Electricity was first discovered about 2 500 years ago. The Greek scientist Thales of Miletus (c. 620 BCE – c. 546 BC) noticed that a piece of amber (the hard fossilized sap from trees) attracted straw or feathers when he rubbed it with a cloth. The word “electricity” comes from the Greek word for amber [...]
Category: inventions
The term “soda water” was coined in 1798. The soda fountain was patented by Samuel Fahnestock in 1819, with the first bottled soda water available in 1835. The first ice-cream soda was sold in 1874 in the US. The first cola-flavored beverage was introduced in 1881. Coca-Cola was invented in 1886 in Atlanta, Georgia by [...]
Who invented the light bulb? No, it wasn’t Thomas Edison. Light bulbs – in particular Starr’s electric lamp – were in use 50 years before Edison applied for the patent in 1879. In addition, British inventor Joseph Swan was awarded a light bulb patent the previous year. Edison went on to make big buck from [...]
In 1834, Charles Babbage (1792-1871) designed the Analytical Engine, the precursor of the computer. He was unable to obtain funding for it from the government, who thought it would be worthless. There are many examples of inventions that were way ahead of their time. So much so that some would not come into use for [...]
Great minds thinks alike. When Johann Vaaler patented his paperclip in 1901, there already were similar designs by William Middlebrook and Cornelius Brosnan. Vaaler is credited with being the first to design a paperclip because of drawings he made as early as 1899. In 1669, the principles of differential calculus were determined by Sir Isaac [...]
When Johann Vaaler patented his paper clip in 1901, there already were similar designs on the books. William Middlebrook of Waterbury, Connecticut patented his design in 1899. Cornelius Brosnan of Springfield, Massachusetts patented his Konaclip in 1900. So, who was first to invent the paper clip? Well, it is thought to be Johann Vaaler. Drawings [...]
Friedrich Bayer was born in 1825, the only son in a family of six children. His father was a weaver and dyer, and Bayer followed in his footsteps. In 1848, he opened his own dye business, which became very successful. In the past, all dyes had come from organic materials, but in 1856 coal tar [...]
Cans were opened with a hammer and chisel before the advent of can openers. The tin cannister, or can, was invented in 1810 by a Londoner, Peter Durand. The year before, French confectioner, Nicolas Appert, had introduced the method of canning food (as it became known) by sealing the food tightly inside a glass bottle [...]
More than 100 billion crayons have been produced so far. The first crayons consisted of a mixture of charcoal and oil. In the early 1900s, cousins Edwin Binney and Harold Smith developed a nontoxic wax crayon. Binney’s wife, Alice, attached the French word for chalk, craie, with “ola,” from oily, to form the Crayola brand [...]
So you think downloading music from the Internet via a phone line is a really cool modern thing? Not so. In 1896, Thaddeus Cahill filed a patent on the “art of and apparatus for generating and distributing music electronically” and until 1914 he fed music signals down AT&T’s telephone lines with his Telharmoniums apparatus. And [...]
