Amazing Inventors of Ordinary things
A look at some chance events that led to their ‘eureka’ moments and made us think, ‘Why I didn’t think of that?’.
Implantable Pacemaker: Tinkering in his laboratory, Wilson Greatbatch mistakenly picked up wrong resistor while trying to record certain body functions. Recognising its rhythm, Wilson found this wrong choice was the perfect path to address cardiac challenges.
Bar Codes: Bernard Silver was a graduate student at Drexel Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania. A local food chain store owner asked him about looking into a way to automatically read product information during checkout. Silver got together with fellow student Norman Woodland to create the ‘bar code’. The initial design looked like a bull’s eye with concentric circles. Later this invention was based on Morse Code that was extended into thin and thick bars. However, it took over 20 years before this invention, commercially became successful.
Sneakers: Charles Goodyear’s process to vulcanize rubber in the 1860’s was the impetus for this invention. The first of these to come off the assembly line had a black bottom covered by brown canvas. The name for the running shoes came from the combination of ‘kid’ and the Latin word for foot ‘ped’. Hence the name “Keds”. The basic design stayed until early 1960s, when University of Oregon track star Phil Knight and coach Bill Bowerman brought in designs from Europe & Japan under the name of the Greek Goddess of Victory: Nike.
Vaseline: Robert Chesebrough owned a failing kerosene business. Once during his visit to Pennsylvania, he accidentally noticed a waxy residue that clung on to oil rigs. He discovered that when applied to cuts and abrasions, the petroleum jelly sped up the healing process. He reportedly gave the famous name from the German word ‘vasser’ (water) and the Greek word ‘elaion’ (olive oil).
Correction Fluid: It was in 1951 a bank secretary, Bettie Nesmith found a way to use a form of white tempera to go over typewriting mistakes. Originally called ‘Mistake Out’, later ‘Liquid Paper’, was later sold to Gillette in 1979. She amassed a fortune which went to her only son Michael. And yes it is Michael Nesmith the musician, songwriter, actor, producer, novelist, businessman, philanthropist, Grammy Award winner and the former member of the music group, the Monkees.
Contact Lens: The first person to approach this idea was Leonardo Da Vinci, but the first operational model wasn’t perfected until 1877 by Swiss physician Dr F E Fick. His invention was a hand blown glass cut to shape the eye (not the cornea, mind you, but the whole eye). It wasn’t until 1936 the German firm I G Farben made contact lenses possible with the invention of the Plexiglas.
Super Glue: Harry Coover was working for Eastman Kodak and trying to create an improved gun sight, just ended up creating sticky, messy cyanoacrylate. Nine years later he still had the sticky mess while working on airplane canopies. More tinkering, Coover and his team stumbled upon this amazing adhesive. Kodak sold cyanoacrylate as Super Glue. Coover later patented cyanoacrylate as a tissue adhesive for injured Vietnam soldiers awaiting surgery.
Velcro: After a hunting trip with his dog in Switzerland, George de Mestral noticed burrs stuck in the dog’s fur. He analyzed the burrs microscopically to discover the hooks that stuck burrs to fur and fabrics. Years of experimentation led to his discovery of a hook-and-loop fastener using nylon and polyester, which he branded as Velcro and patented it in 1955.
Chewing Gum: This candy staple is said to have been introduced by Mexican dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. By 1855 he had gone into exile from his own country, bought with him a large supply chicle a resin made out of the Sapodilla tree. Later a local acquaintance Thomas Adams opted to sell it as a chewing substitute for wax paraffin. By the 1890s, flavor was added and the gum was mass produced by former soap salesman William Wrigley Jr.
Frisbee: It was in 1957 Walter Fredrick Morrison took his obsession with UFO’s to create this popular toy. Morrison and the Wham-O-company observed that Ivy League students made made a sport of tossing ‘pie tins’, made by the Frisbie Pie Company. The name ‘frisbie’ appealed to Wham-O President Robert Kneer. It was altered to ‘Frisbee’ and the name stuck.