Does this man look familiar? He should.

This week we celebrate one of the most important patents ever to cross a USPTO examiner’s desk.

The patent describes a process for a producing a material we use nearly everywhere – our homes, our cars, our offices, our hospitals – we even use it in space!

It’s one of the most abundant materials on the planet, and it is infinitely recyclable.

But, without the work of one brilliant young scientist, its full potential might never had been realized.

Do you know what it is? Continue reading “The True Story of a Boy Wonder Who Totally Changed the World” →

Question from Douglas:

I use a ballpoint pen nearly everyday, who invented it?

Douglas,

The first ballpoint pen patent, 392,046, was issued to John Loud on October 30, 1888. Loud was a leather tanner and needed a writing device to assist him with marking leather and cloth. Regular fountain pens were unable to perform the tasks Loud needed. The new ballpoint pen worked well on tough surfaces, but was too rough for use of paper. The pen was never commercially produced.
View Loud’s patent here.

Irritated with how often he had to fill his fountain pen with ink, László Bíró, wanted to invent a better writing product. Bíró realized the ink used for newspaper printing dried quickly without smudging. He wanted to create a writing device that would dispense ink with the same qualities as the newspaper ink. László and Georg Bíró created the first commercial ballpoint pen. The brothers filed for a British patent on June 15, 1938. They also filed and received US patent 2,400,679 on May 21, 1946. The pen had a few kinks. However, thanks to a creative marketing strategy, the ballpoint pens were popular, especially among the British Royal Air Force.
View Bíró’s patent here.

Did you know the subject of America’s most famous design patent wasn’t actually designed by an American?

On February 18, 1879, French sculptor Auguste Bartholdi received US Patent D11,023 for a statue design – one he called, “Liberty Enlightening The World.”

You know her as The Statue of Liberty. She stands tall on her pedestal on Liberty Island, a beacon of hope for Freedom seekers the world over.

But, did you know the greatest symbol of American Opportunity almost didn’t happen due to a lack of funding? It’s true!

Auguste Bartholdi was commissioned in 1876 – the year of the American Centennial – to create the statue as a gift to America; it would be a symbol of friendship between France & the US for everyone to see. France would raise the money to build the sculpture, and America would handle the pedestal.

Simple, right?

Not really.

Even with Bartholdi’s patent – which he got specifically to allow him to create and sell replicas of Lady Liberty as a fundraising effort – France still had trouble finding enough public support. It took numerous auctions, art exhibits, lotteries and theater events were used to raise the needed funds from their end.

Construction of the statue began in 1875 and was not completed until nine years later in 1884. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, the designer of the Eiffel tower, planned the skeletal framework for the statue. A larger-than-life representation of the Roman Goddess Libertas, Bartholdoi used two different women as models. The face is said to be a likeness of his mother. His wife posed for the arms and torso of Lady Liberty.

Liberty Enlightening the World

Meanwhile, America was having her own bit of funding problems. That is, until Joseph Pulitzer’s shame campaign against the wealthy and middle class alike spurred enough interest to finally fund the pedestal in 1885, just months before the statue – which had been shipped from France July of 1884 – arrived in New York.

So finally, on June 19, 1885, the world’s single, most powerful symbol of Freedom arrived in America in 350 pieces packed into 214 crates. They were reassembled in their place on Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor. On October 28, 1886, before thousands of spectators, President Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty on the now-named Liberty Island.

Lady Liberty stands 305 feet and 1 inch tall from its base to the tip of the torch and weighs 450,000 pounds. Each year over 3 million people visit the statue that has welcomed immigrants to Ellis Island since 1892.

Benjamin Franklin was more than one of America’s most beloved Founding Fathers. He was also the first major American inventor. In 1748 at the age of 42, Franklin retired from his career as a printer to turn his attention full time to studying biology and physics, pursuing his curiosities about the world.

Here are just six inventions we can attribute to one of America’s most beloved founding fathers:

1. The Lightning Rod

Franklin is most famous for his experiments with electricity. Franklin was not the discoverer of electricity but rather he spent time learning about its properties. He was aware of the dangers of electricity and lighting. He used the concept of electric ground to investigate electricity and lighting. This concept led to the invention of the lighting rod. A metal rod was attached to the high point of a building. A metal cable attached to this rod ran down the side of the building and into the ground. When lighting struck the rod, the electricity ran down the cable and into the ground, preventing damage to the building.

2. Bifocals

Franklin was curious about life. This curiosity along with the physical needs of himself and his family led to some of his other inventions. By the age of 40, Franklin needed to wear two different pair of glasses. He had a pair for reading and a pair for nearsightedness. Always switching between the pairs was a hassle. To save himself the trouble, Franklin cut the lens of both glasses in half horizontally. He attached the top of his nearsighted glasses to the bottom of his reading glasses. These were the first pair of bifocal glasses. Continue reading “Famous Inventors: Benjamin Franklin” →

In 1853 at the height of the California Gold Rush, everyday items were in high demand and short supply in San Francisco. A 24-year-old German immigrant, Levi Strauss, left New York and made the journey to California to join his older sister and brother-in-law in running their dry goods store. Upon his arrival, a prospector asked Strauss what he had brought. When told that Strauss had brought canvas for tents and wagons, the prospector told him that he should have brought pants.

Levi Strauss had the canvas made into pants. Miners liked the sturdy pants but complained that they tended to chafe and the canvas material never became soft and comfortable. Once the supply of canvas was gone, Strauss began using a thick fabric made in the French town of Nimes known as serge de Nimes. This name would eventually be shortened to denim. Continue reading “Making History: Levi Strauss Patents His Iconic Jeans” →