Patent disputes do not just occur over drugs or electronics. In fact, even the pencil, a simple product used by millions everyday, was at one time part of a court battle.
The first patent for attaching an eraser to a pencil was issued in 1858 to a man from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hyman Lipman received patent number 19,783 on March 30, 1858 for a Combination of Lead-Pencil and Eraser. Lipman sold his patent to Joseph Reckendorfer in 1862 for one hundred thousand dollars. On November 4, 1862, Reckendorfer received patent 36,854 for an improvement in pencils. Continue reading “Pencil Patent Dispute?”
Thomas Adams, a photographer, glassmaker and hopeful inventor had an infamous Mexican exile as a houseguest at his home in Staten Island, New York. Mexican General Santa Anna was staying with him. Santa Anna introduced Adams to chicle which is made from the sap of the sapodilla tree. The general was hoping to sell the chicle to Americans to use as an additive to natural rubber to reduce its cost. Natural rubber was very expensive and finding a way to reduce the cost would be very profitable.
Nitrous Oxide as an Anesthetic
There are many stories of who invented the ice cream cone. Many people say that the ice cream cone was invented July 23, 1904 at the St. Louis World Fair. But who at the fair invented the cone? There were more than fifty ice cream vendors and over a dozen waffle stands with many claims of invention.
Richard H. Hollingshead, Jr. is credited with the invention of the Drive-in Movie Theatre. Hollingshead’s position as the sales manager for Whiz Auto Products Company was not very interesting and he set out to challenge himself. While studying American culture, Richard discovered that while Americans would never give up going to the movies it was often a hassle for parents. Going to the movies was not a family activity. Children went to matinees while adults dressed up and went to evening shows. A babysitter was needed for the children and dad had to dress up after a day of work. 
In 1905, an eleven-year old boy mixed some soda water powder and water. The boy, Frank Epperson, forgot the mixture on the back porch with the stirring stick still in the container. Overnight the temperature dropped below freezing turning the mixture to ice. Epperson took the frozen soda water to school to show his friends.
Edward Jenner’s discovery is considered to have saved more lives than the work of any other man. Edward Jenner’s great gift to the world was his vaccination for smallpox. Before Jenner’s work with the disease, smallpox was an extremely deadly illness. The disease killed one in three of those who caught it. Those who were lucky enough to survive the disease were greatly disfigured. 
At the age of 3, Louis Braille accidentally poked himself in the eye with a stitching awl from his father’s workshop. The original injury was not very serious, but Louis went blind when the eye later became infected. That trauma then lead to the young boy going blind in his other eye, too.