Great minds, strange finds
A century and a half of proof that one good idea can outlast a lifetime.
“You will be able to tax it”
The father of electricity, Michael Faraday, when asked by William Gladstone, who would go on to become the British Prime Minister, what electricity was good for.
Pasteurization was patented for beer, not milk
Pasteur's patent is titled “Improvement in Brewing Beer and Ale.” Milk came later.
A moment of silence
When Alexander Graham Bell died in 1922, every telephone in America fell silent for a minute. One man's patent, making a lasting mark on America and the world.
The safety belt is older than the car
It was first conceived to hold workmen steady on the sides of tall buildings.
The Ouija board tried to dodge taxes
Its makers argued it was a genuine spiritual tool and should get the relevant tax exemption. The taxman wasn't convinced.
The zipper exists because one man hated tying his shoes
Whitcomb Judson patented his “clasp locker” for boots, not clothes – his cure for the daily nuisance of laces.
Frozen food was copied from the Arctic
Clarence Birdseye watched Arctic fishermen freeze their catch on the spot, brought the trick home, and built a frozen-food empire on it.
The microwave began with a melted chocolate bar
It went soft in Percy Spencer's pocket beside a radar tube. He decided to hold up some kernels, and they began to pop.
An early cash machine was pulled after six months
Bide your time: sometimes good ideas take a while to take hold.
The first cloned sheep was named after Dolly Parton
She was cloned from a mammary cell. The scientists had a sense of humour.
In 1836, the Patent Office burned down. The only backups were in people's homes.
Thousands of drawings and models were lost, with no copies to be found. The only records left were the paper patents the inventors themselves had carried home and kept safe. To rebuild the archive, Congress asked them, one by one, to send their originals back. More than 2,800 patents were saved.
From the very start, the people who earned a patent kept it close. If your name is on one, it deserves to be framed and cherished.
Every fact here is real and sourced – we highly recommend the books Ingenious Patents, by Ben Ikenson and One Hundred Patents That Shaped the Modern World by David Segal.