Velcro
Swiss electrical engineer George de Mestral invented his first touch fastener when, in 1941, he went for a walk in the woods and wondered why Burdock seeds clung to his coat and dog. He discovered it could be turned into something useful. He patented it in 1955 and subsequently refined and developed its practical manufacture until its commercial introduction in the late 1950s.
William Henry (gunsmith)
Henry was an intellectual who helped found Lancaster's Juliana Library-Company in 1759, which during the Revolution and after was housed in his residence, and he held membership in the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, whose first "Transactions" (1771) printed Henry's account of his invention of a "Description of a Self-Moving or Sentinel Register" to regulate the flue of a furnace. Henry invented a screw auger, manufactured and sold exclusively at his Lancaster store, and some credit him with inventing the steamboat: the twelve-year-old Robert Fulton, a Lancaster neighbor, visited Henry in 1777, who had been experimenting since 1763 on boats with steam engines on the Conestoga River (Fulton's own experiments began only in 1786 in England). Henry and his family were members of the Moravian Congregation at Lancaster. Henry was the earliest patron of Benjamin West, who lodged in Henry's home in Lancaster in 1756 and painted portraits of William and Ann Henry, probably shortly after their marriage. More significantly, Henry encouraged West to paint "The Death of Socrates" (1756), perhaps the first history painting produced in the colonies; West always credited Henry with having initiated the painter's interest in history painting, the genre for which the painter became so famous.