And knowledge shall be increased.
—Daniel 12:4
6644 Birth Of Lithography
Poor and discouraged, without a cent to buy more copper plates, a Munich artist was walking the wet streets after a rainfall when he happened to pick up a rain-soaked leaf from the pavement. Where it had reposed he noticed its perfect outline with every delicate rib and vein reproduced in the rain-dissolved dust. Then came an inspiration: he would use cheap sandstone slates instead of copper for his engraving! And thus was born the art of lithography—because one man thought.
6645 Hoover’s Vacuum Cleaner
Could anything be more boring than sweeping floors? Murray Spangler, a department-store janitor in Canton, Ohio, didn’t think so, even though the dust made him wheeze and cough. Many men would have given up and quit. Instead, Spangler set out to find a better way to clean floors. “Why not eliminate the broom,” he wondered, “ … maybe something that would suck up dust. … ?”
Spangler’s question led to a crude but workable vacuum cleaner, which he induced an old friend in the leather business to finance. The friend’s name was H. W. Hoover.
—Bits & Pieces
6646 The Xerox Machine
In making a sales pitch of his product, lean, scholarly Joseph Chamberlain Wilson once quoted in Latin a homily from a Montaigne essay: Fortis imaginatio generat casum (A strong imagination begets the event). In his own case, it took twelve years of imagining the possibilities of an obscure invention for any historic event to occur, but the result was one of the most successful single products ever put on sale.
By the time he died of a heart attack in 1973 at the age of 61, while lunching in Manhattan with Nelson and Happy Rockefeller, Wilson had turned the modest Rochester firm that he took over from his father in 1946 into a $1.7-billion-a-year giant.
6647 Products From Peanuts
Dr. Washington Carver, the world-famed scientist in Tuskegee Institute, who came up out of slavery, has discovered 150 products that can be gotten out of the common sweet potato, and 300 products from the humble peanut. E. Stanley Jones asked Carver how he came to make all of those discoveries. The devout scientist replied, “One day I asked God what could be made out of a peanut. God said to me, “You have brains; find out for yourself.””
6648 Fire-Proof Safes
A workman one day set a basin of cold water, the interior of which was covered with plaster of Paris, upon a hot stove to warm. After some moments of waiting, to his surprise he discovered that the water was just as cold as ever. Then the man thought, “Plaster of Paris a perfect nonconductor of heat.” Result! Fireproof safes, that are now indispensable to every business concern of America.
—Lucy E. Keeler
6649 To Write In The Dark
“Twelve-year-old Becky Schroeder of Toledo, Ohio, has U.S. Patent No. 3,832, 556. Her invention is a backing sheet with phosphorescent lines to be placed under writing paper. The lines will enable a writer to write in straight lines without a light. Becky discovered that a one-minute charge of light from an ordinary light bulb will provide enough visible phosphorescent lines which can be seen through ordinary writing paper in the dark for periods of 15 minutes or more.”
6650 Story Of Louis Braille
In 1789 a blind beggar in France discovered that he could read slightly-embossed letter. This seems to have been one of the earliest indications that the sense of touch could be substituted for the sense of sight. Thus was born a gleam of hope that the blind would someday be able to read. Then, in 1808, a French cavalry officer, Charles Barbier, reported a system of dots which he had developed for use as code messages. The messages would be meaningless to the enemy, but could be decoded by the initiated. He called his system “night writing.”
Barbier demonstrated his find to the Paris School of the Blind in 1820, but the head of the school dismissed it as impractical.
An eleven-year-old pupil, however, was impressed and determined that he would perfect the “night writing.” That pupil was Louis Braille.
6651 Ben Franklin’s Inventions All
Did you ever stop to wonder who invented the old-fashioned stove—or bifocal glasses—who first advocated the use of copper for roofs—who conceived of a damper for chimneys—who first pointed out that white is the coolest thing to wear in summer—who invented the long pole that is now used in grocery stores to reach articles on top shelves—who thought of a combined chair and lighting of streets—who thought it would be nice to have trees bordering both sides of streets—who formed the first library company—the first fire company—the first American fire insurance company—who founded the dead-letter office and the penny post—who was responsible for American university education? Well, it was Benjamin Franklin, who incidentally was the first president of America’s oldest university: the University of Pennsylvania.
—The Fusion Point
6652 Innovative Idea Of Fulton
Few people realize the value of original ideas. New thoughts are the rare blossoms of the centuries. Fulton, Morse, Whitney, and Ericson each had them.
Fulton, at the age of only seventeen, was a portrait painter, and devoted his small savings to the comfort of his widowed mother. He had great inventive faculty, and spent every spare moment in the study of mechanics and useful inventions. When in England, he met Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, who turned his mind toward the propulsion of boats by steam. He realized its immense value to the world and devoted all his energies toward its realization. His application of the idea became the germ of the modern marine engine.
—James Terry White
6653 Westinghouse’s Air Brake
Two freight trains collided and a young man set to work to prevent a repetition of such an accident. The result was the invention of the air brake and the beginning of a great industry. Railroad executives took the attitude of Commodore Vanderbilt, who, when George Westinghouse explained the superiority of the air brake over the dangerous hand brakes, exclaimed, “Do you mean to tell me that you expect to stop a train with wind? I have no time to waste on damn fools.”
Westinghouse did not give up and complain that his ability was not appreciated. He invented a railroad frog which appealed to the railroad officials and eventually gave him an opportunity to have the air brake tested. It is that air brake and Westinghouse’s system of railway signaling which make travel safer.
—Herbert V. Prochnov
6654 Pendulum Clock
Galileo, under twenty years of age, standing one day in the metropolitan church of Pisa, observed a lamp suspended from the ceiling, swinging backward and forward. Thousands had seen it before; but Galileo observed it, and struck by the regularity with which it moved backward and forward, reflected on it, and perfected the method of measuring time by means of a pendulum.
6655 To Get Globe’s Cubic Content
There’s the old story I’ve always liked about Thomas A. Edison when he had risen to prestige for his inventions which changed the world.
His advisers urged him, now that he had arrived, to have advisers with scientific background explain things to him and make a study of his problems. Tom didn’t see much sense to it, but being always open-minded, he consented. They brought to him a brilliant research scientist from Germany who could tell him why the things he had invented worked.
Tom handed him one of his globes, twisted like a gourd. “Give me the cubic content of this,” he said.
Weeks passed and the research man did not bring it back, but kept explaining the difficulties in higher mathematics with which he was confronted.
“Bring it back to me,” said Tom.
He took it over to the sink and filled it with water. Then he poured the water into a measuring tube.
“This,” he said, “is the cubic content.”
—Malcolm W. Bingay
6656 “Miracle-Rub”
A. H. Graenser sat in the lobby of a hotel in Omaha. Certainly no one was ever in much lowlier circumstances. He had been told he could not re-enter his hotel room until he paid his rent. His baggage and his much-needed overcoat were in that room. And Mr. Graenser had just five cents. This was the last straw—he thought. But those mysterious resources of man, that work even when objective senses are deadened, were marshaling for action.
Mr. Graenser walked to a window to look into the street and see just how cold and cruel the outside world was. But he could not see it—the cold glass was steamed over from condensed moisture in the warm lobby air.
But the steamed glass was a blow that did something. It pressed a button, releasing a bit of information long imprisoned and forgotten in a cell of Mr. Graenser brain. He recalled that an old German chemist once had told him how glycerin soap, rubbed on glass and wiped off with clean cloth, would prevent steaming.
His last nickel went for a cake of glycerine soap at a nearby drugstore. In the cold, he sat on a park bench and cut the soap into twenty pieces. A name came to him—Miracle-Rub. Then be began a round of the city’s filling stations. He demonstrated his Miracle-Rub on windshields. The price was fifteen cents a cube, $1.50 a dozen. He sold his complete stock on his first two calls. There followed a series of triple plays—drugstore to park benches to gas stations. Mr. Graenser ended the day with twenty-seven dollars.
From Omaha he worked east, meanwhile improving his product and wrapping it in tinfoil, packed a dozen cubes to a box. He arrived in Detroit three months later with an automobile and a thousand dollars cash.
Today the Presto Company is a prosperous firm, manufacturing cleaning and polishing products.
—Dale Erwin Lang
6657 Big Money In Little Ideas
The glass lemon squeezer made $50,000 for the inventor.
The roller skate has paid $1,000,000 in royalties.
The suspender garter patent was sold for $50,000.
Wooden shoe pegs earned $500,000 in royalties.
The automatic inkwell has netted $200,000.
The ball-and-socket glove fastener has passed the million mark.
The return ball (toy), a rubber ball on a rubber string, yielded $500,000 per year in royalties for a number of years.
These are only a few of the long list of profitable small inventions. What is your idea worth?
6658 Doctors And Inventions
Physicians have been responsible for a number of great inventions, totally unrelated to their calling:
Dr. Timothy Bright of Cambridge (1551–1615) invented modern shorthand.
Dr. Nicholas Barebon (died 1698) of London invented the fire insurance office which did a flourishing business and established him as the world’s first insurance agent.
Dr. James Syme of Scotland (1799–1870) invented the method—later patented by Charles MacIntosh—of coating cloth with a solution of rubber, to make it waterproof. Dr. Syme thereby became the father of the raincoat.
Dr. John Gorrie of Florida (1803–1855) invented the principle of artificial refrigeration. He first experimented with a device for cooling the air, and the principle he invented still underlines the methods of the modern icemaking, cold storage and air-conditioning industry.
Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling (1818–1903) of North Carolina invented the rapid-fire machine gun which is still associated with his name.
Dr. William Francis Channing of Boston (1820–1901) invented the electrical fire alarm which is still universally in use.
6659 Epigram On Thinking (Invent)
• Someone asked Isaac Newton, “How did you discover the law of gravity?” His reply, “By thinking about it all the time.”
See also: Skillfulness ; Technology.