Little Known Facts

• Isaac Newton is known for his numerous discoveries and inventions. However, you might be surprised to know that he also invented the doggie door. It actually started out as a cat door when he grew weary of hearing his cat scratch at the door to be let in.

• Women are responsible for inventing solar panels, windshield wipers, Kevlar (the material

  in bulletproof vests), the circular saw, the gas heating furnace and the fire escape.

• The code name used for the microwave while it was in its testing phase was “Speedy Weenie.”

• The son of slave, Elijah McCoy was an inventor who lived in the 1800s. His inventions worked so well that his name inspired a new phrase. To this day, when nothing else will do, people insist on having “the real McCoy.”

• Since the invention of the safety razor, U.S. presidents have remained clean-shaven.

• The man who invented the sewing machine, Bart Thimonnier, received death threats from other tailors who believed the invention would put them out of business. They also burned down his garment factory.

• In 1950, Zenith created the first TV remote control called “Lazy Bones.” Not surprisingly, studies have shown that you can lose 2 pounds a year by removing the batteries from your remote control.

From Here to There

• A flying automobile was flown successfully in the United Stated in 1947, but crashed because the pilot had forgotten to fill the gas tank.

• In 1896, Alvary Templo built an underwater bicycle. Air, carried in a submarine and piped to Templo’s helmet, enabled him to star under water for up to six hours.

• A dogmobile patented in the United states in 1870, was propelled by two dogs running inside a cage inside the front wheels.

• In 1760, Joseph Merlin, a Belgian musician, invented roller skates. He demonstrated them by skating across a ballroom while playing his violin. Unfortunately, he didn’t know how to stop and crashed into a full-length mirror, breaking his violin.

• In China, heavy wheelbarrows are equipped with sails to make them easier to push.

• Cruise control and automatic transmissions were invented by a blind engineer named Ralph Teetor.

• An advertisement for bicycles in the late 1800 described them as “an ever saddled horse which eats nothing.”

• In 1480, Leonardo da Vinci sketched an idea for a “helical air screw” – an aircraft that would spin in the air. However, Frenchman Paul Cornu achieved the first successful helicopter flight in 1906. The craft lifted off the ground for 20 seconds.

Um, Actually

• Boomerangs were first discovered in Poland, not Australia and the Chinese were the first to use pinatas, not the Mexicans. And finally, bagpipes were not a Scottish invention, but a Persian one.

• Move over Michael Jackson—Bill Bailey, an African American tap dancer in the 1940s, was demonstrating his moonwalking skills fifteen years before the king of pop was born. Bailey referred to his trademark move as the “backslide” and was seen performing it in the 1943 film Cabin in the Sky.

• We have ancient Greeks to thank for electricity, not Benjamin Franklin. Other scientists discovered the properties of electricity long before Franklin. Franklin was simply experimenting with the relationship between lightening and electricity.

Accidental Inventions

• It has been said that necessity is the mother of inventions, but many a discovery has been simply stumbled upon. Take for example Bubble Wrap. In the late 1950s, Al Fielding and Marc Chavannes tried to think outside of the box when it came to wall décor. They took two shower curtains and forced air into them to form air bubbles and create the textured wallpaper. Their idea worked as expected, but the interest in their product did not. After trying out other various uses for it for three years, an employee at the Sealed Air company asked the two if he could present their product to IBM for the purpose of safely shipping their newest computers. Fielding and Chavannes agreed to it and today, the Sealed Air company that sells Bubble Wrap brings in around $400 million annually from that product alone.

• In the 1950s, professor and inventor, Wilson Greatbatch, made the most of his experimental mistake when he invented the implantable pacemaker. Greatbatch was attempting to create an oscillator that could detect and record the sounds of the heart. However, not realizing it, he had installed the wrong resistor into his oscillator and instead of picking up pulses, the devise sent them out. In fact, the oscillator sent out a pulse that was an exact replica of the beat of a healthy human heart. Greatbatch realized that he could change the world of medicine since at the same time, a pacemaker was about the size of a television. With Greatbatch’s first trial implant, the patient was able to live an additional 18 months and trials thereafter saw patients living longer and longer. In 1985, this accidental invention was labeled as one of the ten greatest engineering achievements of the past 50 years by the National Society of Professional Engineers.

• At age 12, being orphaned, Percy Spencer was forced to go into the workforce rather than to school. However, at age 16, Spencer found an opportunity to expand his career. A local company was seeking an electrical engineer. By 1939, he was working for M.I.T., a prestigious institute of technology, where he discovered the effects that active radar can have on food. It was while standing in front of an active radar that he noticed his candy bar begin to melt. He tested its effects on other foods and when he realized its potential in quickly heating and cooking these foods, he created a box to enclose the rays. The box quickly patented and dubbed the “Radarrange,” which was eventually changed to the “Microwave.”