Who invented velcro?
Velcro
De Mestral gave the name "Velcro", a portmanteau of the French words "velour" ("velvet") and "crochet" ("hook"), to his invention as well as his company, which continues to manufacture and market the fastening system.
Helicopter
Designs similar to the Chinese helicopter toy appeared in some Renaissance paintings and other works. In the 18th and early 19th centuries Western scientists developed flying machines based on the Chinese toy.
It was not until the early 1480s, when Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci created a design for a machine that could be described as an "aerial screw", that any recorded advancement was made towards vertical flight. His notes suggested that he built small flying models, but there were no indications for any provision to stop the rotor from making the craft rotate. As scientific knowledge increased and became more accepted, people continued to pursue the idea of vertical flight.
In July 1754, Russian Mikhail Lomonosov had developed a small coaxial modeled after the Chinese top but powered by a wound-up spring device and demonstrated it to the Russian Academy of Sciences. It was powered by a spring, and was suggested as a method to lift meteorological instruments. In 1783, Christian de Launoy, and his mechanic, Bienvenu, used a coaxial version of the Chinese top in a model consisting of contrarotating turkey flight feathers as rotor blades, and in 1784, demonstrated it to the French Academy of Sciences. Sir George Cayley, influenced by a childhood fascination with the Chinese flying top, developed a model of feathers, similar to that of Launoy and Bienvenu, but powered by rubber bands. By the end of the century, he had progressed to using sheets of tin for rotor blades and springs for power. His writings on his experiments and models would become influential on future aviation pioneers. Alphonse Pénaud would later develop coaxial rotor model helicopter toys in 1870, also powered by rubber bands. One of these toys, given as a gift by their father, would inspire the Wright brothers to pursue the dream of flight.
In 1861, the word "helicopter" was coined by Gustave de Ponton d'Amécourt, a French inventor who demonstrated a small steam-powered model. While celebrated as an innovative use of a new metal, aluminum, the model never lifted off the ground. D'Amecourt's linguistic contribution would survive to eventually describe the vertical flight he had envisioned. Steam power was popular with other inventors as well. In 1878 the Italian Enrico Forlanini's unmanned vehicle, also powered by a steam engine, rose to a height of , where it hovered for some 20 seconds after a vertical take-off. Emmanuel Dieuaide's steam-powered design featured counter-rotating rotors powered through a hose from a boiler on the ground. In 1887 Parisian inventor, Gustave Trouvé, built and flew a tethered electric model helicopter.
Alessandro Volta
Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (; 18 February 1745 – 5 March 1827) was an Italian physicist, chemist, and a pioneer of electricity and power, who is credited as the inventor of the electric battery and the discoverer of methane. He invented the Voltaic pile in 1799, and reported the results of his experiments in 1800 in a two-part letter to the President of the Royal Society. With this invention Volta proved that electricity could be generated chemically and debunked the prevalent theory that electricity was generated solely by living beings. Volta's invention sparked a great amount of scientific excitement and led others to conduct similar experiments which eventually led to the development of the field of electrochemistry.
László Bíró
László József Bíró () or Ladislao José Biro (born as László József Schweiger, 29 September 1899 – 24 October 1985) was a Hungarian-Argentine inventor, who patented the first commercially successful modern ballpoint pen. The first ball point pen was invented roughly fifty years earlier by John J. Loud but it did not attain commercial success.
Sitaram Rao Valluri
Sitaram Rao Valluri (June 25, 1924 - January 23, 2019) was an engineer and scientist noted for his work in metal fatigue. He completed his doctorate in 1954 at Caltech with a dissertation under Ernest Sechler and stayed thereafter to continue his research work. In 1963, he won the Wright Brothers Medal with George Bockrath and James Glassco for a paper on the relationship between crack propagation and fatigue in metals. He later returned to India and joined the Applied Mechanics Department of Indian Institute of Technology, Madras where he distinguished himself as a teacher, an outstanding researcher and a pre-eminent authority in the field of metal fatigue. He was invited to take over as the Director of National Aeronautical laboratory in Bangalore, later renamed as CSIR- National Aerospace Laboratories to succeed the first director Dr.P. Nilakantan. During his tenure for 19 years, he transformed NAL into a vibrant force in Indian Aeronautics. He was also instrumental in framing the new recruitment and assessment scheme of CSIR , popularly known as  Valluri /Varadarajan Committee which recommended a new policy of recruitment and assessment in the CSIR laboratories in the year 1981. This was widely acknowledged as one of the most significant steps which lead to the arrest of attrition of bright scientific personnel from advanced scientific institutions in India. He played a major role in the conception of the light combat aircraft (LCA) program in 1980s and briefly served as the first Director General of the Aeronautical Development Agency, Bangalore, the nodal agency for the design and development of LCA in 1985.
Bolo tie
Victor Emanuel Cedarstaff claims to have invented the bolo tie in the late 1940s and later patented his slide design.
Patricroft
Sir Edwin Alliott Verdon Roe was born in Patricroft in 1877. He was the first Englishman to make a powered flight (in 1908 at Brooklands), and the first Englishman to fly an all British machine a year later, on Hackney Marshes. He founded the Avro company, one of the world's first aircraft manufacturers, in 1910. Humphrey Verdon Roe, his brother, was co-founder of Avro and also co-founder of the first birth control clinic in Britain with Marie Stopes.
William P. Bettendorf
He started working as a messenger boy in Humboldt, Kansas in 1870. Two years later he moved to Peru, Illinois where he became a clerk in the hardware store owned by A. L. Shepard. In 1874 he started work as a machinist's apprentice at the Peru Plow Company. It was during this time that he invented the first power lift sulky plow in 1878. The device allowed the farmer to remain seated on his horse-drawn plow and press a lever to raise the plow from the earth. Prior to his invention the farmer had to manually lift the plow blade at the end of each furrow. Most farm implement manufacturers adopted the plow. Bettendorf went on to work at the Moline Plow Company in Moline, Illinois for ten months before becoming the foreman in the fitting department of the Parlin & Orendorff Company in Canton, Illinois, which manufactured plows and other agricultural implements. In 1882 he left Canton and returned to Peru as a supervisor at the Peru Plow Company, where he had been an apprentice. It was here that he invented the Bettendorf metal wheel.
Ruth R. Benerito
While she is publicly credited for the invention of winkle-free fiber, she did not believe she singlehandedly invented it and clarified her role in a 2004 USDA interview by stating, "I don't like it to be said that I invented wash-wear because there were any number of people worked on it and the various processes by which you give cotton those properties. No one person discovered it or is responsible for it, but I contributed to a new process of doing it."
Allen B. Wilson
Allen Benjamin Wilson (1824–1888) was an American inventor famous for designing, building and patenting some of the first successful sewing machines. He invented both the "vibrating" and the "rotating" shuttle designs which, in turns, dominated all home lockstitch sewing machines. With various partners in the 19th century he manufactured reliable sewing machines using the latter shuttle type.
William Munroe (pencil maker)
There were others in Massachusetts that would follow his lead, including one of his former employees, Ebenezer Wood, who would invent the first pencil-making machinery. Some of his competitors that contemplated competing against him were Henry David Thoreau and the Thoreau family. Another competitor to be pointed out that made pens was Benjamin Ball while Joseph Dixon also made pencils and pens. Munroe led the pencil industry in the United States into the 1840s. It should be pointed out that some were not on the level and illegally copied Munroe's techniques of pencil making. They counterfeited his stamps and labels. At least two were found guilty in Massachusetts. Another merchant in New York imported German-made pencils with "W. Munroe" printed on them to be sold as an illegal "knock-off" product. Those pencils were confiscated and destroyed with a fine of five hundred dollars.
Velcro
The fastener consisted of two components: a lineal fabric strip with tiny hooks that could "mate" with another fabric strip with smaller loops, attaching temporarily, until pulled apart. Initially made of cotton, which proved impractical, the fastener was eventually constructed with nylon and polyester.
Velvet Hands
Adriano Celentano performs the role of Guido Quiller, the inventor and main patent propietor of a virtually indestructible type of armored glass which is used to secure jewelry shop windows. Its success occurs at the chagrin of several influential insurance companies, chiefly the La Suisse Assurance in Geneva, who see their winnings from one of their most profitable income niches dwindling, so they attempt to gain the patent to the invention and then get rid of it altogether. As it so happens, Guido lives enstranged from his wife Petula, the other patent holder to the glass, who would be more accessible to the insurance companies' offers. Her condition for the divorce from Guido would be that he should transfer all his exclusive rights to the production of the Quiller glass - and thereby his whole fortune - to her, whereupon she would sell them to the Swiss Assurance and gain a princely monetary compensation in return.
Clock
In 1675, Huygens and Robert Hooke invented the spiral balance spring, or the hairspring, designed to control the oscillating speed of the balance wheel. This crucial advance finally made accurate pocket watches possible. The great English clockmaker, Thomas Tompion, was one of the first to use this mechanism successfully in his pocket watches, and he adopted the minute hand which, after a variety of designs were trialled, eventually stabilised into the modern-day configuration. The rack and snail striking mechanism for striking clocks, was introduced during the 17th century and had distinct advantages over the 'countwheel' (or 'locking plate') mechanism. During the 20th century there was a common misconception that Edward Barlow invented "rack and snail" striking. In fact, his invention was connected with a repeating mechanism employing the rack and snail. The repeating clock, that chimes the number of hours (or even minutes) was invented by either Quare or Barlow in 1676. George Graham invented the deadbeat escapement for clocks in 1720.
History of timekeeping devices
In 1675, Huygens and Robert Hooke invented the spiral balance, or the hairspring, designed to control the oscillating speed of the balance wheel. This crucial advance finally made accurate pocket watches possible. This resulted in a great advance in accuracy of pocket watches, from perhaps several hours per day to 10 minutes per day, similar to the effect of the pendulum upon mechanical clocks. The great English clockmaker, Thomas Tompion, was one of the first to use this mechanism successfully in his pocket watches, and he adopted the minute hand which, after a variety of designs were trialled, eventually stabilised into the modern-day configuration.
Charles Plimpton
Charles Bird Plimpton (31 October 1894 – 29 December 1948) was an English inventor and businessman. He invented Bayko in 1933, a plastic building model construction toy, and one of the earliest plastic toys to be marketed. He established Plimpton Engineering in Liverpool, England, to manufacture the toy, which was sold across the world for over 30 years.
William Leggo
William Augustus Leggo (25 January 1830 at the City of Quebec – 21 July 1915 at Lachute, Quebec) was a Canadian inventor, engraver and businessperson. He is noted for co-inventing the half-tone engraver with George-Édouard Desbarats. He had several patents to his name, including leggotyping and granulated photography.
Henry E. Warren
Henry Ellis Warren (May 21, 1872 – September 21, 1957) was an American inventor credited with invention of the first synchronous electric clock which kept time from the oscillations of the power grid in 1918 as well as with 134 other inventions.
Warren founded Warren Telechron Company in 1912 which later was acquired by General Electric in 1943.
Warren was noted as the "father of electric time".
Just between 1916 and 1926 the company sold 20 million clocks. The clocks remained popular into the 1950s.
In 1940 he also invented the "singing clock" which instead of a pendulum had a vibrating metal string.Warren was born in Boston and attended the Allen School.
Warren graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1894 with degree of Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering.
Razor Fist
Called Razor-Fist because of his fast punches, this man and his brother took the same title and pretended to be only one person. Each brother lost one hand in a car accident, which were subsequently replaced by long knife-like stabbing weapons by Carlton Velcro. Velcro employed the brothers at his mansion on an island in the Marquesas. The brothers were assigned by Velcro to hunt down Shang-Chi and Pavane. This Razor-Fist was accidentally shot to death by Velcro.
Screwdriver
Screws were very hard to produce before the First Industrial Revolution, requiring manufacture of a conical helix. The brothers Job and William Wyatt found a way to produce a screw on a novel machine that first cut the slotted head, and then cut the helix. Though their business ultimately failed, their contribution to low-cost manufacturing of the screw ultimately led to a vast increase in the screw and the screwdriver's popularity. The increase in popularity gradually led to refinement and eventually diversification of the screwdriver. Refinement of the precision of screws also significantly contributed to the boom in production, mostly by increasing its efficiency and standardizing sizes, important precursors to industrial manufacture.
Canadian P.L. Robertson, though he was not the first person to patent the idea of socket-head screws, was the first to successfully commercialize them, starting in 1908. Socket screws rapidly grew in popularity, and are still used for their resistance to wear and tear, compatibility with hex keys, and ability to stop a power tool when set. Though immensely popular, Robertson had trouble marketing his invention to the newly booming auto industry, for he was unwilling to relinquish his patents.
Meanwhile, in Portland, Oregon, Henry F. Phillips patented his own invention, an improved version of a deep socket with a cruciform slot, today known as the Phillips Screw. Phillips offered his screw to the American Screw Company, and after a successful trial on the 1936 Cadillac, it quickly swept through the American auto industry. With the Industrial Revival at the end of the Great Depression and the upheaval of World War II, the Phillips screw quickly became, and remains, the most popular screw in the world. A main attraction for the screw was that conventional slotted screwdrivers could also be used on them, which was not possible with the Robertson Screw.
Pillow Pets
Pillow Pets are a brand of stuffed toys with Velcro straps that allow them to be changed from a decorated pillow into a stuffed animal. The toys are made from chenille. Invented by Jennifer Telfer in 2003, Pillow Pets first gained success when Telfer personally sold the toys near the Christmas season of that year. They would later become more successful through television advertising, where the company's famous slogan, "It's a pillow, it's a pet, it's a Pillow Pet!" was in every ad. Pillow Pets have been used for charitable fund raising.
James Fergason
Twisted nematic liquid crystal displays were superior to the earlier dynamic scattering displays, and soon became widespread. The technology was patented in the United States by Fergason in 1971. He formed his own company, ILIXCO, in 1968 to manufacture liquid crystal displays. His first customers were the Bulova Watch Company and Gruen Watch Company which used the technology to market the first LCD watches using this technology. By the end of the decade, most of the world's digital watches used this kind of LCD. Fergason held over 150 patents in the United States and over 500 foreign patents. He also was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 2001, he founded Fergason Patent Properties, which managed licensing of his patents.
William Bullock (inventor)
William Bullock (1813 – April 12, 1867) was an American inventor whose 1863 improvements to Richard March Hoe's rotary printing press helped revolutionize the printing industry due to its great speed and efficiency. A few years after his invention, Bullock was accidentally killed by his own web rotary press.
Wind-up toy
In the late 15th century, Karel Grod, a German inventor, created some of the first wind-up toys, including a metal fly and a mechanical eagle. In 1509, Leonardo da Vinci created a wind-up lion as a greeting for Louis XII in Italy. Wind-up toys were at first for only royalty, and were more elaborate, with complex systems of gears and springs. In support of his theory that all animals are complex machines, René Descartes may have attempted to build some automata. According to legend, a life-sized wind-up human girl was discovered in his luggage aboard a ship in which he was traveling to Sweden, and was thrown overboard by order of the ship's Captain.
Jacob Christoph Le Blon
Jacob Christoph Le Blon, or Jakob Christoffel Le Blon, (2 May 1667 – 16 May 1741) was a painter and engraver from Frankfurt who invented the system of three- and four-colour printing, using an RYBK color model similar to the modern CMYK system.[2] He used the mezzotint method to engrave three or four metal plates (one each per printing ink) to make prints with a wide range of colours. His methods helped form the foundation for modern colour printing.
William Sellers
William Sellers (September 19, 1824 – January 24, 1905) was a mechanical engineer, manufacturer, businessman, and inventor who filed more than 90 patents, most notably the design for the United States standard screw thread. As president of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Sellers proposed the adoption of a system of screw threads which was easier for ordinary mechanics and machinists to cut than a similar design by Joseph Whitworth. For many years, he led the machine tool firm of William Sellers & Co., which was a very influential machine tool builder during the latter half of the 19th century.
George de Mestral
However, hook and loop's integration into the textile industry took time, partly because of its appearance. Hook and loop in the early 1960s looked like it had been made from left-over bits of cheap fabric, an unappealing aspect for clothiers. The first notable use for Velcro® brand hook and loop came in the aerospace industry, where it helped astronauts maneuver in and out of bulky space suits. Eventually, skiers noted the similar advantages of a suit that was easier to get in and out of. Scuba and marine gear followed soon after.
Jesse Armour Crandall
Other inventions by Jesse included toys and non-toys. Various improvements on velocopedes came both from Jesse and his father. One of Jesse's involved use of a newly designed treadle and earned a gold medal at the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition; Crandall's Sandometer or "The beach brought to your home" in 1879 was a rather novel idea. An artificial arm was invented in 1915; however, Jesse did not attempt to patent it - probably from a combination of the money and effort spent on defending earlier patents and a philanthropic viewpoint. He also invented an invalid chair, which President Grover Cleveland's daughter was reported to use, One puzzle was a result of getting two painter's hooks entangled and the difficulty in getting them separated. This type of puzzle was still popular in the 1960s.Charles Martin Crandall
List of Dutch inventions and innovations
Like the invention of pendulum clock, Huygens' spiral hairspring (balance spring) system of portable timekeepers, helped lay the foundations for the modern watchmaking industry. The application of the spiral balance spring for watches ushered in a new era of accuracy for portable timekeepers, similar to that which the pendulum had introduced for clocks. From its invention in 1675 by Christiaan Huygens, the spiral hairspring (balance spring) system for portable timekeepers, still used in mechanical watchmaking industry today.
William Henry Whiteley
William Henry Whiteley III (June 5, 1834 – August 18, 1903) was a businessman, politician and sea captain. He is best known as the inventor of the cod trap, a large box-like device consisting of netting with an opening where the cod are directed by a long net extending to the shore, which he invented in 1871.
Charles F. Kettering
Charles Franklin Kettering (August 29, 1876 – November 25, 1958) sometimes known as Charles "Boss" Kettering was an American inventor, engineer, businessman, and the holder of 186 patents. He was a founder of Delco, and was head of research at General Motors from 1920 to 1947. Among his most widely used automotive developments were the electrical starting motor and leaded gasoline. In association with the DuPont Chemical Company, he was also responsible for the invention of Freon refrigerant for refrigeration and air conditioning systems. At DuPont he also was responsible for the development of Duco lacquers and enamels, the first practical colored paints for mass-produced automobiles. While working with the Dayton-Wright Company he developed the "Bug" aerial torpedo, considered the world's first aerial missile. He led the advancement of practical, lightweight two-stroke diesel engines, revolutionizing the locomotive and heavy equipment industries. In 1927, he founded the Kettering Foundation, a non-partisan research foundation. He was featured on the cover of Time Magazine on January 9, 1933.
Sellers family
William Sellers (1824–1905) founded Sellers and company, the leading machine tool company of the nineteenth century. As president of the Franklin Institute, he proposed a standard screw thread ("the Sellers screw thread") that has since been adopted throughout the world. He pioneered principles of scientific management and efficiency in cooperation with his chief engineer, Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915). Dr. Coleman Sellers (1827–1907) was also a pioneer in mechanical engineering and a founder and president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He founded the Engineering Department at the University of Pennsylvania and was first president of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the University of the Arts. He was president and professor of mechanics at the Franklin Institute and at the Stephens Institute of Technology. Among his many patents were the Kinematoscope, a protean development in the history of film. As president of the Cataract Construction Company at Niagara Falls, he was decisive in the development of hydroelectric power and the adaption of the alternating current rather than direct current in North America.
Revolver
In 1836, an American, Samuel Colt, patented the mechanism which led to the widespread use of the revolver, the mechanically indexing cylinder. According to Samuel Colt, he came up with the idea for the revolver while at sea, inspired by the capstan, which had a ratchet and pawl mechanism on it, a version of which was used in his guns to rotate the cylinder by cocking the hammer. This provided a reliable and repeatable way to index each round and did away with the need to manually rotate the cylinder. Revolvers proliferated largely due to Colt's ability as a salesman. But his influence spread in other ways as well; the build quality of his company's guns became famous, and its armories in America and England trained several seminal generations of toolmakers and other machinists, who had great influence in other manufacturing efforts of the next half century.
Constant-velocity joint
The universal joint, one of the earliest means of transmitting power between two angled shafts, was invented by Gerolamo Cardano in the 16th century. The fact that it failed to maintain constant velocity during rotation was recognized by Robert Hooke in the 17th century, who proposed the first constant velocity joint, consisting of two Cardan joints offset by 90 degrees, so as to cancel out the velocity variations. This is the "double Cardan", shown below. Many different types of constant-velocity joints have been invented since then.
Thomas Hancock (inventor)
On 21 November 1843, Hancock took out a patent for the vulcanisation of rubber using sulphur, 8 weeks before Charles Goodyear in the US (30 January 1844). He mentioned in his "Personal Narrative" that his friend William Brockedon invented the word vulcanisation from the god Vulcan of Roman mythology. Hancock did not credit himself with discovering the reaction of sulphur with rubber; he instead said that in 1842 Brockendon had showed him some American rubber samples which had been treated with sulphur.
Vactrain
The vactrain proper was invented by Robert Goddard as a freshman at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the United States in 1904. Goddard subsequently refined the idea in a 1906 short story called "The High-Speed Bet" which was summarized and published in a Scientific American editorial in 1909 called "The Limit of Rapid Transit". Esther, his wife, was granted a US patent for the vactrain in 1950, five years after his death.
Vacuum extraction
In 1849 the Edinburgh professor of obstetrics James Young Simpson, subsequently known for pioneering the use of chloroform in childbirth, designed the Air Tractor which consisted of a metal syringe attached to a soft rubber cup. This was the earliest known vacuum extractor to assist childbirth but it did not become popular. Swedish professor Tage Malmstrom developed the ventouse, or Malmstrom extractor in the 1950s. Originally made with a metal cap, new materials such as plastics and siliconised rubber have improved the design so that it is now used more than forceps.
Thomas Coughtrie
Thomas Robb Coughtrie (25 November 1917 – 27 August 2008) was credited by "The Times" as the inventor of the Mole wrench. However, this conflicts with other references that show the invention of the Vise Grip locking pliers in Nebraska with an initial patent in 1921 and fuller developments patented in 1924.
George Kellogg (inventor)
George Kellogg (June 19, 1812 – 1901) was an American inventor and patent expert. 
Kellogg was born at New Hartford, Connecticut in 1812 to Isaac Kellogg (1782-1824) and Aurilla Barney (1792-1861). George graduated from Wesleyan University in 1837. From 1838 to 1841, he was principal of the Sumter Academy in Sumterville, South Carolina. He was for some time a manufacturer in Birmingham, Connecticut, and was in the United States revenue service from 1863 to 1866. He established factories in England, was a patent expert, and patented a machine for making jack chains (1844), a dovetailing machine (1849), a type-distributing machine (1852), and improved surgical instruments (1853). He married Jane Elizabeth Crosby (1816-1892) and they had a child, Clara Louise Kellogg.
Alpheus Babcock
In 1830 he relocated to Philadelphia, at the time the largest producer of pianos in the United States, where he patented what he called "cross stringing", and introduced resilient cloth hammer coverings. He was associated with instrument maker and seller John C. Klemm, his former agent, and by late 1832 worked as foreman for piano maker William Swift, at whose warehouse at 142 Chestnut street, he advertised in The Daily Chronicle in 1833, one could see iron framed pianos for which he claimed sole manufacturing rights. Babcock won honors at the 1833 Franklin Institute exhibition, along with C. F. L. Albrecht of Philadelphia, and Nunns & Co. of New York.
Swarfega
Swarfega was invented in 1947 by Audley Bowdler Williamson (28 February 1916 - 21 November 2004), an industrial chemist from Heanor, Derbyshire. In 1941 he had founded a detergent-sales company, Deb Silkware Protection Ltd., based in Belper, to produce a formulation for extending the life of silk stockings. The name derived from "debutante", to signify the newness of the company and its products. The introduction of nylon stockings threatened to render it superfluous; however, Williamson purportedly suggested that mechanics had already found it useful for cleaning their hands.
Sylvester H. Roper
Sylvester Howard Roper (November 24, 1823 – June 1, 1896) was an American inventor and a pioneering builder of early automobiles and motorcycles from Boston, Massachusetts. In 1863 he built a steam carriage, one of the earliest automobiles. The Roper steam velocipede of 1867–1869 may have been the first motorcycle, for which he was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2002. He is also the inventor of the shotgun choke and a revolver repeating shotgun.
Monkey wrench
Adjustable coach wrenches for the odd-sized nuts of wagon wheels were manufactured in England and exported to North America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They were set either by sliding a wedge, or later by twisting the handle, which turned a screw, narrowing or widening the jaws. In 1840, Worcester, Massachusetts knife manufacturer Loring Coes invented a screw-based coach wrench design in which the jaw width was set with a spinning ring fixed under the sliding lower jaw, above the handle. This was patented in 1841 and the tools were advertised and sold in the United States as "monkey wrenches", a term which was already in use for the English handle-set coach wrenches. For the next eighty-seven years a very wide and popular range of monkey wrenches was manufactured by Coes family partnerships, licensees and companies, which filed further wrench patents throughout the nineteenth century. Some Coes wrenches could be bought with wooden knife handles, harking back to the company's early knife making business. In 1909 the Coes Wrench Company advertised a six-foot-long "key" wrench, shaped like a monkey wrench, for use on railroads. The Coes wrench designs were acquired by longtime toolmaker Bemis & Call of Springfield, Massachusetts in 1928. After 1939 its successor companies manufactured monkey wrenches from Coes designs until the mid-1960s, yielding a production run of over 120 years.
Vigoro
The game was invented in 1901 by Englishman John George Grant. In the original version tennis rackets were used and the wicket consisted of six stumps. On 17 October 1902, a match was played before the MCC committee at Lord's. An eleven led by real tennis and rackets player Eustace Miles, and including Wimbledon champions Laurence and Reginald Doherty, defeated the opposition, led by Surrey batsman Bobby Abel. Miles' team led after the first innings by 73 to 18 runs and won by an innings after Abel's team made only 39 runs in the second innings. That same month the game was also played at Crystal Palace. Games were also played that year, and in 1903, at London's Queen's Club. In England interest in the game died down after a few years but it managed to gain a foothold in Australia where it was introduced during World War I. A key figure in the promotion of the game in Australia was Ettie Dodge, who was President (1919–66) of the New South Wales Women's Vigoro Association and foundation president (1932–66) of the All Australian [Vigoro] Association. Ettie's husband had met John George Grant in England. When the game was introduced to New South Wales schools in the 1920s, Dodge & Co. began selling vigoro equipment. Grant died in 1927 and bequeathed the trademark and copyright of the game to Ettie.
Seat belt
The Swedish national electric utility, did a study of all fatal, on-the-job accidents among their employees. The study revealed that the majority of fatalities occurred while the employees were on the road on company business. In response, two Vattenfall safety engineers, Bengt Odelgard and Per-Olof Weman, started to develop a seat belt. Their work was presented to Swedish manufacturer Volvo in the late 1950s, and set the standard for seat belts in Swedish cars. The three-point seatbelt was developed to its modern form by Swedish inventor Nils Bohlin for Volvo—who introduced it in 1959 as standard equipment. In addition to designing an effective three-point belt, Bohlin demonstrated its effectiveness in a study of 28,000 accidents in Sweden. Unbelted occupants sustained fatal injuries throughout the whole speed scale, whereas none of the belted occupants were fatally injured at accident speeds below 60 mph. No belted occupant was fatally injured if the passenger compartment remained intact. Bohlin was granted for the device.
Northrop Loom
James Henry Northrop, (8 May 1856 - 12 December 1940) was born in Keighley, West Yorkshire in the United Kingdom, where he worked in the textile industry. He emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts in 1881. Northrop worked as a mechanic and foreman, for George Draper and Sons. There he invented a spooler guide. He left and tried to be a chicken farmer, but was unsuccessful. It was at that time that he invented a shuttle-charger. Otis Draper saw a model of the device on March 5, 1889. Draper was also developing the Rhoades shuttle-charger. Northrop was given a loom to test his idea.
Wilmer L. Barrow
Wilmer Lanier Barrow (July 26, 1903 – August 29, 1975) was an American electrical engineer, inventor, teacher, industrial manager, and a counselor to government agencies. He obtained a BSEE degree in 1926 from Louisiana State University, and a D.Sc. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1931. During the pre-World War 2 development of radar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Barrow performed research on microwaves, inventing waveguide in 1936 and the horn antenna in 1938.
Oscilloscope history
The first Digital Storage Oscilloscope (DSO) was invented by Nicolet Test Instrument of Madison, Wisconsin. It was a low speed ADC (1 MHz, 12 bit) used primarily for vibration and medical analysis. The first high speed DSO (100 MHz, 8 bit) was invented by Walter LeCroy (who founded the LeCroy Corporation, based in New York, USA) after producing high-speed digitizers for the research center CERN in Switzerland. LeCroy (since 2012 Teledyne LeCroy) remains one of the three largest manufacturers of oscilloscopes in the world.
Maurice Lacroix
Maurice Lacroix was founded as part of Desco von Schulthess of Zurich in 1975. Founded in 1889, Desco von Schulthess (Desco) is an older company with roots in the silk trade. Since 1946, Desco has also been a representative for luxury watches including Audemars Piguet, Heuer, Eterna, and Jaeger-LeCoultre. Over the years, Desco became more interested in the watch business, and in 1961 Desco acquired an assembly facility named Tiara in Saignelégier, in the Swiss Canton of Jura. There it produced private label watches for third parties. In 1975, Desco started marketing watches under the brand name Maurice Lacroix. There was a member the board of Desco von Schulthess, parent & founding company of Maurice Lacroix, who was named Mr. Lacroix.
Henri Dreyfus
Henri Dreyfus (or Henry Dreyfus, January 7, 1882 – December 30, 1944) was a Swiss inventor of the modern weaving loom. He and his brother Camille Dreyfus also invented Celanese, an acetate yarn.
Georg Kopprasch
Active in the Berlin horn playing scene in the early 1800s, Kopprasch was acquainted with the inventor of the valved horn, Heinrich Stölzel. Because horns could not play chromatically prior to Stölzel's invention of valves, no chromatic etudes existed for the horn and it is likely Kopprasch composed his now seminal works to fill that need.
Zipper
Forty-two years later, in 1893 Whitcomb Judson, who invented a pneumatic street railway, marketed a "Clasp Locker". The device served as a (more complicated) hook-and-eye shoe fastener. With the support of businessman Colonel Lewis Walker, Judson launched the Universal Fastener Company to manufacture the new device. The clasp locker had its public debut at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and met with little commercial success. Judson is sometimes given credit as the inventor of the zipper, but he never made a practical device.
William Edward Hanford
Dr. William Edward "Butch" Hanford (December 9, 1908 – January 27, 1996) was an American chemist who is best known for developing the modern process to make multipurpose material polyurethane. Hanford's most notable discovery occurred while working with fellow chemist Dr. Donald Fletcher Holmes at DuPont. On June 2, 1942, Hanford was awarded a patent for his process. Currently, this method is responsible for manufacturing many of the plastics that are used in medicine, the automotive industry, and consumer products. Hanford's later accomplishments included the development of the first liquid household detergent and a new kind of ammunition for Winchester-Western Company. For his work, Hanford was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1991. The New York Times has noted that Hanford's developments were "monumental."
Armand de Mestral
He is married to Rosalind Pepall, a curator at the Musée de Beaux Arts and they have two sons Philippe and Charles. He is the nephew of George de Mestral the inventor of Velcro.
Clothespin
Today, many clothes-pegs (also clothespins) are manufactured very cheaply by creating two interlocking plastic or wooden prongs, in between which is often wedged a small spring. This design was invented by David M. Smith of Springfield, Vermont, in 1853.
By a lever action, when the two prongs are pinched at the top of the peg, the prongs open up, and when released, the spring draws the two prongs shut, creating the action necessary for gripping.
Smith was also known for being an excellent violin player. It was one of his hobbies. He used to think clearly whenever playing violin, thinking about every day problems. That was how he came up with the idea to invent a clothespin.
Wheel clamp
The modern wheel clamp, originally known as the auto immobiliser, was invented in 1944 and patented in 1958 by Frank Marugg. Marugg was a pattern maker, a violinist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra, and a friend of many Denver politicians and police department officials. The police department needed a solution to a growing parking enforcement problem. The city used to tow all ticketed cars to the pound, where they were often vandalised. Those who were ticketed sued the city for the damage and the police had to itemise everything in the cars. Dan Stills, a policeman, thought an immobiliser would avoid the expensive towing problem and approached Marugg with an idea on how to immobilise a vehicle.
George Herman Babcock
George Herman Babcock (June 17, 1832 – December 16, 1893) was an American inventor. He and Stephen Wilcox co-invented a safer water tube steam boiler, and founded the Babcock & Wilcox boiler company.
Seconds pendulum
The pendulum clock was invented in 1656 by Dutch scientist and inventor Christiaan Huygens, and patented the following year. Huygens contracted the construction of his clock designs to clockmaker Salomon Coster, who actually built the clock. Huygens was inspired by investigations of pendulums by Galileo Galilei beginning around 1602. Galileo discovered the key property that makes pendulums useful timekeepers: isochronism, which means that the period of swing of a pendulum is approximately the same for different sized swings. Galileo had the idea for a pendulum clock in 1637, which was partly constructed by his son in 1649, but neither lived to finish it. The introduction of the pendulum, the first harmonic oscillator used in timekeeping, increased the accuracy of clocks enormously, from about 15 minutes per day to 15 seconds per day leading to their rapid spread as existing 'verge and foliot' clocks were retrofitted with pendulums.
Clothes hanger
Some historians believe President Thomas Jefferson invented a forerunner of the wooden clothes hanger. However, today's most-used hanger, the shoulder-shaped wire hanger, was inspired by a coat hook that was invented in 1869 by O. A. North of New Britain, Connecticut. An employee of the Timberlake Wire and Novelty Company, Albert J. Parkhouse of Jackson, Michigan has also been credited with the invention. The story goes that one morning in 1903, Parkhouse arrived to work to find that all coat hooks were taken. Annoyed, he took a piece of wire, bent it into the shape we would recognize today, and hung his coat. Also credited is Christopher Cann in 1876 as an engineering student at Boston University.
Frank Winfield Woolworth
Frank Winfield Woolworth (April 13, 1852 – April 8, 1919) was an American entrepreneur and the founder of F. W. Woolworth Company and the operator of variety stores known as "Five-and-Dimes" (5- and 10-cent stores) or dimestores, which featured a low-priced selection of merchandise. He pioneered the now-common practices of buying merchandise directly from manufacturers and fixing the selling prices on items, rather than haggling. He was also the first to use self-service display cases, so customers could examine what they wanted to buy without the help of a sales clerk.
Wheellock
The invention of the wheellock in Europe can be placed at about 1500. There is a vocal group of scholars who believe Leonardo da Vinci was the inventor. Drawings made by Leonardo of a wheellock mechanism date (depending on the authority) from either the mid-1490s or the first decade of the 16th century. However, a drawing from a book of German inventions (dated 1505) and a 1507 reference to the purchase of a wheellock in Austria may indicate the inventor was an unknown German mechanic instead.
Clock
The next development in accuracy occurred after 1656 with the invention of the pendulum clock. Galileo had the idea to use a swinging bob to regulate the motion of a time-telling device earlier in the 17th century. Christiaan Huygens, however, is usually credited as the inventor. He determined the mathematical formula that related pendulum length to time (about 99.4 cm or 39.1 inches for the one second movement) and had the first pendulum-driven clock made. The first model clock was built in 1657 in the Hague, but it was in England that the idea was taken up. The longcase clock (also known as the "grandfather clock") was created to house the pendulum and works by the English clockmaker William Clement in 1670 or 1671. It was also at this time that clock cases began to be made of wood and clock faces to utilize enamel as well as hand-painted ceramics.
Holcroft valve gear
The Holcroft valve gear was a type of conjugated valve gear designed by Harold Holcroft and used on three-cylinder steam locomotives of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway (SECR). It bore many similarities to the Gresley conjugated valve gear used on the original LNER A1 design. It varied from the Gresley method of operation by using the combination lever assembly instead of the valve spindles to drive the middle cylinder of a three-cylinder design. This had operational advantages over Gresley's design.
Lead glass
George Ravenscroft (1618–1681) was the first to produce clear lead crystal glassware on an industrial scale. The son of a merchant with close ties to Venice, Ravenscroft had the cultural and financial resources necessary to revolutionise the glass trade, setting the basis from which England overtook Venice and Bohemia as the centre of the glass industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. With the aid of Venetian glassmakers, especially da Costa, and under the auspices of the Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers of London, Ravenscroft sought to find an alternative to Venetian cristallo. His use of flint as the silica source has led to the term flint glass to describe these crystal glasses, despite his later switch to sand. At first, his glasses tended to crizzle, developing a network of small cracks destroying its transparency, which was eventually overcome by replacing some of the potash flux with lead oxide to the melt, up to 30%. Crizzling results from the destruction of the glass network by an excess of alkali, and may be caused by excess humidity as well as inherent defects in glass composition. He was granted a protective patent in 1673, where production moved from his glasshouse in the precinct of the Savoy, London, to the seclusion of Henley-on-Thames. In 1676, having apparently overcome the crizzling problem, Ravenscroft was granted the use of a raven's head seal as a guaranty of quality. In 1681, the year of his death, the patent expired and operations quickly developed among several firms, where by 1696 twenty-seven of the eighty-eight glasshouses in England, especially at London and Bristol, were producing flint glass containing 30–35% PbO.
Mario Maccaferri
Mario Maccaferri (1900–1993) was an Italian luthier, classical guitarist, businessman, and inventor. He is noted for designing the guitar favored by jazz musician Django Reinhardt, and for inventing the plastic clothespin, plastic bath and kitchen tiles and the plastic Islander ukulele which sold millions of copies in the mid-1900s. From 1939 he lived and worked in the United States. As of 2016 his daughter Elaine still runs the family company French American Reeds Inc.
Vollmer (company)
The Vollmer Company was founded in 1946 by Wolfram K. Vollmer (1924–2010) and initially manufactured metal collar buttons. The German currency reform of June 1948 and subsequent economic growth led to a demand for plastic collar buttons and the company introduced plastic injection technology. Vollmer also began to develop plastic model railway accessories and presented a patented catenary system for HO scale model toy trains at the 1949 Nuremberg Toy Fair. By 1954, the company had begun production of HO-scale model houses. In the 1970s Vollmer had a large enterprise that included American models as well as European models.
Pierre (penguin)
In 2007, Schaller designed a wetsuit with the help of Oceanic Worldwide, a wetsuit manufacturer and children's costume seamstress Celeste Argel. The new wetsuit was designed to protect Pierre from the bitter cold that would have otherwise killed him. It was sewn in the shape of a vest, to allow movement when waddling and swimming. The 3 mm-thick neoprene vest was fastened using Velcro. The neoprene material allowed for wet/dry movement and warmth. The colors white, brown, and black were all tested, but each one seemed to draw curiosity from the other penguins. Black was the most discreet option, so that color was chosen for the vest. The vest had holes for Pierre's wings so that he could move them freely. The Velcro fastener ran vertically on the vest, so that if Pierre should gain or lose weight, he would not need a new vest.
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.
Vacheron Constantin
François Constantin traveled around the world and marketed watches. The main market was North America. In 1833, Vacheron and Constantin hired Georges-Auguste Leschot, whose job was to supervise the manufacturing operations. In particular, Leschot was an inventor and his creations turned out to be successful for the company. His inventions had significant impact on the watchmaking industry in general, and he was the first person to standardize watch movements into Calibers. In 1844, Georges-Auguste Leschot was awarded with a gold medal from the Arts Society of Geneva, who highly appreciated Leschot's pantographic device - a device that was able to mechanically engrave small watch parts and dials.
Hook-and-loop fastener
Television show host David Letterman immortalized this during the February 28, 1984 episode of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC. Letterman proved that with enough of the material a man could be hurled against a wall and stick, by performing this feat during the television broadcast. This put the Velcro brand fastener in the national spotlight.
Pendulum clock
The pendulum clock was invented in 1656 by Dutch scientist and inventor Christiaan Huygens, and patented the following year. Huygens contracted the construction of his clock designs to clockmaker Salomon Coster, who actually built the clock. Huygens was inspired by investigations of pendulums by Galileo Galilei beginning around 1602. Galileo discovered the key property that makes pendulums useful timekeepers: isochronism, which means that the period of swing of a pendulum is approximately the same for different sized swings. Galileo had the idea for a pendulum clock in 1637, which was partly constructed by his son in 1649, but neither lived to finish it. The introduction of the pendulum, the first harmonic oscillator used in timekeeping, increased the accuracy of clocks enormously, from about 15 minutes per day to 15 seconds per day leading to their rapid spread as existing 'verge and foliot' clocks were retrofitted with pendulums.
Hook-and-loop fastener
Hook-and-loop fasteners, hook-and-pile fasteners or touch fasteners (often referred to by the genericized trademark velcro, despite the objections of the Velcro Brand), consist of two components: typically, two lineal fabric strips (or, alternatively, round "dots" or squares) which are attached (sewn or otherwise adhered) to the opposing surfaces to be fastened. The first component features tiny hooks, the second features smaller loops. When the two are pressed together the hooks catch in the loops and the two pieces fasten or bind temporarily. When separated, by pulling or peeling the two surfaces apart, the strips make a distinctive "ripping" sound.
Arturo Caprotti
Arturo Caprotti (22 March 1881 – 9 February 1938) was an Italian engineer and architect. In 1915 or 1916 he invented the Caprotti valve gear rotary cam poppet valve gear for steam engines of all kinds, but in practice it was employed almost exclusively in railway locomotives.
Johann Kiefuss
Johann Kiefuss was a German inventor. He is sometimes credited with inventing the wheellock in Nuremberg in 1517. However, it is unlikely he was the actual inventor. The only traceable records of a Johann Kiefuss relate to a gun maker living in Nuremberg about 100 years later, so the misapprehension may be due to an incorrect transliteration of dates. His name is commonly linked to the gun, especially in German sources, from the late 18th century onwards. There is a possibility that Leonardo da Vinci was the inventor of the wheellock, but opinions remain divided.
Marin le Bourgeoys
Marin le Bourgeoys (c. 1550–1634) was a French artist and inventor, known for inventing a flintlock mechanism that was used in firearms for over two centuries.
Helicopter rotor
The use of a rotor for vertical flight has existed since 400 BC in the form of the bamboo-copter, an ancient Chinese toy. The bamboo-copter is spun by rolling a stick attached to a rotor. The spinning creates lift, and the toy flies when released. The philosopher Ge Hong's book the "Baopuzi" (Master Who Embraces Simplicity), written around 317, describes the apocryphal use of a possible rotor in aircraft: "Some have made flying cars [feiche 飛車] with wood from the inner part of the jujube tree, using ox-leather (straps) fastened to returning blades so as to set the machine in motion." Leonardo da Vinci designed a machine known as an "aerial screw" with a rotor based on a water screw. The Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov developed a rotor based on the Chinese toy. The French naturalist Christian de Launoy constructed his rotor out of turkey feathers. Sir George Cayley, inspired by the Chinese toy in his childhood, created multiple vertical flight machines with rotors made of tin sheets. Alphonse Pénaud would later develop the coaxial rotor model helicopter toys in 1870, powered by rubber bands. One of these toys, given as a gift by their father, would inspire the Wright brothers to pursue the dream of flight.
Henri Lloyd
Henri Lloyd pioneered the use of new technologies and fabrics such as Bri-Nylon in its early clothing lines. Among its innovations were the first non-corrosive zipper made of nylon, the introduction of Velcro closures in waterproof garments, the hand taping of seams as an alternative to varnishing, and the incorporation of Gore-Tex waterproofing.
Sven Gustaf Wingqvist
Sven Gustaf Wingqvist (10 December 1876 – 17 April 1953) was a Swedish engineer, inventor and industrialist, and one of the founders of Svenska Kullagerfabriken (SKF), one of the world's leading ball bearing and roller bearing makers. Sven Wingqvist invented the multi-row self-aligning ball bearing in 1907.
Twistgrip
Glenn Curtiss, unlikely to have been aware of the prior uses of the twist grip, used it in his 1904 motorcycle land-speed record machine, and is sometimes credited as the inventor of the device. Indian claimed in their advertisements, also for their 1904 models, to have invented the twist grip. Whether Curtiss, Gottlieb Daimler, or Roper, were the true inventors, the 1904 Indian would be the earliest use of the device on a production motorcycle.
Andrew Betts Brown
Andrew Betts Brown MICE MINA (1841–1906) was a Scottish engineer and inventor. He invented the hydraulic crane and overhead travelling crane. He founded several companies including the Vauxhall Iron Works, which later evolved into Vauxhall Motors, and the huge British engineering firm Brown Brothers.
Circumcision surgical procedure
The Gomco clamp was invented by Dr. Hiram S. Yellen and Aaron A. Goldstein in 1935. Yellen, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Buffalo, New York sought an improved method of newborn circumcision. Goldstein was a prolific local inventor and manufacturer. Gomco stands for the "GOldstein Medical COmpany", the original manufacturer of the instrument. The patent was in the name of Aaron Goldstein (U.S. Patent 119180, issued February 27, 1940). The instrument was a rapid success and was widely marketed and sold in the US and Canada. It is currently manufactured and marketed worldwide.
Rubber glove
In 1889, William Stewart Halsted, the first chief of surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, invented rubber gloves in order to prevent medical staff from developing dermatitis from surgical chemicals.
Floyd Rose
The Floyd Rose Locking Tremolo, or simply Floyd Rose, is a type of locking vibrato arm for a guitar. Floyd D. Rose invented the locking vibrato in 1976, the first of its kind, and it is now manufactured by a company of the same name. The Floyd Rose gained popularity in the 1980s through guitarists like Eddie Van Halen, Neal Schon, Brad Gillis, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Alex Lifeson, who used its ability to stay in tune even with extreme changes in pitch. Its tuning stability comes through the double-locking design that has been widely regarded as revolutionary; the design has been listed on "Guitar World"s "10 Most Earth Shaking Guitar Innovations" and "Guitar Player"s "101 Greatest Moments in Guitar History 1979–1983."
Walter Harris Callow
Walter Harris Callow (1896–1958) was a Canadian veteran who invented the accessibility bus for veterans returning from WW2 and others in wheelchairs (1947). He designed and managed the Walter Callow Wheelchair Bus, while he himself was blind, quadriplegic and, eventually had both legs amputated. Callow planned trips for disabled veterans, tours of the countryside, picnics, sporting events, art classes and other activities. He was born in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia and became a resident of the Camp Hill Military Hospital for twenty years.
W. H. J. Grout
William Henry James Grout (1839–1915) was a pioneering inventor and manufacturer of bicycles. He patented the "Grout Tension Bicycle" in 1870 which introduced several innovations including hollow forks to save weight, rubber tyres for a better ride and adjustable spokes which could be tensioned to align the wheel. He also devised a portable version of the penny-farthing, whose front wheel could be dismantled into four sections for carrying.
Bill Moog
William Moog (15 August 1915 – 1997) is known for inventing the electrohydraulic servo valve in 1951.
Coes Wrench Company
It was while they were living and working in Springfield that Loring Coes invented the screw wrench commonly known as the monkey wrench. Prior to the invention of the screw wrench, the two common wrenches of the time, the English patent wrench and the Merrisk wrench (also known as the Springfield wrench), needed two hands to adjust, whereas the new screw wrench could be used and adjusted with one hand.
Walschaerts valve gear
The Walschaerts valve gear is a type of valve gear invented by Belgian railway mechanical engineer Egide Walschaerts in 1844 used to regulate the flow of steam to the pistons in steam engines. The gear is sometimes named without the final "s", since it was incorrectly patented under that name. It was extensively used in steam locomotives from the late 19th century until the end of the steam era.
Wooly Willy
The brothers Donald and James Herzog developed Wooly Willy while working in the Smethport Specialty Company, their father's toy production company, in Smethport, Pennsylvania, United States. The company produced tops, horseshoe-shaped magnets, and other toys until the vacuum forming devices of the 1940s and 1950s allowed the company to manufacture air-tight containers of transparent plastic. Such containers kept Wooly Willy's metal filings from leaking out and moisture that would rust the metal from leaking in. The artwork for the first Wooly Willy was created by artist Leonard Mackowski of nearby Bradford, Pa. His signature is found hidden in the grass on the reverse side. The Broadfield Toy Co., Inc., of Hempstead, New York, United States created a similar toy called Whiskers in 1925.
Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff
Although Ruhmkorff is often credited with the invention of the induction coil, it was in fact invented by Nicholas Callan in 1836. Ruhmkorff's first coil, which he patented in 1851, utilized long windings of copper wire to achieve a spark of approximately 2 inches (50 mm) in length. In 1857, after examining a greatly improved version made by an American inventor, Edward Samuel Ritchie, Ruhmkorff improved his design (as did other engineers), using glass insulation and other innovations to allow the production of sparks more than 30 centimetres long. Ruhmkorff patented the first version of his induction coil in 1851, and its success was such that in 1858 he becomes the first recipient of the Volta Prize, 50,000 French francs award by Napoleon III for one of the most important discoveries in the application of electricity. He died in Paris in 1877.
Acrow prop
The props were invented by Swiss-born William de Vigier, who came to London in 1935. At first traditionalism amongst builders preferred the established timber props, cut to fit for each job. The break for Vigier's adjustable props came when they were adopted by a few large builders, including Sir Robert McAlpine. By 1939, over 40,000 Acrow props were in use.
Vienna valve trombone
The Vienna valve was invented in Leipzig in 1821 by Sattler, predating the Perinet valve and rotary valve used in France and Germany (and in all French horns). The Vienna Valves (or Double Valves) have two short parallel pistons connected at the bottom by a bar that is moved by a long rod or linkage connected to the spring-loaded finger plate. The Vienna system was in common use in Germany on all kinds of instruments including trumpets up to 1850. Adolph Sax invented instruments with 6 independent valves 3 for each hand, but only the most dexterous musicians were able to play them.
Clutch Cargo
The show was the first to use the "Syncro-Vox" optical printing system because of budgetary limitations and the pressure to create animation within a tight time frame. Syncro-Vox was invented by Edwin Gillette, television cameraman and partner in Cambria Studios, as a means of superimposing real human mouths on the faces of animals for the popular "talking animal" commercials of the 1950s. "Clutch Cargo" employed the Syncro-Vox technique by superimposing live-action human lips over limited-motion animation or even motionless animation cels.
Science and technology in Venezuela
(1743, Calabozo – 1814, Camaguán) is probably the first outstanding inventor that Venezuela had. Alexander von Humboldt mentions a meeting with this man in 1800 cite:"We found in Calabozo, in the heart of the plains, an electric machine of large disks, electrophores, batteries, electrometers, a material almost as complete as that of our physicists in Europe. All these objects had not been purchased in the United States; Were the work of a man who had never seen any instrument, which no one could consult, who did not know the phenomena of electricity more than by reading the Treaty of Sigaud de Lafond (Joseph Aignan Sigaud de Lafond) and the Memoirs of Franklin (Benjamin Franklin)." Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent.
In 1804 participated with the Spanish scientist Francisco Javier Balmis in the vaccination against smallpox in Venezuela. Del Pozo was a partisan of the Spanish colonial government and for this reason he received no support from the new independist government established in 1811. He died forgotten in 1814.
Luis Zambrano (Bailadores, 1901 – Tovar, 1990) was a Venezuelan self-taught inventor and popular technologist. He left formal education after the fourth year of primary school, but soon began to develop an interest in mechanics, enjoying discovering for himself the speed ratios produced by connecting oranges of different diameters and rotating them by means of jets of water. These gadgets lead him to consider new challenges and discover of physical principles in practical ways. In his Valle Nuevo workshop, near Bailadores, he empirically and intuitively learned enough about water turbines to generate electricity and mechanics to allow him to create about 50 inventions, some of which were commissions, such as a strawberry-peeling machine and a sieve for categorising garlic, and numerous improvements to various different machines, despite having lost his right hand to a saw in an accident in 1977. In November 1984, the University of Los Andes awarded him the title of Doctor Honoris Causa "for his useful creative work", the first time that this award had been given to a country man. He was declared an illustrious son of Bailadores, and a street in this Méridan village is now named after him.
Viscose
French scientist and industrialist Hilaire de Chardonnet (1838–1924)—who invented the first artificial textile fiber, "artificial silk"—created viscose. British scientists Charles Frederick Cross and Edward John Bevan took out British patent no. 8,700, "Improvements in Dissolving Cellulose and Allied Compounds" in May, 1892. In 1893 they formed the Viscose Syndicate to grant licences, and in 1896 formed the British Viscoid Co. Ltd. to exploit the process.
Neoprene
Neoprene was invented by DuPont scientists on April 17, 1930 after Dr Elmer K. Bolton of DuPont attended a lecture by Fr Julius Arthur Nieuwland, a professor of chemistry at the University of Notre Dame. Nieuwland's research was focused on acetylene chemistry and during the course of his work he produced divinyl acetylene, a jelly that firms into an elastic compound similar to rubber when passed over sulfur dichloride. After DuPont purchased the patent rights from the university, Wallace Carothers of DuPont took over commercial development of Nieuwland's discovery in collaboration with Nieuwland himself. Arnold Collins at DuPont focused on monovinyl acetylene and allowed it to react with hydrogen chloride gas, manufacturing chloroprene.
Lemuel Wellman Wright
Lemuel Wellman Wright was an inventor who was active in the early 19th century. Biographical material on Wright is scant, and even his exact name is unclear: the name Lemuel Wellman Wright is recorded in the British patent index for the patents listed below, but some texts use Lemuel Willman Wright to refer to the author of the same patents. There are contemporary references to an American from Massachusetts, Lemuel William Wright, who patented machinery and created a factory to make pins in London. The patent subject index lists the author of a patent for making pins in 1824 as Lemuel Wellman Wright (patent number 4955 of 1824), and has no other similar names recorded related to pins, so unless the patent office publication is in error, all these references appear to be to the same inventor.
William Cronk Elmore
William Cronk Elmore (September 16, 1909 - January 23, 2003) was an American physicist, educator, and author who is best known for his work on and related to the Manhattan project during World War II and as a professor of Physics at Swarthmore College, PA from 1938 to 1974. Bill Elmore authored two influential books during his life, "Electronics-Experimental Techniques" with Matthew Sands and the "Physics of Waves" with Mark Heald. He is also known for deriving a simple approximation for the delay through an RC network, known as the Elmore delay.
William Beldue
William Joseph Beldue (1889 – September 28, 1955) was the American inventor of the eyelash curler.
Centrifugal clutch
Thomas Fogarty, who is also credited with inventing the balloon catheter, is credited with inventing a centrifugal clutch in the 1940s although automobiles were already being manufactured with centrifugal clutches as early as 1936. There is also a design for an 'automatic clutch' (essentially the same device) in the 'Meccano Magazine' of June 1931. But centrifugal clutches were used in railway locomotives much earlier (before 1858), and referred to (in relation to electric motors) in a patent of 1899. 
A device such as this was reportedly used in the Taylor Aerocar roadable airplane of the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Mettler Toledo
Allen DeVilbiss, Jr. (1873-1911) was an inventor who lived in Toledo, Ohio, USA. He became interested in the concept of weighing machines and conceived the idea of an automatic computing pendulum scale. He was able to prove his concept with a local butcher, who realized that customers appreciated the automatic computation which eliminated the risk of overcharging. While his invention gained in popularity, DeVilbiss was not interested in making it a viable business.