that year. By Christmas time, only six months after it was introduced by Wham-O, 7 million balls had been sold at 98 cents apiece. Norman Stingley, a California chemist, invented the bouncing gray ball. In his spare time, he had compressed a synthetic rubber material under 3,500 pounds of pressure per square inch, and eventually created the remarkable ball. It had a resiliency of 92 percent, about three times that of a tennis ball, and could bounce for long periods. It was reported that presidential aide McGeorge Bundy had five dozen Super Balls® shipped to the White House for the amusement of staffers.

·  At a glance, the Celsius scale makes more sense than the Fahrenheit scale for temperature measuring. But its creator, Anders Celsius, was an oddball scientist. When he first developed his scale, he made freezing 100 degrees and boiling 0 degrees, or upside down. No one dared point this out to him, so fellow scientists waited until Celsius died to change the scale.

·  At a jet plane's speed of 1,000 km (620mi) per hour, the length of the plane becomes one atom shorter than its original length.

·  Western Electric successfully brought sound to motion pictures and introduced systems of mobile communications which culminated in the cellular telephone.

·  On December 23, 1947, Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., held a secret demonstration of the transistor which marked the foundation of modern electronics.

·  Bavarian immigrant Charles August Fey invented the first three-reel automatic payout slot machine, the Liberty Bell, in San Francisco in 1899.

·  Dr. John Gorrie of Appalachicola, Florida, invented mechanical refrigeration in 1851. He patented his device on May 6, 1851. There is a statue which honors this "Father of Modern Day Air Conditioning" in the Statuary Hall of the Capitol building in Washington, DC.

·  Electrical hearing aids were invented in 1901 by Miller R. Hutchinson.

·  In 1889, the first coin-operated telephone, patented by Hartford, Connecticut inventor William Gray, was installed in the Hartford Bank. Soon, "pay phones" were installed in stores, hotels, saloons, and restaurants, and their use soared. Local calls using a coin-operated phone in the U.S. cost only 5 cents everywhere until 1951.

·  The first commercial vacuum cleaner was so large it was mounted on a wagon. People threw parties in their homes so guests could watch the new device do its job.

·  The parachute was invented by Leonardo da Vinci in 1515.

·  Lazy Susans are named after Thomas Edison's daughter. He invented it to impress a gathering of industrialists and inventors.

·  Cyano-acrylate glues (super glue) were invented by accident. The researcher was trying to make optical materials, and would test their properties by putting them between two prisms and shining light through them. When he tried the cyano-acrylate, he couldn't get the prisms apart.

·  A machine has been invented that can read printed English books aloud to the blind, and it can do so at speed half again as fast as normal speech.

·  The single blade window cleaning squeegee was invented in 1936 by Ettore Sceccone and is still the most common form of commercial window cleaning today.

·  Roulette was invented by the great French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. It was a by product of his experiments with perpetual motion.

·  The man who invented shorthand, John Gregg, was deaf.

·  The hypodermic needle was invented in 1853. It was initially used for giving injections of morphine as a painkiller. Physicians mistakenly believed that morphine would not be addictive if it by-passed the digestive tract.

·  Thomas Edison’s first major invention was the quadruplex telegraph. Unlike other telegraphs at the time, it could send four messages at the same time over one wire.

·  Inventor Gail Borden, Jr. invented condensed milk in the 1850's.

·  After his death in 1937, Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the wireless telegraph was honored by broadcasters worldwide as they let the airwaves fall silent for two minutes in his memory.

·  In the year 1886, Herman Hollerith had the idea of using punched cards to keep and transport information, a technology used up to the late 1970's. This device was constructed to allow the 1890 census to be tabulated. In 1896 the Tabulating Machine Company was founded by Hollerith. Twenty-eight years later, in 1924, after several take-overs the company became known as International Business Machines (IBM).

·  At the turn of the century, most light bulbs were hand-blown, and the cost of one was equivalent to half a day's pay for the average U.S. worker.

·  Camel's-hair brushes are not made of camel's hair. They were invented by a man named Mr. Camel.

·  Western Electric invented the loudspeaker which was initially called "loud-speaking telephone."

·  Phone service was established at the White House one year after its invention. President Rutherford B. Hayes was the first to have phone service (1877-81).

·  Fifteen years after its invention in 1876, there were five million phones in America. Fifteen years after its invention, more than 33 million wireless phones were in the U.S.

·  According to U.S. law, a patent may not be granted on a useless invention, on a method of doing business, on mere printed matter, or on a device or machine that will not operate. Even if an invention is novel or new, a patent may not be obtained if the invention would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the same area at the time of the invention.

·  According to Dennis Changon, spokesman for the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal, Canada - if all of the commercial planes in the world were grounded at the same time there wouldn't be space to park them all at gates.

·  In 1931, an industrialist named Robert Ilg built a half-size replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa outside Chicago and lived in it for several years. The tower is still there.

·  The first manager of the Seattle Space Needle, Hoge Sullivan, was acrophobic - fearful of heights. The 605 foot tall Space Needle is fastened to its foundation with 72 bolts, each 30 feet long. The Space Needle sways approximately 1 inch for every 10 mph of wind. It was built to withstand a wind velocity of 200 miles-per-hour.

·  The first revolving restaurant, The Top of the Needle, was located at the 500-foot level of the 605-foot-high steel-and-glass tower at the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle, Washington. It contained 260 seats and revolved 360 degrees in an hour.

·  The state-of-the-art restaurant was dedicated on May 22, 1961.

·  Henry Waterman, of New York, invented the elevator in 1850. He intended it to transport barrels of flour.

·  John Greenwood, of New York invented the dental drill in 1790.

·  The corkscrew was invented by M.L. Bryn, of New York, in 1860.

·  Electrical hearing aids were invented in 1901 by Miller R. Hutchinson, who was from New York.

·  Dr. Jonas Salk developed the vaccine for polio in 1952, in New York.

·  Four wheel roller skates were invented by James L. Plimpton in 1863.

·  The first words that Thomas A. Edison spoke into the phonograph were, "Mary had a little lamb."

·  In the early 1800s, a French silk weaver called Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented a way of automatically controlling the warp and weft threads on a silk loom by recording patterns of holes in a string of cards.

·  As an advertising gimmick, Carl Meyer, nephew of lunch meat mogul Oscar Meyer, invented the company's "Wienermobile". On July 18, 1936, the first Oscar Mayer "Wienermobile" rolled out of General Body Company's factory in Chicago. The Wienermobile still tours the U.S. today.

·  Germany holds the title for most independent inventors to apply for patents.

·  George Eastman, inventor of the Kodak camera, hated having his picture taken.

·  Because Napoleon believed that armies marched on their stomachs, he offered a prize in 1795 for a practical way of preserving food. The prize was won by a French inventor, Nicholas Appert. What he devised was canning. It was the beginning of the canned food industry of today.

·  Bavarian immigrant Charles August Fey invented the first three-reel automatic payout slot machine, the Liberty Bell, in San Francisco in 1899.

·  Joseph Priestly is credited with discovering oxygen, ammonia, carbon monoxide, hydrogen chloride, sulphur dioxide, and nitrous oxide. He was also the first to isolate chlorine.

·  Joseph Swan invented the light bulb in 1879, one year before Thomas Edison did. However, Swan didn't patent the idea and was widely accused of copying Edison who did patent the idea and was therefore recognized as its inventor. Swan continued to be denied recognition until some time later when it was shown that both light bulbs were produced using different processes. Edison and Swan later formed a joint company using the best of both technologies.

·  Miller Reese of New York, patented the first hearing-aid.Unlike the hearing aids that we know today - this original was not portable. Electrical hearing aids were invented in 1901 by Miller R.Hutchinson.

·  John Greenwood invented the dental drill in 1790.

·  The corkscrew was invented by M.L. Bryn in 1860.

·  Four wheel roller skates - James L. Plimpton in 1863.