It’s time to wish “Happy Birthday” to another inventor time sometimes seems to have forgotten, although it probably shouldn’t have.
You see, without music professor and serial tinkerer David Edward Hughes, a lot of modern conveniences – tv, radio, telephone, and music recording namely – probably wouldn’t exist. Although he was awarded countless honors in his [...]

This week we commemorate the 186th anniversary of the first-ever sale of friction matches.
As the story goes, a young Englishman named John Walker had become rather sickened by his surgeon apprenticeship and left the field in 1818 for a less gruesome job as a chemist: something he was apparently (and quite fortunately) good at!
By Walker’s [...]

This week we celebrate one of the most important patents ever to cross a USPTO examiner’s desk.
The patent describes a process for a producing a material we use nearly everywhere – our homes, our cars, our offices, our hospitals – we even use it in space!
It’s one of the most abundant materials on the planet, [...]

Today is Walt Disney’s 111th birthday.
In a few months, the invention that made Disney famous will turn 72.
You see, when Disney first started in the business in 1919, animation involved layering transparencies of moving elements right on top of an opaque background. This primitive multi-layer technique allowed artists to focus more on the actual animation [...]

This Sunday, the PEZ Dispenser celebrates its 60th Patent Birthday.
On December 2, 1952, the iconic flip-top candy dispenser was granted its first American patent. It was designed to look like a cigarette lighter, a nod to the candies initial design as an alternative to smoking.
At the time I don’t think the company could have imagined [...]

I’ve had a hard time holding my tongue about this for the past few weeks, but I’ve finally been given the “go ahead” to let the cat out of the bag:
Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have been welcomed into the exclusive Stanford Inventor Hall of Fame alongside sixteen other modern innovators.
The best part? [...]

Ok, that’s a lie.
I’m sorry, but after this morning’s fact-checking debacle, I just couldn’t resist.
To be fair, my morning started out “normal enough” as I perused the web for a good invention history factoid to share with you on our daily Today in Invention History Facebook posting. I got pretty excited when I discovered that [...]

Photography has come a long way from the first photographs. Photography has now progressed past the need for film and chemicals to the realm of sd cards and computer processing. The first photograph was taken by the Frenchman, Joseph Nicephore Niépce.
Joseph Nicephore Niépce was fascinated with lithography but he did not have a steady drawing [...]

The light bulb that is synonymous with Thomas Edison has reached the end of its hey day. After over 130 years, the light bulb whose design has virtually remained unchanged, will slowly no longer be imported or produced here in the United States. Starting on January 2, 2012, the 100W incandescent bulb will be the [...]

The Wright Brothers built the world’s first successful airplane. On December 17, 1903, the brothers made the first powered flight in North Carolina. The flight last for only 12 seconds with the aircraft only ever reaching a height of 20 feet off of the ground. Still, the flight was ground breaking.
This flight led to the [...]