Things You Didn't Know About Inventors

Monday, Aug 17, 2020, 4:26 pm

By:Tony Williams

1.Apple falling

We have all heard of the story of Newton being hit by an apple and that giving him the idea for gravity, but there is no evidence it happened. He used to tell the story himself, but there is no record of it, so if it did not happen, then why did he decide to lie about it?

2.Isaac Newton

Did you know that Isaac Newton made the doggy door? The cat flap had already been around, but he decided to put two flaps on his door with one being bigger than the other, so the doggy door was basically invented completely by accident, but so are a number of other items.

3.Mr Owl

The guy that was the voice behind the Mr Owl cartoon was the same guy that actually invented the artificial heart. He did need some help from other experts, but he came up with the prototype with his patent being granted in 1963. How he got from one thing to the other is certainly strange.

4.Thomas Edison

During his lifetime he filed almost 1100 patents and when he died he had been granted 34 for the telephone, 141 all about batteries, 150 that were connected to the telegraph, and 389 that were connected to electricity in some way. It is fair to say that he was one busy guy.

5.Earmuffs

The inventor of earmuffs was Chester Greenwood and he invented them when ice skating. However, he then went on to have over 100 different patents for various things and now his hometown of Farmington, Maine has a day of celebration each year where people decorate things with earmuffs.

6.JB Dunlop

Dunlop was of course famous for inventing the pneumatic tire, but did you know that he was actually a veterinary surgeon? You wonder how you can get from dealing with dogs and cats to inventing something that is now used around the world because what link actually exists between the two?

7.Bifocals

The reason why Benjamin Franklin invented bifocals was quite simple as it was because he hated wearing two pairs of glasses. In other words, he invented them because he was too lazy to change glasses as and when required, but at least it led to something that is very useful.

8.The web

The guy that invented the Internet is Tim Berners-Lee, but he has never made any money from it. Why? Because he refused to patent it as he wanted people to communicate and believed that if he patented it that it would become too expensive, so he passed up a crazy amount of money.

9.Tesla

Tesla loved to experiment, but one experiment seems to have gone a bit too far. It is said that he tried something with Mark Twain and managed to give him such of a tingle that it is said he pooped his pants and it was basically forced out of him due to the electricity.

10.Da Vinci

There is no doubt that he was an intelligent guy, but centuries before it was scientifically proven to be the case he believed that the world was older than the Bible says. He came to this conclusion after watching how rivers manage to erode things.

11.Vaseline

The person that invented it, Robert Cheseborough, apparently liked it a bit too much. We put it on various things such as scrapes or dry skin, but it is said that he used to eat a spoonful of it every single day without fail. Why he felt the need to do this and what he thought it would do with regard to helping him is certainly something we just cannot understand.

12.Edison

In 1903, Edison took experiments to a new level when he decided to electrocute an elephant. Why? Simply because he was desperate to prove that the AC current by Tesla was actually very dangerous. Why he felt the need to pick on an elephant is certainly an absolute mystery.

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