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| Displaying inventions Anecdotes: 169 Found |
William Brodie: The Drop
William Brodie, a respected figure in Edinburgh, lived a double life as a highly...
Rocket Guy
One day in 2003, a team from the Discovery Channel's "Daily Planet" visited the ...
Maiman's Laser
The famed physicist Theodore Maiman once recalled the New York press conference ...
Gallup Poll
As an editor of the student paper at the University of Iowa in the early 1920s, ...
Serendippable!
One day in 1853, an annoying guest at a resort in Saratoga Springs, New York, co...
Sitwell's Egg
"The Sitwell Egg, invented by Sir George Sitwell, had a yolk of smoked meat, a w...
High Roller?
Gerard Roy was a colorful character. Known locally as The Man from Mars, he was ...
Petard? (long)
Thomas Midgley's inquiring mind was a mixed blessing at best. According to biogr...
99.998% Perspiration
Someone once remarked upon the huge number of failures which Thomas Edison had r...
Bell & Watson
On the 10th of March, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell spoke the first complete sente...
Merlin Magic?
"The first roller skates were perfected more than two centuries ago by Joseph Me...
Say Watt?
According to the traditional account, James Watt one day happened to observe a k...
Wide Screen
During World War II, the famed magician Jasper Maskelyne was enlisted by the All...
Divine Inspiration?
While working on the world's first motion picture camera (the kinetoscope), Thom...
Holy Crap?
In 2000, Thomas Crapper, the Victorian sanitary engineer often credited with the...
Pure Genius
A deaf man who recorded sound? A school dropout who unraveled the mysteries of e...
Famous Last Worms?
P. J. Tierney, developer of the modern diner, died in 1917. The cause of death? ...
Turnkey Solution?
Thomas Edison enjoyed showing visitors around his summer residence, pointing out...
Rx
On August 10th, 1897, Felix Hoffman and Arthur Eichengrun invented synthetic asp...
Achromatic Telescope
In 1733, Chester Moor Hall discovered that a so-called "achromatic" telescope co...
Captain Gregory: Battie Mon...
Among the exhibits at the New York World's fair in 1939 was a model of a propose...
Kalashnikov
Some 55 years after his invention of the AK-47 assault rifle (in 1947), Mikhail ...
Elias Howe: Dream Machine
"A major problem in the development of Howe's sewing machine was the location of...
Qwerty Conspiracy?
In 1936, American efficiency expert August Dvorak patented a new keyboard whose ...
Nut Meal
In 1895, St. Louis doctor John Harvey Kellogg filed a patent for a "process of p...
The Birth of Television
On January 27th, 1926, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public ...
Successful Experiment
In 1800, Robert Fulton developed the world's first usable submarine and torpedo....
Guillotine
"Ironically, the guillotine, which became the most notable symbol of the excesse...
Arrival of Cinema
In 1895, Auguste Lumiere and his brother Louis made cinematic history by giving ...
Smart Brick
In 2003, professor Chang Liu and his team of structural engineers at the Univers...
Doh!
In Camden, Maine, there is a 27 1/2 foot marble statue dedicated to a certain ca...
Maxim Men
According to Maxim magazine, during his tenure as chief executive, "commo...
Odorama
In 1982, the John Waters film Polyester was enhanced in a curious manner:...
BANNER JACKASS
As well as temper tantrums and a penchant for boasting, Adolf Hitler suffered fr...
Just Compensation?
While working for the Gold & Stock Co. (a telegraph company which provided gold ...
Duckmaster
In 2002, Argentine inventor Matías Gilli unveiled "an ultra-efficient anatomical...
Edison Cement
"One of the metropolitan area's earliest and most outspoken concrete evangelists...
Cool Invention?
Rudyard Kipling spent five of the happiest years of his life in Brattleboro, Ver...
Joy Ride
During Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, the British engineer and invent...
Westinghouse
Although Westinghouse's automatic air brake (patented in 1872) promised a dramat...
Simply Brilliant
In 214 BC, a powerful Roman force attacked the city of Syracuse, the home of the...
Eccentric Inventor
"Perhaps the most eccentric father ever to appear in a son's autobiography was S...
Hi-Infidelity
Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of television, got married on an impulse. "On ...
Fahrenheit: Serendipity!
"Fahrenheit was born on this day in 1686," Leno reported on May 24th one year. "...
Philo T. Farnsworth: Dr. X
One day in the late 1950s, Philo T. Farnsworth reluctantly appeared as a mystery...
Lazy Laszlo Biro?
While working as a journalist (with a Hungarian newspaper called ...
Victor Gruen: Frankenstein'...
The Austrian-born architect Victor Gruen - famed for his invention of the modern...
Wright Brothers: Hard to Be...
"Flight was generally looked upon as an impossibility and scarcely anyone believ...
Ed Headrick: Spinning in hi...
When Ed Headrick, the inventor of the frisbee, died in August, 2002, his family ...
Hershey Serendipity
While experimenting with magnetrons (devices which produce microwave radiation) ...
Sounding
Lord Kelvin once worked out a method for measuring the depth of the sea using pi...
Good Year, Bad Life...
Despite his genius for innovation, Charles Goodyear (who, for example, opened Am...
Robert Millikan: Gigantic B...
"In 1930, the American physicist and Nobel Prize-winner Robert Millikan (1868-19...
Radio Luddite
National Broadcasting Company chief David Sarnoff once delivered a speech lioniz...
Good Harvest
Cyrus McCormick went bankrupt after the panic of 1837. He lost his farm and ever...
Smiley Face
"Back in 1963, Harvey Ball was asked by an insurance company to come up with a s...
Sarcastomatic
In the early 1960s, William Rouverol invented the original Votomatic punch-card ...
Prescience
The official inventor of the periscope was not granted a patent on his device. W...
A/CK!
The invention of air conditioning may be traced to the assassination of Presiden...
Smell-O-Vision
In 1960, Mike Todd, Jr unveiled a $2 million motion picture featuring Smell-O-Vi...
Summer Romance
While picnicing on a small island one summer day in 1906, Ole Evinrude sped acro...
Daguerrotorture
Why are subjects never seen smiling in the earliest photographs? Even decades af...
WWW
While working as a consultant at CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Phys...
Coinage
"He [Thomas Hardy] laughed a little and said that once or twice recently he had ...
Concert Companion
2003 marked the appearance of a hand-held wireless gadget, called the Concert Co...
Dark Continent?
Thomas Edison's invention of the light bulb was not universally well-received. I...
Knock Knock (long)
In January 2003, Crispin Jones and his colleagues at Ideo (an industrial-design ...
Ray of Light
One day someone accidentally opened the door of Man Ray's darkroom. As a result,...
Deep Concern
On a visit to Portsmouth with his wife Mary, the Prince of Wales was once invite...
Francis Xavier McNamara: Di...
One evening in 1950, tarpaulin manufacturer Francis Xavier McNamara was inspired...
Something Rotten?
In 1772, Johann Friedriche von Struensee was executed in Denmark for crimes agai...
Balloon Flight
"On June 4, 1783 at the market square of a French village of Annonay, not far fr...
Sylvan Goldman: Shopping Ca...
"Shoppers in the 1930s were used to carrying baskets and found the new contrapti...
Bat-Moron
"In 1911, a suburban tailor named Teichelt, who had invented a bat-wing cape tha...
Fire Medicine
A ninth-century Chinese alchemist made a serendipitous discovery one day while s...
Vertical Integration
A firm believer in vertical integration, Henry Ford produced virtually everythin...
Frank Fleer: Flubber?
In 1906, Frank H. Fleer's 'Frank H. Fleer Corporation' introduced the world's fi...
Close Shave
King Gillette spent eight frustrating years inventing and developing his safety ...
Snoops?
Having constructed a lifelike robot in the form of a girl, Rene Descartes had th...
Cog & Pulley
Archimedes was well aware of the remarkable possibilities furnished by his inven...
Ring of Truth?
While Edgar Degas was quite conservative, his friend the etcher Jean-Louis Forai...
Wiffle Ball
One day in 1953, an unemployed man named David Nelson Mullany cut holes in a har...
Grainy Image?
One day while tilling a potato field on his family's Idaho farm, Philo T. Farnsw...
Darrow
One of Clarence Darrow's grateful female clients once asked the great lawyer how...
News Flash
"After a few more flashes in the pan, we shall hear very little more of Edison o...
Leverage
The great Greek mathematician and engineer Archimedes discovered the laws of lev...
Crowning Achievement
Though best known for his portraits of more than 50 American Revolutionary heroe...
Scratch History
"Grand Wizzard Theodore," according to the Scratch Academy, "was a guy up in the...
David Vining: Virtual Colon...
In 1994, the radiologist David Vining, the genius behind the virtual colonoscopy...
Ed Kelly: Rest in Peace
"Ed Kelly, the man who introduced America to Cool Whip, died at the age of 86," ...
Invention of Dry Cleaning
"It was an accident that lead to the invention of dry cleaning. A Frenchman, Jol...
Port-A-Potty
During a family picnic one day, Jacob Feinzilberg's daughter "heard nature's cal...
Willie Wells: Batting Helmet
One day, after being beaned in the head by yet another pitcher, legendary Negro ...
Frank Fleer: Why Gum is Pink
In 1928, after two decades of experimentation, Frank H. Fleer's 'Frank H. Fleer ...
Benjamin Franklin: Bright I...
"One of Benjamin Franklin's most famous innovations started off as a joke. In 17...
Hollywood Quakes
When legendary video game designer John Romero added Quake's "demo-record" featu...
Daisuke Inoue: Karaoke Machine
In October 2004, Daisuke Inoue, the Japanese pony-tailed former drummer who inve...
Francis Bacon: Cool Experim...
In March 1626, as Francis Bacon (father of the "experimental method") was passin...
Patently Moronic
At the turn of the 19th Century, many were swept up in fin-de-siecle euph...
A certain Captain Hanson Grego
A certain Captain Hanson Gregory is often credited with a curious invention: It ...
Cockerell's Invention
One historic day in 1950, Christopher Cockerell and his wife unveiled a curious ...
Son of Pete?
One wintry day in 1905, 11-year old Frank Epperson accidentally left a glass of ...
Identi-Code
Noted director Robert Altman was once an amateur inventor. Among his creations w...
Lightning Rod
Although Benjamin Franklin's invention of the lightning rod brought him acclaim ...
Wireless Marvel (long)
One day in 1910, after chopping his wife Cora's head off and throwing it into th...
Blunt Order
One day Cardinal Richelieu became disgusted with the barbaric practice (common u...
Whisky Wheelbarrow
"The first mechanical road vehicle, forerunner of the automobile, was
a steam-p...
Pilkington
Glass-maker Allistair Pilkington was washing dishes one day when he observed a f...
Burrs
Swiss engineer George de Mestrel returned from an excursion one day and found th...
Eureka Moment
One day, as he lay on his bed watching a fly buzzing through the air, Rene Desca...
Patently Obvious?
Despite his incredible ability as an inventor, Thomas Edison (who filed some 130...
Dancing Robot
Al Gore, eat your heart out: In July 2003, Japanese inventor and Tohoku Universi...
nuorraH yaR
The legendary automobile designer Ray Harroun won the first Indianapolis 500 in ...
Morse
In May 1844, Samuel Morse sent the world's first public telegram over a speciall...
Doubleday
Abner Doubleday wrote 67 volumes of memoirs. Incredibly, no mention is made of t...
Lexan
One day in 1953 Daniel Fox, then a chemist working for General Electric, found t...
Candy on a Stick
in the early 1900s, George Smith made a living selling candy on a stick. As comp...
Moët
In 1967, an underrated American driver named Dan Gurney piloted his Ford racecar...
Acid Burn
In 1938, while experimenting with derivatives of ergot (a rye fungus), Swiss che...
Young Cousteau
"Jacques Yves Cousteau, the underwater explorer annd inventor of the aqua-lung, ...
Jim Segermark's Vasclip
"Jim Segermark freaked out when his doctor first told him what would happen duri...
Inventive Chairman
Sony's inventive co-founder and chairman Akio Morita worked exceptionally hard p...
Super Serendipity
"In 1982, a nasa nuclear engineer named Lonnie Johnson was working at home on a ...
Simply Bananas
In October 2004, German artist Karl-Friedrich Lentze applied for an unusual pate...
Blithe Prophecy
"Sir James Barrie once told me that he had been happy writing for the ...
Mother of Invention
Because he (and his domineering mother, Catherine de Medicis) believed that mone...
Idiot Sauvant
"A pioneering French inventor called Sauvant claimed in 1932 that he had perfect...
Swat Team
One day in 1905, Dr. Samuel J. Crumbine of the Kansas State Board of Health foun...
Frozen Food
When Clarence Birdseye introduced the first frozen food in 1930, it was feared t...
Waffle Iron
While operating a waffle iron in his kitchen one morning in 1962, Bill Bowerman ...
Conquistador's Weapon
Francisco Pizarro, a nearly illiterate Spanish conquistador, conquered the grand...
Haber Process
The so-called Haber process, developed by the famed chemist Fritz Haber in 1909,...
Small Concession
Among the vendors at the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904 was an Englishman nam...
Caveat Inventor
On February 14, 1876, Elisha Gray applied for a "caveat" announcing his intentio...
Narcissistic Advice?
Who wrote the first known book on cosmetics, recommending face packs of barley-b...
Mosaic
In 1993, while working on a fuckingcomputer project as a student at the Universi...
Tie-Breaker
Jimmy Van Allen (famed for his invention of the tennis tie-breaker) died on the ...
Dr. Megaphone
One day while working at the famous Necker hospital in Paris, the French physici...
Sonic Weapons
The French robotics researcher Gavreau once traced some inexplicable bouts of na...
Telephone Game?
Alexander Graham Bell may have been thrilled to show Gardiner Green Hubbard (a f...
Farnsworth Raid
One day in the late 1920s, a small laboratory in California was raided by armed ...
Driven to Distraction
John Dunlop was frequently driven to distraction by the deep grooves which his s...
Radio Visionary
In the 1920s, David Sarnoff sought investment capital for the development of the...
Walking Boots
In 2003, inventor Viktor Gordejev (from Ufa in the Ural Mountains) announced tha...
Charles Martin Hall
In 1886 Charles Martin Hall was a twenty-two year old university student. One da...
Little Genius from Blarney
For 25 years, virtually every encrypted electronic transaction used a system cal...
Nicephore Niepce
The French chemist Nicephore Niepce, famed for his role in the development of ph...
Shuji Nakamura: Rebellious ...
"Shuji Nakamura was just another rebellious inventor who had succeeded by trusti...
Sticky Situation
One day in 1948, a Swiss engineer named George de Mestral found himself in a sti...
Dewar Flask
In 1892, British physicist Sir James Dewar invented an insulated bottle-within-a...
Fortune Cookies
Ironically, French fries were invented in Belgium and pasta was invented in Chin...
Teflon
Though teflon was discovered by Roy Plunkett in a Du Pont lab in 1938 (during th...
Gerstenzang
One day in 1923, Leo Gerstenzang found himself watching his wife applying cotton...
Welcome Danger?
Harold Lloyd's silent feature Welcome Danger (1929) was eclipsed at its p...
Ear-Muffs
"When he was 15 years old, Chester Greenwood went ice slating on a pond near his...
Frankenstein Doctor
As a young man, Earl Bakken saw Frankenstein, and was immediately fascina...
David Boggs & Grand Junction
"By 1990 Ethernet [the networking backbone for everything from corporate network...
Rotary Dial
"Rotary dials were patented in 1891 by Almon B. Strowger, an undertaker in the U...
Nakanuts
With 3,000 inventions, Dr. Yoshiro Nakamats, the eccentric founder of the yearly...
Bicycle History
One day in the 1830s, Kirkpatrick Macmillan, a blacksmith from Dumfries, Scotlan...
Publishing History
After spending a weekend with Agatha Christie and her husband in Devon one day, ...
Indian Moguls
In 1856, a British civil servant named William Herschell was entrusted with the ...
Heel
Tired of pounding the pavement in search of a job, an unemployed Bostonian named...
Vaucanson's Automaton
Mme du Deffand once found herself engaged in conversation with an inventor of au...
Chester Carlson & the Ball-...
Chester Carlson, the inventor of the xerographic process for copying documents, ...
Self-Starter
Few automotive inventions are more celebrated by women than by the opposite sex....
Thunder
Having decided that a scene in Appius and Virginia called for a clap of t...
Prompt Invention
One day news arrived that Samuel Morse's wife had died - one week earlier. Morse...
Hoberman Sphere
While working as an engineer, Chuck Hoberman became interested in transformation...
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