Can you imagine life without tape? How would we wrap presents, fix ripped papers and make duct tape dresses? Richard Drew invented the first masking tape in 1925.
Richard Drew was an engineer working at 3M when he perfected the masking tape. At the time, 3M was a sandpaper manufacturer. Drew was delivering trial batches [...]

Patent disputes do not just occur over drugs or electronics. In fact, even the pencil, a simple product used by millions everyday, was at one time part of a court battle.
The first patent for attaching an eraser to a pencil was issued in 1858 to a man from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hyman Lipman received patent number [...]

August is National Inventors Month. The United Inventors Association of the USA, the Academy of Applied Science, and Inventor’s Digest Magazine started this celebration in 1998. The purpose of this month is to celebrate creativity and innovation. Some of the most imaginative patents granted have not been for products that most would consider practical but [...]

Question from Sarah J.:
Have any US Presidents been granted patents?
Abraham Lincoln is the only US President to ever receive a patent. Lincoln received patent #6469 on May 22, 1849 for a device to lift boats over shoals.
Read more about Abraham Lincoln’s patent here.
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In 1943, Richard James, a naval engineer stationed at the shipyard in Philadelphia, was working on an anti-vibration device for ship instruments. Part of the device involved high-tension springs. Richard accidentally knocked one of the springs off of a shelf. He watched as the spring kept moving, walking and flip-flopping after it hit the [...]

Thomas Adams, a photographer, glassmaker and hopeful inventor had an infamous Mexican exile as a houseguest at his home in Staten Island, New York. Mexican General Santa Anna was staying with him. Santa Anna introduced Adams to chicle which is made from the sap of the sapodilla tree. The general was hoping to sell the [...]

Benjamin Franklin was more than one of America’s most beloved Founding Fathers. He was also the first major American inventor. In 1748 at the age of 42, Franklin retired from his career as a printer to turn his attention full time to studying biology and physics, pursuing his curiosities about the world.
Franklin is most famous [...]

Webster’s dictionary defines serendipity as the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for. Accidental discoveries have happened in all fields and disciplines. Some great advancements in medicine have been the product of serendipity. Nitrous oxide as an anesthetic, rubber gloves to control infections and insulin are among these discoveries:
Nitrous Oxide [...]

In 1905, an eleven-year old boy mixed some soda water powder and water. The boy, Frank Epperson, forgot the mixture on the back porch with the stirring stick still in the container. Overnight the temperature dropped below freezing turning the mixture to ice. Epperson took the frozen soda water to school to show his friends.
Eighteen [...]

Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were common items found in US, Canadian and British shoes stores from the 1920’s until about 1960. A shoe fitting fluoroscope allowed for a real time x-ray of a person’s foot inside a pair of shoes. A customer would stick his/her feet in the opening of the fluoroscope while standing and look through [...]