Invention - Optical Glass

Ernst Abbe's inventions and discoveries focus mostly on the field of optics:  microscopes, special lenses, object-glasses, refractometer, and prism telescopes. 

Ernst Abbe

Born: January 23, 1840 in Eisenach, Germany

Died: January 14, 1905, age 64 in Jena, Germany

Marriage and Children

1871 to his death - Else Snell Abbe (1844-1914), one child Greta Abbe Unrein (1872-1945).

Ernst Abbe was a social reformer and entrepreneur but mostly he was known for his work in developing optical instruments.  In 1866 at the age of 26, he became research director of the Zeiss Optical Works. By 1886 he invented the apochromatic lens which eliminated primary and secondary distortion.  The company began to sell Abbe's improved microscopes in 1872. 

Carl Zeiss

Owner of Zeiss Optical Works was Carl Zeiss (born September 11, 1816 - died December 3, 1888, age 72 in Germany). He was a scientific instrument maker, lens maker, optician and businessman. In 1849 he married Berta Schatter (b. 1827-d. 1850).  In 1853, he married Ottillie Trinkler (b. 1819-d. 1897).

Zeiss was obsessed with manufacturing optical glass with a quality that was consistent from batch to batch but it was not possible with the current grade of glass products that he was getting from England, France and Switzerland because the glass wasn't the best type to use for microscopes. 

Otto Schott

Abbe and Zeiss met chemist Otto Schott who was skilled in producing small batches of experimental glass but of very high quality.  Otto Schott (b. 1851- d. 1935, age 83) contacted them to offer is expertise of high quality glass and convinced Zeiss and Abbe to move to Jena to conduct experiments. With a grant from the Prussian government, they began two years of experiments in glassworks.

In 1875, Otto Schott became a partner in Zeiss Optical Works and using his formula, they produced high quality optical glass with repeatable composition.   

By 1877 the partners were reaping profits selling lenses for cameras, binoculars and microscopes. Ernst Abbe improved the manufacturing process of optical instruments and went on the lecture circuit. He also wrote over 100 papers on their discoveries.

Schott & Associates Glass Technology Laboratories

In 1884, Abbe, Zeiss, Otto Schott and Zeiss's son Roderick formed the Schott & Associates Glass Technology Laboratories which had merged with the Zeiss Optical Works and concentrated on research and production. They ultimately produced 44 different types of optical glass.  

In 1885, Carl Zeiss suffered a stroke, recovered, then suffered a series of strokes in 1888. He died on December 3, 1888.  Roderick Zeiss withdrew from the partnership shortly after his father's death. 

Ernst Abbe was the driving force behind the company. He was at the top of his profession in optics and became active in labor reform. He introduced the 8-hour workday in 1900, created a pension fund, and set up the Carl Zeiss Foundation in 1889 for research in science. In 1895 he built an image reversal system for his telescopes.  The company owed it success to employing only the highest skilled artisans trained to work with the greatest degree of precision.  Ernst Abbe died on January 14, 1905 in Jena Germany.

Legacy

Otto Schott was the sole survivor of the partners. He expanded his interests to include making laboratory and medical supplies, such as thermometers, glassware, medicinal vials, and tubing.  In the late 1890s he became involved in bringing commercial electricity to Jena, Germany. He held a monopoly on global optical glass until the start of the first World War. 

Schott and Associates made glass vials for the COVID-19 vaccinations.  The Schott Glass Museum in Jena displays the development of glass science featuring the works of Otto Schott.

 

 

What Is A Patent?

 The Latin word "patent" means "to lay open" or "make available for public inspection."

A patent is a numbered legal document connected to an intellectual property or invention which is issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office after a patent application has been approved. It is granted to anyone who invents a device, product, or object that is useful or improves upon an existing invention.

The inventor has a limited period of time (usually 5 to 20 years) to demonstrate their invention and to offer it for sale. The actual patent prevents all others from copying it and selling it. Anyone who interferes, infringes or attempts to steal the details of a patent in order to duplicate it to put his own name on it can be sued.

The inventor must write a description on the patent application that is worded with just enough detail so a person with basic skills in that particular field could operate the device. The description must be written on an "Enabling Disclosure" form and show that the invention is actually in his possession when the patent was filed. 

Anyone can make the argument that by sharing details, the invention is at risk to be copied because of this disclosure. But it is the patent itself that protects the inventor from other people who try to file a patent application for something they never invented or have never operated.  

If the basic information about the invention is omitted, then the patent is considered violated and it might not be re-issued. Depending on the gravity of the violation, the patent could also be permanently revoked. 

Not everyone agrees that a patent is a good thing, so they don't bother  getting one. Ben Franklin is a case in point. For all his inventions, he never filed for a single patent because he wanted to cut the red tape so the public could be exposed to the product.   

There are some inventors who refuse to get a patent until the last weeks before the product goes public because they feel the "basic" wording of the Enabling Disclosure gives away too much information about their intellectual property so it can be duplicated.  Not filing a patent leaves themselves open to anyone who wants to copy their idea.   

There are some inventors who get a patent for every step in the process of creating their invention because they feel they are actually protecting it from theft.  

Each invention is different. The process of creating it is different. Each inventor needs to decide how to proceed in obtaining patents - either get patents in increments or obtain one for the whole completed project.

The bottom line is - a patent protects an invention from being stolen. 

If it can be stolen because someone was able to figure out the end result because there was more than enough information provided from the steps in the beginning of the project, then either the Enabling Disclosure was not basic enough (it was too precise) or it is best if the inventor waited to file for the patent when more of the invention is in place for his patent to protect his invention.

Sharing years in advance before an invention is market-ready is one of the reasons why inventors end up in court, either being sued or suing others for infringement.

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Inventions vs. Discoveries

 An invention is a new product or process that solves a technical problem.  A discovery is something that already existed but had not been found.  Inventions can lead to discoveries and discoveries can also lead to inventions.  Ben Franklin's discovery of lightning prompted him to invent the lightning rod in 1752.  

Many inventions were invented thousands of years ago and sometimes the origins are lost to time. Sometimes scientists discover a model of an early invention where they can tell how old it is and where it came from.

Patents tell us when, where and by whom an invention was invented. But people who don't apply for patents, like Ben Franklin for example, leave the door open for anyone to claim they were the inventor of one of his discoveries.

Inventor - Sir Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton

Born: December 25, 1642 in Lincolnshire England

Died: March 31, 1727, age 84 in Middlesex, Great Britain

Parents:

Isaac Newton, b. 1606 - d. 1642, he died 3 months beforehis only child was born

Hannah Ayscough Newton, 1623-1679 -remarried in 1645 to Reverend Barnabas Smith and had three children. She was a widow again in 1653.

Siblings:

Mary Smith Pilkington (1647-1695), Benjamin Smith (1651-?), Hannah Smith (1652-1695).

Sir Isaac Newton, 1642-1727

Isaac Newton was a physicist, mathematician, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. But he was also an inventor. He was a thinker but a very poor student in school. Instead he devoted his mind to inventing devices or improving on existing inventions. In his youth, he invented a small working windmill, a clock that operatedby the force of dropping water, and a sundial.

Newton was a cat person. He loved his cats but didn't like to be interrupted when they wanted attention.  He invented the pet door so his cats could come and go without disturbing him. There's only one reference that he invented the pet door and no proof.

When he tackled the science of gravity and motion, he gave all his time and effort. The story goes that he was sitting in his garden drinking a cup of tea, and saw an apple fall from a tree.  The story about the apple hitting him on the head seems to have been a fallacy. He realized the force that pulled the apple from the t ree was the same force used in outer space that keeps the planets in orbit. His discoveries lay idle for about 20 years and in 1684, English astronomer Edmond Hailey asked for his help in explaining the motion of planets aound the sun.  When Hailey saw that Newton had already worked out the mathematics of the motion of the planets, he put his work aside to urge Newton to publish his discoveries.The laws of gravity were published  in The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in 1687, now considered one of the greatest contributions to science.

In 1704, Newton published his discoveries in optics and explained why object appear to be colored and laid out the foundation for spectrum analysis.  He invented the reflecting telescope and was the first person to see Jupiter's moons. 

He invented calculus which explained motion in mathematical terms. He was on the faculty of Trinity College, part of Cambridge University, and was a typical absent-minded professor.  He never married. He left Trinity in 1701 and spent last years in Parliament and as President of the Royal Society.  He was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705. 

While working as a warden at the Royal Mint, he put out a recall for all English coins, had them melted down and remade into a much higher quality and harder to counterfeit currency.  It left the whole country without coin currency for a full year.  The new design has milled edges which is still in use today in coin currency all over the world.

He was always willing to make time for other scientists and authors. Albert Einstein praised him by saying that Isaac Newton's discoveries helped him to advance his work.

Newton was so revered in England that he was buried in Westminster Abbey, the highest honor in Great Britain. 

Three Isaac Newton Laws:  

- Every object moves in a straight line unless acted upon by a force. 

- The accerlation of an object is directly proportinate to the net force exerted and inversely proportionate to the object's mass.  

- For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction

Inventor - Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal

Born: June 19, 1623 in France

Died: August 19, 1662, age 39 in Paris France

Pseudonym:  Louis de Montalte

Parents:
Etienne Pascal

Antoinette Pascal

Blaise Pascal, inventor

Blaise Pascal was a a child prodigy, and inherited his father's mathematical mind.  Ultimately he became a French philospher, mathematician, physicist, inventor  and a Catholic writer.  He and his sister Jacqueline were educated by his father at home. Blaise was always in poor health and suffered from seizures, but he was bright and he had a head for numbers.

 

His family were devout Catholics , starting as members of the Jansenists, a splinter group of the Catholic Church. His father was a judge in the tax courts and it was his job to calculate and collect the taxes. Blaise watched his father labor for many hours calculating by hand how much tax he had to collect from each household.  In 1643, Blaise invented a mechanical adding machine for his father to calculate the taxes more quickly and accurately.  Blaise was 18 years old. He named the adding machine "The Pascaline."

He studied hydrodynamics and hydrostatics and invented the syringe and the hydraulic press.  He supplmented his income by writing articles for the Catholic press. Much of his work was published after his death.

His name has been attributed to:  Pascal's Principle (hydraulic brakes, jack, and crane), Pascal's Law (they hydraulic lift system), Pascal's Triangle, Pascal's Theorem, and Pascal's Wager (live your life as if God exists because you will lose very little if God turns out to be a myth. If he is real, one stands to gain immeasurably.) The Unversity of Blaise Pascal is in his home town.

He was diversified and in addition to his achievements, he is revered for improving upon the technology used for the roulette machine, the foundations of hydrodynamics. One of his published works was "Provincales" in which he attacked the Jesuits while defending Antoin Arnauld, founder of Jansenism at that time,

Invention - The Corset

 A number of different people have been credited with inventing the corset but not all of them were granted a patent.  More women than men were granted a patent for designing, modifying, or improving on the corset in any way.

From 1842 through 1876, these are the patents granted to women which are on file at the US Patent Office:

- Mary Brush was the second woman to be granted a patent. She lived in Davenport Iowa and received patent #2 on July 21, 1815 for inventing the corset.

- On January 21, 1842, Elisabeth Adams improved on it and was granted patent #1940.

 - On September 10, 1850, Louisa Balia was granted patent #7627 for desginging corset stays.

- On December 23, 1858, Anna S. McLean, of Williamsburg, New York, was granted patent #22,443 for the corset.

- On August 26, 1862, Adeline J. Brooks of Philadelphia was granted patent #36,272 for the corset.

- On September 15, 1863, Lavinia H. Foy of Worcester, Massachusetts was granted patent #39,906 and #39,909 for improvements in corsets with corset skirt supporters

- On September 15, 1863, Mina Sebille, of New York, received patent #39,964 for improvement to corsets.

- On June 24, 1864, Eleanor M. Marshall of Hillsdale New York received patent #43,321 for improvements in mammiform breast protectors

- On November 28, 1864, Harriet H. Thompson of Washington DC received patent #45,103 for imrpovement in abdominal supporters.  

- On November 29, 1864, Lavina H. Foy received another patent #45,296 for improvement in corset skirt supporters but it had to be put in her husband's name James H. Foy.

- On May 23, 1865, Clarissa Preston of Detroit Michigan received patent #47,856 for improving the corset.

- On May 1, 1866, Lavina H. Foy of Worcester Massachusetts received patent #54,323 for improving the combined corsets and bustles.

- On February 5, 1867, Cathrine Allsop Griswold of Willimantic, Connecticut received patent #61,824 for improvements in the corset.

- On May 28, 1867, Mellissa E. Bulkley of Providence Rhode Island received patent #65,163 for improving the corset.

- On January 14, 1868, Clara Z. Cummings of Buffalo New York received patent #73,235 for improving the corset.

- On April 7, 1868, Martha B. Solomon of Charlestown Massachusetts was granted patent #76,354 for improving children's corsets.

- On July 7, 1868, Lavinia H. Foy of Newton Courtre, Massachusetts was granted patent #79,647 for improving the corset.

- On August 10, 1869, Marie T. Smith of New York was granted patent #93,429 for improving corset fastenings.

- On December 20, 1870,  Mary P Tilton of Trenton New Jersey was granted patent #110,310 for improving the pads in corsets.

- On November 14, 1871, Caroline L. Hamlin of New York was granted patent #120,967 for improving the corset.

- On December 19, 1871, Mary J. Vavorstrand of Illinois was granted patent #122,081 for improvement in corsets and skirt supporters combined.

- On December 26, 1871, Melissa Bulkley of Rhode Island was granted patent #122,152 for improving the supporting corset fastenings.

- On March 26, 1872, Harriet G Emery and Margaret C Fuller of Boston Massachusetts were granted paent #124,801 for improving children's corsets.

- On November 19, 1872, Sarah A. Pake of Wisconsin was granted patent #133,209 for improving the corset.

- On April 8, 1873, Mary Russell of Union Bridge Maryland was granted patent #137,724 for the corset

- On March 31, 1874, Annie Hobart of Massachusetts was granted patent #149,040 for improving corset protectors.

- On October 27, 1874, Clara P Clark of Wakefield Massachusetts was granted patent #156,278 for improving the corset

- On February 9, 1875,Susanna Burns of Eastport Maine received patent #159,530 for improving the corset.

- On February 1, 1876, Mary Vavorstrand of Missouri, received patent #172,901 for improving the corset.

- On February 1, 1876, Harriet Chapman of Philadelphia Pennsylvania was ggranted patent #172980 for improving the corset.

- On March 21, 1876, Annie Whittier and Calista Andrews of Ohio recived patent #175,224 for improving the corset.

- On April 27, 1876, Annie Wilson of New York received patent #176,499 for improving the corset.

- On May 2, 1876, Louise schmitt of New Orleans received patent #177,019 for improving the corset.

- On September 26, 1876, Mary Mansfield of Salem Massachusetts was granted patent #182,526 for improvement in clasps for corsets.

- On October 3, 1876, Fanney Batcheller of Boston was granted patent #182,742 for improving the corset.

There are 313 more women who received patents for their contribution to improving the corset up to the year 1963.

Inventor - Benjamin Franklin

With his numerous inventions, Benjamin Franklin certainly made his mark on the world.  

Ben Franklin

During Franklin's time in colonial Philadelphia, there were people who made-do and people who didn't. If a gadget was invented to make life easier, most gave it a trial. People relied on what they heard from others who had tried the product before they gave it a chance.

Ben Franklin was always on the move. His inventions came about mostly from to necessity. While he ran a printing shop, he started US Post Office, started the first lending library, invented the catheter, the odometer, the Franklin Stove, the Lightning Rod, Bifocal eyeglasses, the glass harmonica, the Long Arm reaching device, swimmie fins, and the political cartoon.

See our post about Franklin Stoves.

Inventor - William Chester Ruth

Born: July 19, 1882 in Ercildoun, Pennsylvania

Died: April 3, 1971, age 88 in Gap, Pennsylvania

Inventions: Mechanical Cinder Spreader, Automatic Baler Feeder, and holder of 52 patents.

William Chester Ruth was the son of Samuel Ruth, a slave who was born on the South Carolina plantation of Robert Frederick Ruth. Samuel was liberated as a teen when the 54th Massachusetts Infantry occupied Savannah George and he was working for them as a regimental water carrier.  Then Lt. Stephen Atkins Swails took him as his body servant.

After the war, Samuel and two Union Army friends went to Pennsylvania where he met and married Louisa Pinn, the sister of one of the two Army friends. Her father ws Reverend Robert A. Pinn who was a Union soldier during the Civil War who received the Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Chaffin's Farm.

Samuel and his new wife Louisa saved up their wages to buy a farm outside of Ercildoun, Pennsylvania where they raised ten children.  

William Chester Ruth worked on the family farm and trained as a blacksmith from age 12 while going to school part of the year.  He was naturally curious about machinery, always taking apart machines and putting them back together again. He went to school up to eighth grade.

In 1906, he married Gertrude Miller and raised one son, Joseph.  In 1914, he took over his father's duties as spiritual leader of the Ercildoun's Church of Christ, a church founded by his father shortly after buying his farm.

In 1917, he and Gertrude moved to Gap, Pennsyvania, located in Dutch Country of Amish and Mennonites. In 1922 he opened a blacksmith shop "Ruth's Ironworks" on Route 30 in Gap where he shoed horses and repaired farm machinery for Amish folks.  Soon he began designing his own devices to improve machinery performance.

In 1924, he patented his first invention - the Combination Baler Feeder - a device that collected straw that exited out of a thresher and fed straw safely into the baler chamber.  By 1930, he had two more patents for improvements to the Baler Feeder.  He received patents for 47 of the machine's 87 parts.

Among his other inventions were a cinder-spreading truck bed called the Mechanical Cinder Spreader, which the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PENNDOT) bought for treating icy roads.

During WWII, he helped design a bombsight for warplanes which were used to build the Trident Missile. By 1950, he was earning over $50,000 a year just from his inventions. He hired six assistants and invested $65,000 to convert his blacksmith shop into a machine and welding shop. 

He partnered with a local white man named Howard Rutter who helped him to market products to white manufacturers and white farmers who wouldn't normally buy from him, as a black man.  

William continued to be spiritual leader and lay preacher at the Church of Christ in Ercildoun, right up until his death on April 3, 1971. While walking on Lincoln Highway to his shop in Gap, William Chester Ruth was hit by a car and died of his injuries. He was 88.  He was buried at Ercildoun Cemetery next to the Church of Christ.

 

Inventor - Edward Goodrich Acheson

Born: March 9, 1856 in Washington, Pennsylvania

Died: July 6, 1931, age 75 in New York City, New York

Inventor of the Acheson process to synthesize silicone carbide  (carborundum) and graphite

Raised in the coal fields of Pennsylvania, Edward Goodrich Acheson attended Bellefonte Academy from age 13 to 16. His father died in 1872 so he left school to help support his family, taking a job as a surveyor's assistant for the Pittsburgh Southern Railroad.  

In his spare time, he dedicated his time to electric experiments. In 1880, he invented a type of battery, pitched it for sale to Thomas Edison and he got hired on September 12, 1880 to work in Edison's lab in Menlo Park NJ. While there, he experimented maing a conducting carbon for Edison to use in his electric light bulbs.

In 1881, he went with a team of other Edison inventors to the Paris Exposition of Electricity and stayed there to install demos of Edison's electric light system in Belgium and in Milan.  In 1884, he left Edison's employ to be a supervisor of a plant that manufactured electric lamps while he continued working on other inventions.

He produced an artificial diamond using an electric furnace then further perfected it by heaing clay and coke in an iron bowl with a carbon arc light which produced hexagon crystals which was silicon carbide which he called carborundum.

In 1891, at Edison's suggestion, he built an electricity plan in Port Huron and used the electricity to experiment further with carborundum. In 1893 he received his first patent and went on to accummulate over 70 more patents relating to graphite products, oxides, and abrasives.  

The Electrochemical Society presents an award in his name every two years to inventors who make contributions to electricity and abrasives.  Edward Goodrich Acheson received the first award shortly before he died in 1931.

In 1953, the Pennsylvania Historical Commission put a historical marker outside his home as acknowledgement for his many achievements.  In 1997, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and his home in Monongahela, Pennsylvania is now a National Historic Landmark.  

Invention - Super Soaker Water Gun

 

Lonnie Johnson, Inventor

Birth Name: Lonnie George Johnson

Nickname: "The Professor"

Born: October 6, 1949 in Mobile, Alabama

Inventor: Best known for the Super Soaker Water Gun but also invented over 80 other products such as a compressed-air-powered robot (The Linex),  No-Heat Hair Rollers, a Musical Wet Diaper Detector, Energy Converter (converts Solar energy to electricity), Hair Drying Curler Clips, and Nerf Foam Dart Guns,

Home Base: Ansley Park, Atlanta, Georgia

Married: Linda Moore Johnson, 4 children

Education and Employment:

Tuskegee University - 1973 - Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering. 1975 - Masters Degree in Nuclear Engineering

United States Air Force - Engineer, Assigned to Strategic Air Command (Stealth Bomber Program). 

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory - 1979 - Systems Engineer for Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Cassini mission to Saturn

Chairman of the Board of The Georgia Alliance for Children

Founded Johnson Research & Development Company

*****

When you read about some of the inventions on this blog, you might find yourself saying "Gee, why didn't I think of that!?"   

This is one of those inventions.

Given his impressive resume, the last invention that anyone would associate with Lonnie Johnson would be a water gun toy because his background yields to more heavy duty technical stuff like spaceships and military armaments. 

He said he was the kind of kid who took his toys apart to see how they were made. He admits he is mechanically inclined which he says comes from helping his father repair things around the house. 

One day he was playing around with rockets and made jet fuel on the kitchen stove that nearly burned down the house.  

He liked to take all kinds of things apart to study them and modify them. For that reason, his friends nicknamed him "The Professor."  In 1968, when he was a high school student, he won first prize for "Linex," his homemade robot that was powered by compressed air and made entirely out of junkyard scraps and spare parts.   

In 1981, the idea for his Super Soaker came about by accident while he was working on an environmentally friendly heat pump that was powered by water instead of Freon.  A high pressure nozzle was attached to the bathroom faucet and when he turned on the water, the water literally blasted out of the nozzle and shot across the bathroom.  It was too powerful for the heat pump but it would be a novelty if it were a water gun.

He needed to finish working on the heat pump, but he put together a prototype for the water gun and gave it to his daughter to test it with her friends and they loved it. He planned to patent and market the toy to earn some money so he could finance his other projects.   

In 1983, he filed for a patent and three years later in 1986 he was awarded US Patent #4591071.  The blueprints simply described it as a "Squirt Gun" 

But this is not just any water squirt gun. It is a "go big or go home" water cannon that he eventually named the Power Drencher Water Gun.  

Lonnie Johnson's Super Soaker

It took another four years of fine tuning and perfecting the water gun, and when he was ready to look into marketing, he learned that it would cost him $200,000 to get it manufactured and distributed to stores. On his military salary, it was not possible.  

He set out to find a company who would manufacture and distribute it for him. He interviewed many companies and finally in 1989, he signed a contract with the Larami Corporation in Philadelphia.

Due to another water gun toy with a similar name, he changed the name of his water gun to Super Soaker. It was on store shelves by 1990, with a price of $10 to $60, depending on the size and model.  It took ten years from designing it in 1981 to selling in stores in 1991.

Early model Super Soaker

 

It was a success. In 1991 alone, his line of Super Soaker water gun toys generated over $200 million in sales.    

A young boy with his Super Soaker

Just because he now had lots of money coming in, Lonnie Johnson didn't retire to rest on his laurels. In 1991, he founded Johnson Research and Development Corporation to discover new products and to continue to improve and expand on the Super Soaker toys.  He had many ideas he wanted to develop.

The Nerf Super Soaker 50 water gun

The Nerf dart gun toy was popular at that time, and although it was a fun toy, Johnson thought he could improve on it by shooting multiple foam darts.  His design became a Nerf projectile foam dart gun.  

In February 1995, Hasbro bought out Larami Corporation and they continued honoring Larami's contracts. Or so Lonnie Johnson thought.

  

In February 2013, Johnson discovered he was being underpaid in royalties for the Super Soaker and Nerf toys, so he filed a lawsuit against Hasbro. The two went into arbitration and in November 2013, Lonnie Johnson was awarded $72.9 million in royalties from Hasbro. According to Hasbro, the Super Soaker had total sales of about $1 billion.

At last count in 2018, Lonnie Johnson holds over 130 patents. Here is a list of some of his other inventions and patents.  

https://lonniejohnson.com/patents

A young boy's collection

Young Enthusiast Chris Reid' displays his Super Soaker Collection  - Amazing!

Watch Lonnie Johnson tell the shorter version of his story on his YouTube video - 4 minutes in length.

You are here:

https://inventionsandpatents.blogspot.com

Inventor - Leonardo da Vinci

Born:  April 15, 1452 in Florence, Tuscany Italy

Died: May 2, 1519, age 67, in France

Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519

Parents:

His 25-year old father was Piero da Vinci (1426-1504) a notary who went on to become an attorny, and 17-year old peasant girl named Caterina Buti del Vacca (1434-1494) who were never married to each other; both married other people one year after Leonardo was born. 

Piero da Vinci took custody of the child immediately after birth and placed him in his father's household. It's been recorded by Emanuel Repetti, the local historian, that Leonardo was born in Anchiano, a country hamlet where an illegitimate child's birth offered some privacy. About a year before Leonardo's birth, Piero was engaged to Albiera Amadori and they married one year later. She died in 1464 and Piero married three more times. 

A much younger Leonardo da Vinci

His mother Caterina later married a local artist named Antonio di Piero Buti del Vacca. Leonardo was raised in the home of his paternal grandfather, Antonio da Vinci. All tolled, there were as many as 16 half-siblings from all the marriages, about eleven lived past infancy, but were much younger than Leonardo so he had very little contact with them. The last child was born when Leonardo was 46 years old.

When his father died in 1504, Leonardo barely noted his passing and cut off his siblings because they caused a lot of trouble in disputes over their inheritances.

Young Adulthood

Around the mid-1460's, da Vinci's grandfather's household moved to Florence where Leonardo became a study boy for Andrea del Verrocchio the leading painter in Florence at the time. His master was the great sculpture Donatello of whom Leonard became an apprentice at age 17 for seven years.  He was exposed to famous painters such as Botticelli, Peruginio, and Ghirlandaio, where he learned drafting, plaster casting, mechanics, woodworking, metallurgy, chemistry, drawing, painting, modeling and sculpting.

Some of da Vinci's Inventions

Leonardo Da Vinci was a famous painter and sculptor who did not attend formal school. He was taught by family servants how to read and write, and some basic mathematics, but for most of his middle years, he was self taught. His time outdoors was where he began to observe the natural world, the properties of water, and how birds of prey caught their food.

One of da Vinci's notebooks

His notebooks had thousands of pages of illustrations, verse, and anatomical drawings which showed he had quite an understanding of the human body. He sharpened his skill by dissecting corpses of animals and humans in order to learn how the body works. Most of his drawings were done starting around the 1480s and his drawings of the body were hailed as the first of its kind.

In 1517, Leonardo da Vinci suffered paralysis of his right hand so he wrote in reverse. The writing could only be read by holding it up to a mirror.  When he died, he left over 6,000 pages of journals filled with his ideas, inventions and grocery lists.  Rumors abounded that he wrote in reverse to protect the work from being stolen, while others believed it was to protect against smudges because writing from left to right would have smudged his writing and ruined the journals. Although his paralysis was well documented, it is entirely likely that he did it also to protect his work from being stolen.

Many people feel that the "Mona Lisa" was da Vinci's greatest masterpiece, certainly the most famous of his works. His sculpting work also brought him notoriety. In the late 1400s, da Vinci was commissioned to create a 20 foot sculpture of the Duke of Milan's father riding on horseback.  One hopes they didn't want the sculpture in a hurry because it took him 17 years to do the sketches and build a model of the sculpture.  In 1499, Milan was invaded by the French army and the sculpture was destroyed.

Leonardo da Vinci as an accomplished inventor., showed his expertise lay in understanding how things worked which he accomplished with little effort.  He invented the parachute, several types of winged flying devices (airplanes, etc.), scuba gear, the water wheel, the anemometer (which measured the speed of wind), and a giant crossbow.

The parachute idea was first credited to Sebastien Lenormand in 1783, but it was actually discovered several hundred years earlier when da Vinci's drawings were examined, that he was first to conceive of the idea.

The first commercial helicopter was not built until the mid-1940s, but da Vinci's sketches contains those of modern day flying machines including a helicopter.

When cannons took too long to load, he built 33-barreled guns that could be loaded and fired at the same time. He also invented the triple barrel cannon which was used on the battlefield.

His invention of the armoured car was before the modern tank and it was loaded with a large number of weapons and able to move in any direction.

Although da Vinci has been given the credit for inventing the modern day clock, what he actually did was design a more accurate clock.

He had many ideas and even though they needed the assistance of amny pulleys, weights, gears, and tools, da Vinci's self-propelled cart was impressive because it could move without being pushed.

He invented the revolving bridge which was key for soldiers fighting the war.  The bridge was portable, able to be folded up and stored in comfortable parcels so soldiers could bring it out to progress over waterways and damaged bridges.

Leonardo da Vinci sketched ideas for several hundred inventions covering every aspect of life.  Many were years ahead of their time, but he built very few of them during his lifetime.  His aspiration was to organize and publish his ideas, but he died before that happened.

As a successful artist, he was given permission to dissect human corpses at the Hospital of Santa Maria in Florence and later in Milan and Rome. His drawings of the human anatomy, building of skeletons, and his detailed writings for chapters helped in the teaching of anatomy to future doctors. Although da Vinci had no formal schooling, his contemporaries regarded his genius as being so rare that his remarkable talents were inspired from God rather than from human skill.

da Vinci's Mona Lisa

Although the Mona Lisa is considered his most famous portrait, the Last Supper is the most reproduced painting of all time.

da Vinci's Last Supper

Trivia

In 1994, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, bought Leonardo's notebook The Codex Leicester for $30.8 million, the most expensive book ever sold.  The notebook is 72 pages long and written sometime between 1506 and 1510.  It holds many of da Vinci'sw diagrams, ideas, and sketches, relating to the Earth, Moon, and Sun. 

Death

In 1516, King Francis I of France bestowed on him the title of Premier Painter, Engineer, and Architect to the King." One of the perks was a country manor home, the Chateau of Clous which was where he spent his last years painting and drawing. He died there at age 67 in 1519.

Leonardo da Vinci lamented on his deathbed that he failed God and men by not practicing his art as he should have. He sent for a priest to make his confession, and receive the Holy Sacrament. King Francis I became his close friend and some legends claim that he held Leonardo's head in his arms as he died. He never married, never fathered any children. His work and his pupils were his family.

In his Will, he stipulated that 60 beggars carry tapers and follow his casket. His principal heir and executor was Francesco Melzi, one of his best pupils, who sketched da Vinci through the years and give us the likenesses we now know as da Vinci. Melzi received his paintings, tools, library, and personal effects. Another long time pupil named Salai and his servant Baptista each received half of the vineyards. His servant woman received a fur-lined cloak. 

Salai owned the Mona Lisa painting at the time of da Vinci's death but it later turned out to be one of several copies. In Salai's own Will, the date of his copy of the painting was around 1513 or so.  In 1524, it was assessed at 505 lire. In 1962, there was a proposal to insure the painting for over $100 million before making a tour around the world but the insurance was not purchased. Instead the money was spent on more security.

His exact gravesite near the palace church of Saint-Florentin was completely demolished in the early 1800s during the French Revolution making it impossible to identify da Vinci's actual gravesite.

Inventor - Frank Abbott

Born: September 5, 1836

Died: April 20, 1897 in New York, age 61

Inventions:  

- Dental instruments including chisels, pluggers, scalers, some of which are still in use today.

- First automatic Mallet with back-action.

Raised on a farm in York County, Maine, Frank Abbott atended school until age 16 then began to travel. In 1855, he studied dentistry under local dentist Dr. J. E. Ostrander in Oneida, New York.  He opened his own dental practice in Johnstown, New York at age 22.

He married Catherine Ann Cuyler and they had three children.  When the Civil War began, he served as a Lieutenant in the 115th New York Volunteer Infantry. He was captured at Harper's Ferry, West Virginia and was released later as part of a prisoner exchange.

When he returned to his practice, he went to the City University of New York as a medical student and in 1866 was appointed as clinical lecturer in New York College of Denistry, then Professor of Operative Denistry in 1868 and as dean in 1869.

He collected rare American history prints and is mentioned in many dental textbooks and encyclopedias.

 

Inventor - Samuel Abbot

Born: March 30, 1786 in Wilton, New Hampshire

Died: January 2, 1839, age 52 in Wilton, New Hampshire, burned to death in his factory

Invention: Starch from the Potato - He invented the manufacturing process of extracting flour from the potato using horse or water power. It was used as sizing in clothing factories to prepare clothing for store displays.

Samuel was the 11th of 12 children. Nothing is known about his mother. His father was Abiel Abbot, the son of Captain John Abbot of Andover Massachusetts whose family emigrated from Yorkshire, England. They were the fifth generation of Abbots since 1643.

Samuel's father Abiel was one of the first early settlers of Wilton, New Hampshire who started his farm amid the wilderness of the New World. Abiel served in the militia during the Revolutionary War, represented his city in the New Hampshire Court, and was a trusted citizen with the business of the town.

Of the 12 children, ten survived to adulthood.  Like all of his siblings, Samuel was well educated and very right. He was one of three Abbot children who attended Harvard College. Samuel graduated in 1808 with a law degree and became a member of the bar in 1812.  

In 1813, he lived with and worked for Attorney C H Atherton Sr. in Amherst. He admired Samuel's wide interests in many subjects and enlisted his help to prepare his son C. H. Atherton Jr. for college, who went on to become a US Senator. 

 In 1817, Samuel opened his own law office in Ipswich. Though he was noticed by judges in the Supreme Court, his interests were diverted from law to chemistry and mechanics.  He put all his efforts into learning and experimenting how to use machinery to extract flour from the potato. After trial and error, his efforts paid off after investigating the use of horse or water power.

He bought a factory in Wilton and put it under the supervision of his brother Ezra while he devoted his time and attention to scientific pursuits.  

The starch flour of the potato gainbed the interest of cotton cloth factories who wanted to use it as sizing instead of using wheat flour which was more expensive to buy.  Soon he was making a profit and the farmers in the neighborhood benefitted because it was one of the safest crops to grow and harvest.  

Samuel scholarly activities made him a favorite among townsfolk because he was well-versed on nearly any subject of modern science and could solve problems of application and mechanics.

Samuel was also interested in theology, especially the history of Christianity, and was known for creating libraries for the town, private citizens, churches, and Sunday schools . He was a liberal contributor as well.  

He went on to represent the town in the state legislator for five years and was a superintendent of the Sunday School, taking an interest in the morals of the younger generation.

He was a man who was guided by his interests, leaving behind any ambitions he ever had for law.  Samuel never married and dedicated himself to learning all he could about new things while his brother ran the factory.

On January 2, 1839, he entered the factory to retrieve a trunk that contained his accounts and securities. The interior of the building had caught fire and he fell to the ground in suffocation. The fire spread so quickly there was no way to save him. His remains were found in the ashes of the building. At the time of his death, he was 52 years old.

 

 

  

Inventor - James Dyson

Born:  May 2, 1947 in Norfolk, England

As of 2022, he is 75 years old.

James Dyson

Marriage and Children

1968 - married Deirdre Hindmarsh, Lady Dyson, three children

Education

1956 to 1965 - Gresham's School in Holt Norfolk

1965 to 1966 - Byam Shaw School of Art

1966 to 1970 - Royal College of London, studied fine art, switched to industrial design and interior design. As a student there, he helped design the Sea Truck, a high-speed watercraft made of fiberglass.

Inventions

James Dyson's first invention was the Ballbarrow, a modified wheelbarrow using a ball instead of a wheel which won the “Building Design Innovation Award” in 1977.

Keeping with the idea of the ball, he invented the Trolleyball, which launched boats, the Wheelboat, which traveled at 40 mph on both land and water.

His attention turned to vacuum cleaners when he got frustrated by his Hoover's performance. The dust bag pores kept getting clogged with dust and the suction suffered for it. He got the idea of using cyclone force to create a vacuum cleaner that would not lose its suction.

He is an example of persistence. Supported by his wife's salary as an art teacher, he finally launched his G-Force cleaner in 1983, after five years and 5,127 prototypes.  But he couldn't get a manufacturer to handle his product in the United Kingdom because it would hurt the sales of replacement dust bags.

Some of Dyson's failed prototypes

So Dyson launched it in Japan using catalogue sales, selling it for 2000 pounds (about $2450.00 US dollars).  He filed for patents for his dual cylcone vacuum cleaner in 1980 but it was rejected by all major manufacturers because of the high price and competition with existing cleaners on the market. 

In 1991, he set up his own manufacturing company, Dyson Ltd.  In June 1933, he opened a research center and factory in Wiltshire England. His slogan was "Say goodbye to the bag" to attract the public. He adapted unique colors for his products in pinks, greys, white and black.  His Dyson Dual Cyclone became the fastest selling vacuum cleaner ever made in the UK and outsold some of those being sold by the companies who rejected him earlier. 

Starting in 1986, Dyson licensed the technology to Fantom Technologies in North America.  Other manufacturers began to market their own cyclone vacuum cleaners.  In 1999, Dyson sued Hoover for patent infringement. The High Court ruled that Hoover deliberately copied a fundamental part of the patented designs for its Triple Vortex vacuum cleaner and paid four million pounds in damages.

In 2000, he expanded his interests to a washing machine called the ContraRotator, that had two rotating drums moving in opposite directions.  It was not a commercial success and was discontinued in 2005.

In 2002, he used optical illusions to create the Wrong Garden, a water sculpture that appears to flow up to the tops of four ramps before cascading to the bottom of the next ramp. It was on display at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2003.

In 2006, he launched the Dyson Airblade, a fast hand dryer that uses a thin sheet of moving air as a squeegee to remove water instead of trying to evaporate it with heat. It allows for faster drying and uses less energy than electrical hand dryers.  It is in use in hundreds of public restrooms.

On October 18, 2009, he launched the Air Multiplier which is a fan without any external blades.

In 2014, Dyson introduced his "360 Eye" robotic vacuum cleaner, a custom designed  digital motor for high suction, treads for traction, a full width brushroll bar, and a user interface on a free IOS or Android app.

In April 2016, he launched Dyson Supersonic, a hair dryer with a smaller motor located in the handle which gave better balance, smaller size and quieter operation.

In 2017, he tried his hand to produce an electric car investing over two billion pounds of his  own money. After employing 400 people for the project, buying the battery company Sakti3, he announced the project was cancelled due to not being commerically viable.

In 1999, Dyson bought Domaine des Rabelles, a winery and estate in F rance. In 2003, he paid 15 million pounds for Dodington Park, a 300 acre Georgian estate in South Gloucestershire.  He and his wife also own a home in Chelsea, London.

He owns a super yacht (299 feet) which is ranked 36 of the world's 100 largest yachts, two Gulfstream private jets, and an Agusta Westland helicopter.

Awards

He received the “Prince Phillip Designers Prize” in 1997 and “Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran Award” in 2000.  The University of Bath honored him with a doctorate degree in Engineering in 2000. 


In 2005 he was chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and in 2007 he was appointed as a Knight Bachelor in the New Year Honors.


His effort of making things better has helped him achieve sales of more than $10 billion worldwide.  


Dyson exports his products to more than 50 countries and has approximately 2,500 people working for him globally which are mostly scientists and engineers.  

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Inventor - Charles A Lindbergh

Charles A. Lindbergh was an American aviator, inventor, and writer best known for making the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic in 1927. 

Charles Lindbergh, inventor and aviator

Alias:  Used name of Careu Kent with his three mistresses and their 7 children

Parents:

Father - Congressman-attorney Charles August Lindbergh (b. January 20, 1859 - d. May 24, 1924, age 65). (His birth name was Carl Mansson, born to Ola Mansson and his mistress Lovisa Carlen. Changed name when accused of embezzlement, left his wife and 7 children and took Lovisa and Baby Carl Mansson to USA, had 7 more children. Baby Carl became Charles August Lindbergh.)  Married in 1887 to Mary La Fond Lindbergh (b. May 1, 1867-d. April 16, 1898, age 30) - 3 children

- Lillian Vida Lindbergh Roberts (b. Dec 7, 1877 - d. Nov 4, 1916, age 29). Married Loren Britton Roberts in 1911, 1 child, Louise (1912-1974)

- Edith May Lindbergh (b. Jan 18, 1890-D. April 8, 1891, age 1)

- Eva Augusta Lindbergh (b. Sept 12, 1892-d. Jan 28, 1985, age 92). Married in 1916 to George W. Christie (1890-1956) 2 children. Married in 1970 to George H. Spaeth (1890-1988)

 

Mother - Married in 1901 -Evangeline Lodge Land Lindbergh (b. May 29, 1876-d. Sept 7, 1954, age 78), 1 child, Charles Augustus Lindbergh (1902-1974).

Marriages, Mistresses and Children:

Wife - Married in 1929 -Anne Spencer Morrow Lindberg (b. June 22, 1906 - d. Feb 7, 2001, age 94), 6 children

- Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. (b. June 22, 1930 - d. March 1, 1932, age 1)

- Jon Morrow Lindbergh (b. August 16, 1932 - still living ) UPDATE: died July 29, 2021, age 88, Married March 1954 to Barbara H. Robbins, 6 children. Married to Mara Lindberg, 2 children, Anne and Alena.

- Land Morrow Lindberg (b. 1937), married on Aug 30, 1960 to Susan Miller

- Anne Spencer Lindbergh Perrin (b. Oct 2, 1940-1993, age 53) Married 3 times. 3 children. Connie Feydy,  Marek Sapieyevski, Charles Lindberg Feydy.

- Scott Lindbergh (b. August 12, 1942 -) Married Monique DuBois

- Reeve Lindbergh Tripp (b. Oct 2, 1945). Married June 19, 1968 to Richard Brown, 1 child, Jonathan (b. 1983-d.1985, age 2). Divorced on Feb 11, 1987, Married Nathaniel Tripp on Feb 11, 1987 - 1 child , Ben

Mistress - Brigitte Hesshaimer (b.1927-d.2001) - 3 children, Dyrk Hesshaimer (b.1958-d.2015), Astrid Hesshaimer Bouteuil (b. 1960), David Hesshaimer (b. 1967)

Mistress - Brigitte's sister - Marietta Hesshaimer  (b. 1924-d. July 18, 2014)- 2 children, Vago Hesshaimer (b. 1960), Christoph Hesshaimer (b.1966)

Mistress - Valeska, 2 children. She was Lindbergh's German translator and private secretary. Friend of Brigitee and Marietta.

*****

Charles Lindbergh was the only child of Charles and Evangeline who separated when he was seven years old. He grew up on his family’s farm and after high school, spent two years working on it before enrolling in University of Wisconsin to study engineering. 

 

His love of aviation began at an early age and drew him to enter Nebraska Aircraft Corporation Flight School in February 1922, without finishing his engineering degree. After working as a mechanic, parachute jumper, and barnstormer-wing walker, he purchased a war plane in 1923 and made his first solo cross-country flight from Americus Georgia to Montgomery Alabama.

He hung up his barnstorming hat and reported to Brooks Field on March 19, 1924, for a one year training course with the US Army Air Service.  Eight days before graduation, on March 5, 1925, he had a mid-air collision with another Army plane during maneuvers that forced him to bail out. At the end of training, only 18 of the 104 cadets completed the training. aLindbergh earned his Army pilot's wings and for finishing first in his class. He was given a commission of Second Lieutenant in the Air Service Reserves Corps. 

He took a job as a flight instructor in St. Louis Missouri and in October 1925, he and three other pilots were hired by the Robertson Aircraft Corporation to provide air mail service between St. Louis and Chicago with several stops on the route. 

The Daily Mail newspaper awarded prizes for achievements in aviation from 1906 to 1930. In 1919, two British aviators won for the first nonstop transatlantic flight from Newfoundland to Ireland. This set off attempts by others to break the record, sponsored by a number of backers.

Two St. Louis businessmen took out a $15,000 bank loan and with Lindbergh's $2,000 the sponsored Lindbergh's historic flight on the Spirit of St. Louis which was a two ton, single seat, single engine plane that was custom built for the flight. On May 20, 1927, he departed from Roosevelt Field on Long Island New York andafter flying for 3,600 miles through very challenging weather, he landed 33-and-one-half hours later at Le Bourget Aerodrome near Paris on May 21, 1927.  He quickly became an international hero and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and the first Distinguished Flying Cross by the U.S. government. 

After Lindbergh toured 82 American cities, meeting with people and promoting the commercialization of aviation, he became a goodwill ambassador for the US.  

On May 27, 1929, he married Anne Morrow, the daughter of Dwight Morrow, the American Ambassador to Mexico and a financial adviser-partner at J.P. Morgan Company. Anne Morrow Lindbergh was the first woman in America to earn a glider pilot’s license and later a pilot’s license. The couple flew to five continents, mapping routes for commercial air travel on the way.  He used  his world fame to promote air mail service which caused an air mail boom that tripled the number of pilot licenses and planes.

The couple had six children but Lindbergh only saw them a few times per year. In 1929, Charles Lindbergh helped rocket pioneer Robert Goddard secure a Guggenheim endowment to expand his research. In 1931, Lindbergh sent diagrams and instructions to the Longines watch company for a watch that would make navigation easier for pilots. It was produced in 1931 and is still manufactured today.  He did not apply for a patent for this watch.

In 1930, his sister-in-law developed a fatal heart condition. He studied how the human heart could be repaired with surgery. He contacted Nobel Prize winning French surgeon Alexis Carrel and studied the perfusion of organs outside the body.  This led to Charles Lindbergh invention of a glass perfusion pump that he called "The Model T" which has been credited with making heart surgery possible.  He also described an artificial heart but it wasn't developed for many years later.  His pump was improved upon by others and led to the construction of the first heart-lung machine.

Lindbergh's Invention - Perfusion Pump

On March 1, 1932, baby Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. was abducted from their home in New Jersey and held for $50,000 ransom in gold certificates. On May 12, the child's body was found in the woods not far from their home. A 34-year old German immigrant carpenter, Richard hauptmann, was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. He died on April 3, 1936 in the electric chair at Trenton State Prison.  

The Lindberghs moved to Europe and in 1938, he bought a four acre island off the coast of France and rented homes all over Europe and the United States. This was done to seek privacy from the media in the aftermath of the tragic kidnapping and murder of their first child in 1932.
 


Lindbergh was also a renowned writer and wrote seven books in his lifetime. One of his books titled “The Spirit of St. Louis” won a Pulitzer Prize in 1954.  


Although Lindbergh's personal life has nothing to do with inventions, it is interesting to note that between 1958 and 1967, he also fathered seven other children with three mistresses. 

Ten days before his death from Lymphoma, he wrote to each one of his mistresses and asked them to keep their relationships a secret, even from their own children, until after his death.  One daughter, Astrid, figured it out after she read a magazine article in the mid-1980s. She later discovered photos and over 150 love letters from Lindbergh to her mother Brigitte Hesshaimer.  Still she kept her findings a secret until after her mother died in 2001.  In 2003, DNA confirmed that Charles Lindbergh was Astrid's father and her two siblings.   

All of the children have since obtained DNA tests and learned the identity of their father whom they only knew by his alias "Careu Kent" when he visited them once or twice a year. 

Charles Lindbergh spent his last years on the Hawaiian island of Maui, where he died of lymphoma at age 72 on August 26, 1974.   His wife Anne lived another 25 years until February 2001. She died at her daughter's home at the age of 94. 


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Interesting Reading:

More on Lindbergh's Perfusion Pump Invention 

Lindbergh's Double Life