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.
John Hetrick’s invention was the first prototype of today’s modern air bags and derived from an accident on a Sunday afternoon drive. In the spring of 1952, Hetrick, his wife and daughter went for a car ride in their 1948 Chrysler Windsor. The car veered into a ditch on the side of the road to avoid an on-road collision.
In 1966, scientists at NASA developed a open cell polyurethane-silicon plastic to improve the safety of seat cushions on spacecraft and to lessen the impact of landing. The soft cushion material wants to maintain it’s original form and structure when it is compressed. Even after being compressed to 10% of it sizes, the foam will return to its original shape and size which is why it is called memory foam.
To better compete within the soap industry, Proctor & Gamble sought to create a high quality, affordable, duel bath bar and laundry product. In 1878, the first successful formula was created and produced under the name of White Soap.
The history of popcorn making and corn popping machines have seen much improvement. Advancements have allowed us to efficiently pop our favorite snack just in time for that movie. In the past, many methods had been executed to pop corn as a treat. One simple way was placing kernels over a fire on a hot rock. As the impact of the heat increased on the kernels, they would pop in different directions. People would chase after the pieces in order catch and enjoy the taste of this snack. Sadly, many of the corn kernels were charred. Luckily, there are easier ways to obtain this delightful goody and it began with the world’s first commercial popcorn machine.
In 1920, a candy maker in Youngstown, Ohio created a recipe for coating ice cream with chocolate. Harry Burt’s smooth chocolate coated ice cream treats were delicious. The first taste tester was his daughter Ruth who loved the flavor but hated the mess. Earlier, Burt had invented a lollipop on a stick known as a Jolly Boy Sucker. Taking the advice of his son, Harry Jr., Burt froze the same stick into his ice cream, creating handles for the treats. Burt named his new ice cream invention the Good Humor Bar. The name came from the belief that a person’s humor or temperament came from their sense of taste.
Did you know the subject of America’s most famous design patent wasn’t actually designed by an American?
You can add Super Glue to your list of inventions that were discovered by accident. Dr. Harry Coover was not trying to invent a super-sticky substance when he came across Super Glue. In 1945, Dr. Coover was actually working on a way to create a clear plastic to use in precision gunsights for Eastman Kodak.
In 1593, when Galileo Galilei invented a basic water thermometer the device was called a thermoscope. His thermoscope and the ones that followed were not standardized in the liquid or the scale for telling the temperature. These simple devices mainly indicated a temperature increase or decrease, but no one was sure by how much. Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was a German physicist who changed the way the world viewed temperature.
The benefits of sunscreen have been known for thousands of years. Even the Greeks used a mixture of sand and oil to attempt to protect themselves from the sun while training for the Olympics. Christopher Columbus was the first to write about the use of sunscreen. Columbus wrote in his journal while visiting an island in the Caribbean that the people of the island “all paint themselves, some black, some other colors, but mostly red. I have learned that they do this on account of the sun, which does not injure them as much if they are painted.”