Inventions

Dancing How glad you are about the invention of dancing will depend largely on whether or not you’re any good at it. Dancing Queen. Of course, no one knows who was the first person to start tapping their feet in time to some music or the site of the world’s first dance floor. But we … Read more

The Language Decoder A language decoder would be an incredible tool to have at your disposal —you’d be able to converse with everyone, no matter where they came from and what language they spoke! It may sound like science fiction, but the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on a version of … Read more

The Ejector Seat Although it looks funny in action, the ejector seat has saved thousands of lives since its invention in the middle of the 20th century. Supersonic Seats. An ejector seat is designed to catapult the pilot and crew out of a plane in an emergency, inflate a parachute once the seat is clear … Read more

Fizzy Drinks Too many fizzy drinks can be bad for you, but the first manufactured fizzy drinks were just bubbles in water, which isn’t so bad for you, just flavorless. A Glass of Bubbly. The fizz in fizzy drinks is dissolved carbon dioxide (the same gas you breathe out). No one really invented fizzy drinks … Read more

Sliced Bread You often hear things referred to as the best thing since sliced bread’. But when was sliced bread invented, and why is it such a good thing? Bread: Who Kneads It? You wouldn’t have thought that inventing a machine to slice bread would be that difficult. Yet one man spent 16 years of … Read more

Photography Most people keep photos as a reminder of special people and moments. Unfortunately, photos can also remind us of all our bad hair days and fashion blunders. Say Cheese. People have known how to project images using a pinhole camera for thousands of years, they were using them in China 2,500 years ago. But … Read more

In March 1983 a new technology appeared on the U.S. music scene that would make the traditional LP record a mere item of nostalgia, a curio to be picked up at yard sales by baby boomers. The digital compact disc (CD) marked a radical departure in quality and convenience from the twelve-inch long-playing record. The … Read more

According to Ohio Arts, the powder inside an Etch A Sketch is not dangerous, but it sure would make a mess if you broke one open. It’s aluminum that’s ground fine so it will stick to everything it touches, with some small plastic beads added to agitate the powder and keep it from clumping together. … Read more

The chief inventor of the Ouija Board, Charles Kennard, consulted the board to come up with its own name. The spirits spelled out “o-u-I-J-A,” explaining that it was the Egyptian word for “good luck.” That turned out to be wrong, but no matter: Ouija it was. Later, the spirits from Beyond played an even worse … Read more

Checkers is one of the oldest games in the world, with a variation played in the days of the early Egyptian pharaohs in about 1600 B.C. The game was mentioned in the works of Homer and Plato, too. About 800 years ago, checkers was adapted to the 64-square chessboard, and by the 16th century, it … Read more

In 1881, a worker at Procter and Gamble forgot to turn off the machine that whipped a little air into the soap mixture. He ran the “ruined” batch through production and packaging anyway instead of pulling it. Consumers went wild. They loved the way the bar floated instead of sinking to the murky bottom of … Read more

For eons people have used stone, brick, or wooden tubs to bathe in, in or around the home. But two men significantly affected the bathtub as we know it today. John Kohler, a foundry owner in Wisconsin in the late 1800s, developed an enameled iron watering trough for animals. When indoor plumbing became popular, he … Read more

Unlike today’s vacuum flushed train toilets, which lead to air-sealed storage containers for holding waste, toilets used to flush directly out of a hole in the bottom of the train car. These toilets were known as Hopper toilets. While moving along in open country, flushing onto the track seemed a common sense way of disposing … Read more

The truth is that the t-shirt has been around a long time, and no one knows its exact origins. The following are two popular theories. One idea is this: Men working on the docks at Annapolis, Maryland, in the late 1600s unloaded a great deal of tea. The simple shirts they wore became known as … Read more

The Japanese word for Pac-Man is Pakkuman and paku means “eat” in Japanese. Pac-Man was created by a young Namco employee named Tōru Iwatani in April 1979. According to legend, Pac-Man was inspired by the Japanese folk hero “Paku” who was known for his appetite. Pac-Man become an icon of video game culture during the … Read more

A “master key” is designed to open a specific set of several locks. Although these locks have individual keys, they also have a second tumbler system within the mechanism that enables the master key to open any one within that set. A “skeleton key” is a key ground down by criminals to pick a lock … Read more

At the end of the nineteenth century, most candies were too large and dangerous for a child’s mouth. They were sold unwrapped, and they inevitably caused a sticky mess on clothes, faces, and fingers. That was enough to make many parents keep their children from buying them. In a stroke of marketing genius, George Smith … Read more

In the thirteenth century, the Chinese invented dark glasses to be worn by judges so that none in the courtroom could read their eyes. The narrowly slit Eskimo goggles are prehistoric and are a protection against snow-blindness, not the direct sun. Modern sunglasses were a consequence of twentieth-century flight, designed by the American Army Air … Read more

Although another bicycle may have been invented earlier, the first bicycles in the world that we know about were built late in the 18th century. These early bikes, called hobby horses, consisted of two wheels connected by a curved bar. Since these bikes had no pedals, riders had to move their bikes by pushing along … Read more

Who invented the first computer? The answer depends on your definition of a computer. The first known counting devices or tools were Tally Sticks from about 35,000 BC. The Abacus was then invented by the Babylonians in 2400 BC. Charles Babbage is widely credited with having conceived and invented the first automatic computer. Who Invented … Read more