Baseball Cap ~
c1868
In the 1850s, when baseball was getting its start in
America, most players
wore straw hats. This all changed after the Civil War. In the late 1860s, players began
wearing visor caps. The caps were imitations of those worn by Union and Confederate
soldiers during the American Civil War. Book
Source: The Kid
Who Invented the Popsicle |
Coffee Pot ~
Benjamin Thompson ~ 1806
Coffee drinkers the world over no longer had
to chew their brew. Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, invents a coffee pot with a metal
sieve to strain away the grounds. Source:
American
Experience
The French Drip Pot is perfected by
Benjamin Thompson Count Rumford,
an eccentric American adventurer who settled in Paris, France. Source:
Mr.
Coffee |
eBooks ~ Michael Hart ~ 1971
Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free
electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project
Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and continues to inspire the
creation of eBooks and related technologies today. Source:
Project Gutenberg
|
Google ~ Sergey Brin
and Larry Page ~ 1998
As a research project at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page
created a search engine that listed results according to the popularity
of the pages, after concluding that the most popular result would often
be the most useful. After raising $1 million from family, friends and
other investors, the pair launched the company in 1998. Google has since
become the world’s most popular search engine, receiving more than 200
million queries each day. Source:
Biography Channel |
Holography ~ Emmett
Leith and Juris Upatnieks ~ 1964
When College of Engineering researchers Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks
displayed their revolutionary laser transmission hologram of a toy train
at the Optical Society's 1964 Spring Conference, they shed new light on
a nascent scientific principle that, in the following years, has found
numerous applications in aerospace, archaeology, credit card security
and popular art, to name just a few. Source:
University
of Michigan |
Human Powered
Flight ~ Paul MacCready ~ 1977
On August 23, 1977, Paul MacCready's plane, the 55-pound Gossamer Condor,
took flight above a California air strip, powered by a human bicyclist.
Source:
Inventing Modern America |
iPod ~ Tony Fadell ~ 2001
The iPod originated with a business idea dreamed up by Tony Fadell, an
independent inventor. Fadell's idea was to take an MP3 player, build a
Napster music sale service to complement it, and build a company around
it, Apple hired Fadell in early 2001 and assigned him a team of about 30
people, including designers, programmers and hardware engineers. Source:
Wired |
Karaoke Machine ~ Daisuke
Inoue ~1971
Leases the first set of karaoke machines to nightspots in Kobe, Japan.
Despite invention's popularity, makes little profit since he fails to
patent the machine. By 1996, the Karaoke industry is a $10
billion-a-year business Source:
Time Magazine |
Laser ~ Arthur L. Schawlow and
Charles H. Townes ~ 1958
The invention of the laser, which stands for light amplification by
stimulated emission of radiation, can be dated to 1958 with the
publication of the scientific paper, Infrared and Optical Masers, by
Arthur L. Schawlow, then a Bell Labs researcher, and Charles H. Townes,
a consultant to Bell Labs. That paper, published in Physical Review, the
journal of the American Physical Society, launched a new scientific
field and opened the door to a multibillion-dollar industry. Source:
Bell
Labs |
Magnavox Odyssey ~ Ralph Baer ~ 1971
In 1966, Ralph Baer
was working for a military contractor, in New
Hampshire. He decided to create a console that would enable people to
play electronic games on their television sets. In 1971, Baer sold his
game machine to Magnavox. They called the system the Odyssey. Source:
Classic Gaming |
Spray Atomizer
~ Allen DeVilbiss ~ 1888
In 1888, Toledo, Ohio physician Dr. Allen DeVilbiss developed a spray
atomizer to provide an easier way to apply medicines to patients'
throats. His invention was so successful that by 1890 he had retired
from medical practice and established a company, DeVilbiss Manufacturing
Company, to produce the atomizers. Source:
Bowling Green State University |
Video Game ~ William Higinbotham ~ 1958
In 1958, a person by
the name of "Willy Higinbotham", who was a physicist, made a working
model and not even with a single transistor, but with vacuum tubes! His
"Tennis" game-type was invented at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Source:
Classic
Gaming |
Water
Disinfection System ~ Ashok Gadgil ~ 1992
Using science no more complex than the ultraviolet light emitted by an
unshielded fluorescent lamp, he built a simple, effective, and
inexpensive water disinfection system. Source:
Inventing Modern America |
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