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What would we do
without a calculator? While working with his father, who worked
as a tax commissioner, he wanted to come up with a solution to reduce
some of his workload. At age 18, Blaise Pascal constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction. |
Louis was inspired by a meeting
with a soldier who demonstrated a type of coded writing used in
the French Army called "Night Writing.” It consisted
of different patterns made with 12 dots, but had proved too difficult
for the French soldiers to understand and use. Louis took to it
immediately and cut the number of dots used to six. By the age of
15 he had the 63 different combinations perfected. He published
his first “Braille” book in 1829, at the age of 20.
He later added patterns for music and mathematics. |
Curious as to why our award
for our Annual Invention Competition is the “Chester Award”?
The award is named after Chester Carlson the founder of xerography!
Carlson had invented a copying process based on electrostatic energy.
Xerography became commercially available in 1950 by the Xerox Corporation.
Xerography comes from the Greek words meaning "dry writing.” |
Post-It Notes! In the early 1970s,
Art Fry was in search of a bookmark for his church hymnal that would
not fall out or damage the book. Fry noticed that a colleague at
3M, Dr. Spencer Silver, had developed an adhesive that was strong
enough to stick to surfaces, but left no residue after removal and
could be repositioned. He used Dr. Silver’s adhesive and applied
it along the edge of a piece of paper. After solving his problem,
he realized he could use his bookmarks to leave notes for co-workers.
That is when he realized his “bookmark” was better known
as a Post-It Note! |
It was originally called "mistake
out,” the invention of Bette Nesmith Graham, a Dallas secretary
and mother. Graham sought a better way to correct typing errors.
She remembered that artists painted over their mistakes on canvas,
so why couldn’t typists paint over their mistakes? She used
her own kitchen blender to mix up her first batch of Liquid Paper
or what we know now as wite-out™, a substance used to cover
up mistakes made on paper. |
| It’s that time of year again…back to school! Don’t dread it, instead, check out how some of the coolest school supplies were invented! Did you know school supplies can be invented by kids? Of course, who better to understand what you really need than kids themselves!
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