For thousands of years doctors told patients suffering from pain to chew on the bark of a willow tree.  Even as far back as 400 B.C. Hippocrates recommended a tea made from yellow leaves. It wasn't until the 1800's that scientists discovered what was in the willow tree that relieved pain and reduced fever. What was the substance called?

Fascinating facts about the invention of Aspirin by Felix Hoffman in 1897.

ASPIRIN

The effects of aspirin-like substances have been known since the ancient Romans recorded the use of the willow bark as a fever fighter. The leaves and bark of the willow tree contain a substance called salicin, a naturally occurring compound similar to acetylsalicylic acid, the chemical name for aspirin. Even as far back as 400 B.C. Hippocrates recommended a tea made from yellow leaves. It wasn't until the 1800's that scientists discovered what was in the willow tree that relieved pain and reduced fever. The substance was named salicylic acid.

But when people suffering from pain took the salicylic acid, it caused sever stomach and mouth irritation. In 1832, a thirty-seven-year-old French chemist named Charles Gergardt mixed another chemical with the acid and produced good results, but the procedure was difficult and took a lot of time. Gerhardt decided the new compound wasn't practial, so he set aside.  

Sixty-five-years later a German chemist, Felix Hoffman, was searching for something to relieve his father's arthritis. He studied Gerhardt's experiments and "rediscovered" acetylsalicylic acid--or aspirin, as we now know it. Charles Gerhardt had mistakenly thought his compound was not useful, but today over 70 million pounds of it are produced annually all over the world.  American's take more then 15 billion tablets a year, making it America's most widely used drug.

It started in the U.S. and has conquered the world. In some parts of the world it sells for three times the price of liquor. It was originally sold as a brain tonic, but was poorly received. What is the name of this drink product?

Fascinating facts about the invention of the Coca-Cola by John S. Pemberton in 1886.

COCA-COLA

It started here and has conquered the world. When the big international push came in the fifties and sixties, American tourists were stunned to discover that in countries like Spain, a Coke was three times as expensive as a glass of brandy.

Coca-Cola probably has every bit as much to do with America’s special place in the world as all our vaunted military power. It’s the little things that count. The inventor of Coca-Cola was Dr. John S. Pemberton, in 1885. It was sold as a brain tonic, but was poorly received.

The formula changed hands three more times before Asa D. Chandler hit upon the idea of carbonating the drink. The bubbles made all the difference, and he struck gold. The Coca-Cola Company was founded in 1892 and has never looked back.

In 1912 Walter Deubner was looking for a way to give his business a boost. He invented a product that helped his customers go from buying in 10 pound quantities to buying in seventy-five pound quantities. What was his invention called?

of the Shopping Bag by Walter Deubner in 1912.

SHOPPING BAG

Walter H. Deubner ran a small grocery store in St. Paul, Minnesota, and he was looking for a way to give his business a boost.

By careful observation, he noticed that his customers purchases were limited by what they could conveniently carry. So he set about devising a way to help them buy more purchases at one time. It took him four years to develop the right solution: a prefabricated package, inexpensive, easy to use-and strong enough to carry up to seventy-five pounds worth of groceries.

The package consisted of a paper bag with cord running through it for strength. Deubner named his new product after himself, calling it the "Deubner Shopping Bag," and sold it for five cents. Deubner patented his product and within three years, by 1915, was selling over a million shopping bags a year.

An American Indian of the Huron tribe long ago invented a snack food that became very popular with the new Americans, so popular that sales now exceed over four billion dollars a year. What is this snack food called?

Fascinating facts about the invention of the Potato Chips by George Crum in 1853.

POTATO CHIPS

As a world food, potatoes are second in human consumption only to rice. And as thin, salted, crisp chips, they are America's favorite snack food. Potato chips originated in New England as one man's variation on the French-fried potato, and their production was the result not of a sudden stroke of culinary invention but of a fit of pique.

In the summer of 1853, Native American George Crum was employed as a chef at an elegant resort in Saratoga Springs, New York. On Moon Lake Lodge's restaurant menu were French-fried potatoes, prepared by Crum in the standard, thick-cut French style that was popularized in France in the 1700s and enjoyed by Thomas Jefferson as ambassador to that country. Ever since Jefferson brought the recipe to America and served French fries to guests at Monticello, the dish was popular and serious dinner fare.

At Moon Lake Lodge, one dinner guest found chef Crum's French fries too thick for his liking and rejected the order. Crum cut and fried a thinner batch, but these, too, met with disapproval. Exasperated, Crum decided to rile the guest by producing French fries too thin and crisp to skewer with a fork.The plan backfired. The guest was ecstatic over the browned, paper-thin potatoes, and other diners requested Crum's potato chips, which began to appear on the menu as Saratoga Chips, a house specialty.

Soon they were packaged and sold, first locally, then throughout the New England area. Crum eventually opened his own restaurant, featuring chips. At that time, potatoes were tediously peeled and sliced by hand. It was the invention of the mechanical potato peeler in the 1920s that paved the way for potato chips to soar from a small specialty item to a top-selling snack food.

For several decades after their creation, potato chips were largely a Northern dinner dish. In the 1920s, Herman Lay, a traveling salesman in the South, helped popularize the food from Atlanta to Tennessee. Lay peddled potato chips to Southern grocers out of the trunk of his car, building a business and a name that would become synonymous with the thin, salty snack. Lay's potato chips became the first successfully marketed national brand, and in 1961 Herman Lay, to increase his line of goods, merged his company with Frito, the Dallas-based producer of such snack foods as Fritos Corn Chips.

People all over the world made this item from grape vines and stiff grasses as both a religious adornment and as an item of amusement.  It took a couple of Americans, however, to figure out how to make money out of it.  What was this item called?

Fascinating facts about the invention of the Hula Hoop by Richard P. Knerr and Arthur K. Melvin in 1958.

HULA HOOP

You may think that the Hula Hoop was a fad born in the 1950s, but in fact people were doing much the same thing with circular hoops made from grape vines and stiff grasses all over the ancient world. More than three thousand years ago, children in Egypt played with large hoops of dried grapevines.  The toy was propelled along the ground with a stick or swung around at the waist.

During the fourteenth century, a "hooping" craze swept England, and was as popular among adults as kids.   The records of doctors at the time attribute numerous dislocated backs and heart attacks to "hooping."  The word hula became associated with the toy in the early 1800s when British sailors visited the Hawaiian Islands and noted the similarity between "hooping" and hula dancing.  In 1957, an Australian company began making wood rings for sale in retail stores.

The item attracted the attention of Wham-0, a fledgling California toy manufacturer. Richard P. Knerr and Arthur K. Melvin, of Wham-O, manufactured a plastic hoop in a variety of bright colors.  The Hula Hoop was introduced in 1958 and made the two men very rich indeed.   The fad died out in the sixties, but Hula Hoops are now very much with us again thanks to the fitness craze.  What better way to grind off those unsightly bulges around the waist and hips.

What flip-flops as much as Bill Clinton and is still popular with the American public, after all these years?   It flip-flops all over the place, especially down stairs.

Fascinating facts about the invention of the Slinky by Richard James in 1943.

SLINKY

In 1943. during World War II, an engineer in the United States Navy was on a new ship's run. As he worked, a torsion spring suddenly fell to the floor. the spring flip-flopped as the ingenious man watched. The naval engineer's name was Richard James, and when he returned home, he remembered the spring and the interesting way it flip-flopped. James and his wife Betty perfected a long steel ribbon tightly coiled into a spiral.

They began production in 1945. From that spring's accidental fall came a toy Americans have enjoyed for over fifty years, the Slinky. The non-electrical, no-battery-required, non-video toy has fascinated three generations of children and adults alike. According to one estimate more than 250 million Slinkys have been sold and the only change in the original design has been to crimp the ends as a safety measure.

Who was the person who designed the (United States of America) American Flag?  Don't guess Betsy Ross, because you will be wrong.

Fascinating facts about the design of the American Flag by Robert Heft in 1959.

AMERICAN FLAG

50-Star Flag

The man credited with designing the American flag is Bob Heft. He earned his place in history in 1958 while living with his grandparents in Ohio.

His updated 50-star flag was a class project later adopted by presidential proclamation after Alaska and before Hawaii was admitted to the union in 1959. Since Heft's flag was made public, he's been in all 50 state and 37 foreign countries, making hundreds of speeches and traveling more than 100,000 miles a year. Heft also has been the guest of nine U.S. presidents at the White House. Heft is the former eight-time mayor of Napoleon, Ohio, and has served as president of the state's Mayor's Association. During his career, Heft taught at Northwest State Community College, and also works as a real estate broker. Heft's stars-and-stripes flag has been the second longest serving design since the nation's founding.

As a 17-year-old high school junior, Heft found himself in need of a class project. His proposed flag idea was initially turned down by the teacher. He went ahead and finished his project, receiving a B minus for his efforts. Heft's teacher compromised and promised to deliver a better classroom grade if he could get the U.S. Congress to accept his flag. The rest is history.

Alexander Graham Bell Fascinating facts about Alexander Graham Bell inventor of the telephone in 1876.

Bell, Alexander Graham (1847-1922), American inventor and teacher of the deaf, most famous for his invention of the telephone. Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and educated at the universities of Edinburgh and London. He immigrated to Canada in 1870 and to the United States in 1871. In the United States he began teaching deaf-mutes, publicizing the system called visible speech. The system, which was developed by his father, the Scottish educator Alexander Melville Bell, shows how the lips, tongue, and throat are used in the articulation of sound. In 1872 Bell founded a school for deaf-mutes in Boston, Massachusetts. The school subsequently became part of Boston University, where Bell was appointed professor of vocal physiology. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1882. Since the age of 18, Bell had been working on the idea of transmitting speech. In 1874, while working on a multiple telegraph, he developed the basic ideas for the telephone. His experiments with his assistant Thomas Watson finally proved successful on March 10, 1876, when the first complete sentence was transmitted: "Watson, come here; I want you." Subsequent demonstrations, particularly one at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, introduced the telephone to the world and led to the organization of the Bell Telephone Company in 1877. In 1880 France bestowed on Bell the Volta Prize, worth 50,000 francs, for his invention. With this money he founded the Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C., where, in that same year, he and his associates invented the photophone, which transmits speech by light rays. Other inventions include the audiometer, used to measure acuity in hearing; the induction balance, used to locate metal objects in human bodies; and the first wax recording cylinder, introduced in 1886. The cylinder, together with the flat wax disc, formed the basis of the modern phonograph. After 1895 Bell's interest turned mostly to aeronautics. Many of his inventions in this area were first tested near his summer home at Baddeck on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada. His study of flight began with the construction of large kites, and in 1907 he devised a kite capable of carrying a person. With a group of associates, including the American inventor and aviator Glenn Hammond Curtiss, Bell developed the aileron, a movable section of an airplane wing that controls roll. They also developed the tricycle landing gear, which first permitted takeoff and landing on a flying field. Applying the principles of aeronautics to marine propulsion, his group started work on hydrofoil boats, which travel above the water at high speeds. His final full-sized "hydrodrome," developed in 1917, reached speeds in excess of 113 km/h (70 mph) and for many years was the fastest boat in the world. He died on August 2, 1922, at Baddeck, where a museum containing many of his original inventions is maintained by the Canadian government.

Fascinating facts about the invention of the Telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876.

TELEPHONE

Probably no means of communication has revolutionized the daily lives of ordinary people more than the telephone. Simply described, it is a system which converts sound, specifically the human voice, to electrical impulses of various frequencies and then back to a tone that sounds like the original voice. In 1831, Englishman Michael Faraday (1791-1867) proved that vibrations of metal could be converted to electrical impulses. This was the technological basis of the telephone, but no one actually used this system to transmit sound until 1861. In that year, Johann Philip Reis (1834-1874) in Germany is said to have built a simple apparatus that changed sound to electricity and back again to sound. A crude device, it was incapable of transmitting most frequencies, and it was never fully developed.

A practical telephone was actually invented independently by two men working in the United States, Elisha Gray (1835-1910) and Scottish-born Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922). Incredibly, both men filed for a patent on their designs at the New York patent office on February 14, 1876, with Bell beating Gray by only two hours!  Although Gray had built the first steel diaphram / clectromagnet receiver in 1874, he wasn’t able to master the design of a workable transmitter until after Bell had. Bell had worked tirelessly, experimenting with various types of mechanisms, while Gray had become discouraged.

According to the famous story, the first fully intelligible telephone call occurred on March 6, 1876, when Bell, in one room, called to his assistant in another room. "Come here, Watson, I want you."

Watson heard the request through a receiver connected to the transmitter that Bell had designed, and what followed after that is a history of the founding of the Bell Telephone Company (later AT&T), which grew to be the largest telephone company in the world.

The first telephone system, known as an exchange, which is a practical means of communicating between many people who have telephones, was installed in Hartford, Connecticut in 1877, and the first ex-change linking two major cities was established between New York and Boston in 1883. The first exchange outside the United States was built in London in 1879. The exchange involved a group of operators working at a large switchboard. The operators would answer an incoming telephone call and connect it manually to the party being called. The first automatic telephone exchange was patented by Almon Strowger of Kansas City in 1891 and installed in 1892, but manual switchboards remained in common use until the middle of the twentieth century.

The coin operated pay telephone was patented by William Gray of Hartford in 1889. The first rotary dial telephone was developed in 1923 by Antoine Barnay in France. The mobile telephone was invented by Bell Telephone Company and introduced into New York City police cars in 1924. Although the first commercial mobile telephone service became available in St. Louis, Missouri in 1946, the mobile telephone would not become common for another four decades.

In 1978, American Telephone and Telegraph’s (AT&T) Bell Laboratories began testing a mobile telephone system based on hexagonal geographical regions called cells. As the caller’s vehicle passed from one cell to another, an automatic switching system would transfer the telephone call to another cell without interruption. The cellular telephone system began nationwide usage in the United States in 1981.

Fascinating facts about the invention of the Velcro by George de Mestral in 1948.

VELCRO

For thousands of years, man has walked through fields of weeds and arrived home with burrs stuck to his clothing. It’s amazing no one took advantage of the problem until 1948. George de Mestral, a Swiss engineer, returned from a walk one day in 1948 and found some cockleburs clinging to his cloth jacket. When de Mestral loosened them, he examined one under his microscope. The principle was simple. The cocklebur is a maze of thin strands with burrs (or hooks) on the ends that cling to fabrics or animal fur. By the accident of the cockleburs sticking to his jacket, George de Mestral recognized the potential for a practical new fastener. It took eight years to experiment, develop, and perfect the invention, which consists of two strips of nylon fabric. One strip contains thousands of small hooks. The other strip contains small loops. When the two strips are pressed together, they form a strong bond.  VELCRO, the name de Mestral gave his product, is the brand most people in the United States know. It is strong, easily separated, lightweight, durable, and washable, comes in a variety of colors, and won’t jam.

Fascinating facts about the invention of Post-it Notes by Arthur Fry and Spencer Silver in 1974.

POST-IT NOTES

Everyone knows what Post-it notes are: They are those great little self-stick notepapers.  Most people have Post-it Notes.   Most people use them.  Most people love them.  But Post-it Notes were not a planned product. 

No one got the idea and then stayed up nights to invent it.  A man named Spencer Silver was working in the 3M research laboratories in 1970 trying to find a strong adhesive.  Silver developed a new adhesive, but it was even weaker than what 3M already manufactured.  It stuck to objects, but could easily be lifted off.   It was super weak instead of super strong. 

No one knew what to do with the stuff, but Silver didn't discard it.  Then one Sunday four years later, another 3M scientist named Arthur Fry was singing in the church's choir.  He used markers to keep his place in the hymnal, but they kept falling out of the book.  Remembering Silver's adhesive, Fry used some to coat his markers.  Success!  With the weak adhesive, the markers stayed in place, yet lifted off without damaging the pages.  3M began distributing Post-it Notes nationwide in 1980 -- ten years after Silver developed the super weak adhesive.  Today they are one of the most popular office products available. Post-it®

Fascinating facts about the invention of Liquid Paper by Bette Nesmith Graham in 1951.

LIQUID PAPER

You know that white stuff you paint on paper to cover mistakes? It was originally called "mistake out" and was the invention of Bette Nesmith Graham, a divorcee who went to work in 1951 to support herself and her son.

Though she found work as a typist, she unfortunately wasn't a very good one and developed a white tempura paint to hide her mistakes. Using her kitchen and garage as laboratory and factory, she gradually developed a product that other secretaries and office workers began to buy. While continuing to work as a secretary, she educated herself in business methods, promotion, and research until she was satisfied that the product she had developed was really worthwhile. She then offered Mistake Out to IBM which turned it down.

Undaunted, Bette Graham changed the name from Mistake Out to Liquid Paper and kept selling it from her kitchen-garage for the next 17 years. By 1968 she was making a profit. And in 1979, the Gillette Corporation bought Liquid Paper for $47.5 million plus royalties. She was also the mother of Michael Nesmith, a member of The Monkees.

Fascinating facts about the invention of Wire Coat Hanger by Albert J. Parkhouse in 1903.

WIRE COAT HANGER

One morning in 1903, Albert J. Parkhouse arrived as usual at his workplace, the Timberlake Wire and Novelty Company in Jackson, Michigan, which specialized in making lampshade frames and other wire items. When he went to hang his hat and coat on the hooks provided for the workers, Parkhouse found all were in use.

Annoyed-and inspired-Parkhouse picked up a piece of wire, bent it into two large oblong hoops opposite each other, and twisted both ends at the center into a hook. Then he hung up his coat and went to work. The company apparently thought it was a good idea, because they took out a patent on it. In those days, companies were allowed to take out patents on any of their employees’ inventions. The company made a fortune; Parkhouse never got a penny.

Fascinating facts about the invention of Ivory Soap by William Procter in 1879.

IVORY SOAP

Ivory Soap is 99 44/100 percent pure .... and it FLOATS!  

Did it take years of experimenting to get that soap to float?  Not exactly. Ivory Soap floated by accident.  For years the Procter & Gamble company had been developing a formula for a high quality soap at an affordable price. In January 1878, they finally perfected the formula. They called it simply "White Soap," and began production.  Several months later the accident occurred. 

A large batch of White Soap was mixing when a workman at the factory went to lunch and left the machinery running.  When he returned, he found that air had been worked into the mixture. he decided not to discard the batch of soap because of such a small error, and he poured the soap into the frames.  The soap hardened and it was cut, packaged, and shipped.

A few weeks later, letters began arriving at Procter & Gamble asking for more of the soap that floated.  The workman's error had turned into a selling point!  Harley Procter came up with the name :Ivory" while listening to a bible reading at church one morning in 1879.

Fascinating facts about the invention of the Paper Clip by Johann Vaaler in 1899.

PAPER CLIP

Consider the humble paper clip: It’s just a thin piece of steel wire bent into a double-oval shape, but over the past century, no one has invented a better method of holding loose sheets of paper together.

Its invention in 1899 is credited to a Norwegian named Johan Vaaler, who patented the device in Germany because Norway had no patent law at the time. Vaaler did nothing with his invention, however, and a year later a U.S. patent for a paper clip, called the Konaclip, was awarded to Cornelius J. Brosnan of Springfield, Massachusetts. In England, Gem Manufacturing Ltd. quickly followed with the now familiar double-oval shaped Gem clip. Since then, literally zillions of paper clips have been sold.

The common paper clip is a wonder of simplicity and function, so it seems puzzling that it wasn’t invented earlier. For centuries, straight pins, string and other materials were used as fasteners, but they punctured or damaged the papers. While the paper clip seems like such an obvious solution, its success had to wait for the invention of steel wire, which was "elastic" enough to be stretched, bent and twisted. The design was perfected further by rounding the sharp points of the wire so they wouldn’t catch, scratch or tear the papers.

By 1907, the Gem brand rose to prominence with a "slide on," double-U style paper clip that "will hold securely your letters, documents, or memoranda without perforation or mutilation until you wish to release them." Although some dispute the originator of the paper clip, Norwegians have proudly embraced their countryman, Johan Vaaler, as the true inventor. During the Nazi occupation of Norway in World War II, Norwegians made the paper clip a symbol of national unity. Prohibited from wearing buttons imprinted with the Norwegian king’s initials, they fastened paper clips to their lapels in a show of solidarity and opposition to the occupation. Wearing a paper clip was often reason enough for arrest.

Although colorful plastic materials and new shapes have challenged the double-oval steel-wire paper clip over the years, none has proven superior. The traditional paper clip is the essence of form follows function. After a century, it still works.

Fascinating facts about the invention of Life Savers Candy by Clarence Crane in 1912.

LIFE SAVERS CANDY

In 1912, when candy maker Clarence Crane first marketed "Crane’s Peppermint Life Savers," life preservers were just beginning to be used on ships-the round kind with a hole in the center for tossing to a passenger fallen overboard. But that is not the whole story. Crane had been basically a chocolate maker. Chocolates were hard to sell in summer, however, and so he decided to try to make a mint that would boost his summertime sales. At that time most of the mints available came from Europe and they were square in shape. Crane was buying bottles of flavoring in a drug store one day when he noticed the druggist using a pill-making machine. It was operated by hand and made round, flat pills. Crane had his idea. The pill making machines worked fine for his mints, and he was even able to add the life preserver touch by punching a tiny hole in the middle. Later Crane was to sell his rights to his new candy for under three thousand dollars. He may have regretted that decision, for "Life Savers" earned the new manufacturer many millions of dollars.

Fascinating facts about the invention of the Dixie Cups by Hugh Moore in 1900.

DIXIE CUPS

In 1900, in the United States there were no drinking fountains. Instead, public drinking dippers in water barrels were widely used by thirsty travelers. One young man, named Hugh Moore, decided the practice was unsanitary. He wanted first of all to make pure spring water available, and he wanted a way for people to drink it which would be germ free. Moore designed a cup made of paper. These paper cups seemed clumsy at first, but a drink of spring water from a clean paper cup was so inviting that thousands tried it.

Moore installed cup-vending machines at trolley line comers, and on a hot day a five-gallon bottle could be emptied in an hour. Sales of the "Health Cup" were assured once Moore succeeded in having them placed in railroad cars. With the name changed to Dixie Cup, his sanitary paper containers became standard items on trains and in soda fountains. By 1960, Dixie Cups were selling at the rate of more than fifty million dollars worth per year.

Fascinating facts about the invention of the Blue Jeans by Levi Strauss in 1873.

BLUE JEANS

The Gold Rush of 1848 attracted many adventurers to California. One of them was a twenty-year-old named Levi Strauss. Strauss had been a draper, or cloth seller, in New York, and he took a few bolts of cloth to sell on the journey west.

In this manner he earned his way, and by the time he reached California, Levi Strauss had sold everything except a roll of canvas. No one wanted clothes made of canvas! Or did they? It turned out that "up in the diggings," where the miners worked, pants wore out very quickly. So Strauss made some pairs of canvas trousers to sell to miners. More and more miners were coming to Strauss and asking him for a pair of those canvas trousers. Not entirely happy with canvas, Levi started using a new fabric from Genoa, Italy The weavers there called the fabric "genes". Strauss changed the name to "jeans" and later he called his pants "Levi’s". They were popular with cowboys as well as miners. Today, called Levi's or blue jeans, they are popular with men, women, and children in many countries of the globe.

Fascinating facts about the invention of the Popsicle by Frank Epperson in 1905.

POPSICLE

Frank Epperson, a then eleven-year-old, invented the the Popsicle and the invention was accidental.

One day Frank mixed some soda water powder and water, which was a popular drink in those days.  He left the mixture on the back porch overnight with the stirring stick still in it.  The temperature dropped to a record low that night and the next day Frank had a stick of frozen soda water to show his friends at school.  Eighteen years later-in 1923- Frank Epperson remembered his frozen soda water mixture and began a business producing Epsicles in seven fruit flavors.  The name was later changed to the Popsicle.  One estimate says three million Popsicle frozen treats are sold each year.  There are more them thirty different flavors to choose from, but Popsicle Industries says the general flavor favorite through the years has remained "taste-tingling orange".

Fascinating facts about the invention of Tea by Chinese Emperor Shen Nung in 2737 BC.

TEA

What kind of world would this be without tea?

There would be no teapot or teakettle if tea had never been discovered. There would be no teacup, teaspoon, or tea towel, and no tea time. Two of the world’s most famous parties would have been canceled: The colonists could not have held the Boston Tea Party in 1773, throwing 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. And Lewis Carroll 's Alice in Wonderland would say nothing of the Mad Hatter’s and March Hare’s tea party. Luckily, tea was discovered in 2737 b.c. by a great Chinese emperor named Shen Nung.

One day Shen Nung was boiling water outside when leaves from a nearby bush fell into the open kettle. Before Shen Nung could retrieve the leaves, they began to brew. He smelled the sweet aroma of the mixture and once he tasted it, the world was given tea! Tea is the most popular beverage in the world today-after plain water. It was introduced in Europe in 1610, and until about two hundred years ago, people in many Asian countries used blocks or bricks of tea as money.

Fascinating facts about the invention of Toll House Cookies by Ruth Wakefield in 1930.

TOLL HOUSE COOKIES

Back in 1930, Kenneth and Ruth Wakefield purchased a Cape Cod-style toll house located halfway between Boston and New Bedford, on the outskirts of Whitman, Massachusetts. Originally constructed in 1709, the house served as a haven for road-weary travelers..

Here, passengers paid toll, changed horses, and ate much-welcomed home-cooked meals. It was also here, over 200 years later, that the Wakefield decided to open a lodge, calling it the Toll House Inn. In keeping with the tradition of creating delicious homemade meals, Ruth baked for guests who stayed at the Toll House Inn.

As she improved upon traditional Colonial recipes, Ruth's incredible desserts began attracting people from all over New England. One day, while preparing a batch of Butter Drop Do cookies, a favorite recipe dating back to Colonial days, Ruth cut a bar of our Nestlé Semi-Sweet Chocolate into tiny bits and added them to her dough, expecting them to melt. Instead, the chocolate held its shape and softened to a delicately creamy texture. The resulting creation became very popular at the Inn. Soon, Ruth's recipe was published in a Boston newspaper, as well as other papers in the New England area. Regional sales of Nestlé Semi-Sweet Chocolate Bar skyrocketed.

Ruth eventually approached Nestlé and together, they reached an agreement that allowed Nestle to print what would become the Toll House Cookie recipe on the wrapper of the Semi-Sweet Chocolate Bar. Part of this agreement included supplying Ruth with all of the chocolate she could use to make her delicious cookies for the rest of her life.

As the popularity of the Toll House cookie continued to grow Nestle looked for ways to make it easier for people to bake. Soon, they began scoring the Semi-Sweet Chocolate Bar, and packaged it with a special chopper for easily cutting it into small morsels. Shortly after, in 1939, they began offering tiny pieces of chocolate in convenient, ready-to-use packages and that is how the first Nestlé Toll House Real Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels were introduced.

Fascinating facts about the invention of Wheaties Cereal by George Cormack in 1921.

WHEATIES CEREAL

Wheaties is a genuine American icon. The familiar orange box and the slogan "The Breakfast of Champions" have become more than just advertising symbols. They have become a metaphor for sports greatness and success.  Many athletes, at the pinnacle of their success, have shared their childhood dreams about someday joining the legends who have had their picture on a Wheaties box. And, indeed, Wheaties is a delicious, healthy product that has helped fuel and inspire many a champion.  But the legend and lore of this famous orange box - and the many champions it has featured over the years - is a story in itself. 

The Invention
Like many great inventions, Wheaties was discovered by accident. In 1921, a health clinician in Minneapolis was mixing a batch of bran gruel for his patients when he spilled some of the mix on a hot stove. The gruel crackled and sizzled into a crisp flake. Tasting the very first Wheaties prototype, he decided this delicious accident had promise.  He took the crisped gruel to the people at the Washburn Crosby Company.

The head miller, George Cormack, took on the task of trying to strengthen the flakes to keep them from turning to dust inside a cereal box. Cormack tested 36 varieties of wheat before he developed the perfect flake. A company wide contest was held to name the new cereal. The winner was Jane Bausman, the wife of the export manager. Wheaties was chosen over numerous other entries, including Nutties and Gold Medal Wheat Flakes.

Wheaties -- The Breakfast of Champions
Wheaties'association with sports began in 1933, nine years after the cereal was introduced, with the sponsorship of baseball broadcasts.  One of the most popular slogans in advertising history was penned later that same year. General Mills' contract for sponsorship of the broadcasts of Minneapolis Millers games on WCCO radio included a large advertising signboard at the ball park.

Knox Reeves, an advertising executive for Wheaties' Minneapolis-based agency, was asked what should be printed on the sign. He took out a pad and pencil, sketched a Wheaties box, thought for a moment, and then printed "Wheaties - The Breakfast of Champions."

Fascinating facts about the invention of the Fax Machine by inventors Alexander Bain, Elisha Gray, Arthur Korn, and Edouard Belin beginning in 1843.	FAX MACHINE
The use of the fax machine to transmit images via telephone lines did not become common in American businesses until the late 1980s, but the technology dates back to the nineteenth century. In 1843 in England, Alexander Bain (1818-1903) devised an apparatus comprised of two pens connected to two pendulums, which in turn were joined to a wire, that was able to reproduce writing on an electrically conductive surface.
In 1862, the Italian physicist Giovanni Caselli built a machine he called a pantelegraph (implying a hybrid of pantograph and telegraph), which was based on Bain’s invention but also included a synchronizing apparatus. His pantelegraph was used by the French Post & Telegraph agency between Paris and Marseilles from 1856 to 1870. Elisha Gray (1835-1901), American inventor, born in Barnesville, Ohio invented and patented many electrical devices, including a facsimile transmission system. He also organized a company that later became the Western Electric Company. In 1902, Arthur Korn (1870-1945) in Germany invented telephotography, a means for manually breaking down and transmitting still photographs by means of electrical wires. In 1907, Korn sent the first inter-city fax when he transmitted a photograph from Munich to Berlin. In 1925, Edouard Belin (1876-1963) in France constructed the Belinograph. His invention involved placing an image on a cylinder and scanning it with a powerful light beam that had a photoelectric cell which could convert light, or the absence of light, into transmittable electrical impulses. The Belinograph process used the basic principle upon which all subsequent facsimile transmission machines would be based. In 1934, the Associated Press introduced the first system for routinely transmitting "wire photos," and 30 years later, in 1964, the Xerox Corporation introduced Long Distance Xerography (LDX). For many years, facsimile machines remained cumbersome, expensive and difficult to operate, but in 1966 Xerox introduced the Magnafax Telecopier, a smaller, 46-pound (17 kg) facsimile machine that was easier to use and could be connected to any telephone line. Using this machine, a letter-sized document took about six minutes to transmit. The process was slow, but it represented a major technological step. In the late 1970s, Japanese companies entered the market, and soon a new generation of faster, smaller and more efficient fax machines became available.

Fascinating facts about the invention of the Personal Computer by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976.

PERSONAL COMPUTER

Personal Computers, microcomputers were made possible by two technical innovations in the field of microelectronics: the integrated circuit, or IC, which was developed in 1959; and the microprocessor, which first appeared in 1971. The IC permitted the miniaturization of computer-memory circuits, and the microprocessor reduced the size of a computer's CPU to the size of a single silicon chip. 

The invention of the microprocessor, a machine which combines the equivalent of thousands of  transistors on a single, tiny silicon chip, was developed by Ted Hoff at Intel Corporation in the Santa Clara Valley south of San Francisco, California, an area that was destined to become known to the world as Silicon Valley because of the microprocessor and computer industry that grew up there. Because a CPU calculates, performs logical operations, contains operating instructions, and manages data flows, the potential existed for developing a separate system that could function as a complete microcomputer.

The first such desktop-size system specifically designed for personal use appeared in 1974; it was offered by Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems (MITS). The owners of the system were then encouraged by the editor of a popular technology magazine to create and sell a mail-order computer kit through the magazine. The computer, which was called Altair, retailed for slightly less than $400.

The demand for the microcomputer kit was immediate, unexpected, and totally overwhelming. Scores of small entrepreneurial companies responded to this demand by producing computers for the new market. The first major electronics firm to manufacture and sell personal computers, Tandy Corporation (Radio Shack), introduced its model in 1977. It quickly dominated the field, because of the combination of two attractive features: a keyboard and a cathode-ray display terminal (CRT). It was also popular because it could be programmed and the user was able to store information by means of cassette tape.

Soon after Tandy's new model was introduced, two engineer-programmers—Stephen Wozniak and Steven Jobs—started a new computer manufacturing company named Apple Computers.

In 1976, in what is now the Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created a homemade microprocessor computer board called Apple I. Working from Jobs’ parents’ garage, the two men began to manufacture and market the Apple I to local hobbyists and electronics enthusiasts. Early in 1977, Jobs and Wozniak founded Apple Computer, Inc., and in April of that year introduced the Apple II, the world’s first personal computer. Based on a board of their design, the Apple II, complete with keyboard and color graphics capability, retailed for $1290.

Some of the new features they introduced into their own microcomputers were expanded memory, inexpensive disk-drive programs and data storage, and color graphics. Apple Computers went on to become the fastest-growing company in U.S. business history. Its rapid growth inspired a large number of similar microcomputer manufacturers to enter the field. Before the end of the decade, the market for personal computers had become clearly defined.

In 1981, IBM introduced its own microcomputer model, the IBM PC. Although it did not make use of the most recent computer technology, the PC was a milestone in this burgeoning field. It proved that the microcomputer industry was more than a current fad, and that the microcomputer was in fact a necessary tool for the business community. The PC's use of a 16-bit microprocessor initiated the development of faster and more powerful micros, and its use of an operating system that was available to all other computer makers led to a de facto standardization of the industry.

In the mid-1980s, a number of other developments were especially important for the growth of microcomputers. One of these was the introduction of a powerful 32-bit computer capable of running advanced multi-user operating systems at high speeds. This has dulled the distinction between microcomputers and minicomputers, placing enough computing power on an office desktop to serve all small businesses and most medium-size businesses.

Another innovation was the introduction of simpler, "user-friendly" methods for controlling the operations of microcomputers. By substituting a graphical user interface (GUI) for the conventional operating system, computers such as the Apple Macintosh allow the user to select icons—graphic symbols of computer functions—from a display screen instead of requiring typed commands. Douglas Engelbart, invented an "X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System": the prototype of the computer "mouse" whose convenience has revolutionized personal computing. New voice-controlled systems are now available, and users may eventually be able to use the words and syntax of spoken language to operate their microcomputers.

Fascinating facts about the invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991.

WORLD WIDE WEB

World Wide Web (WWW), system of resources that enable computer users to view and interact with a variety of information, including magazine archives, public- and university-library resources, current world and business news, and software programs. The WWW can be accessed by a computer connected to an internet, an interconnection of computer networks or through the public Internet, the global consortium of interconnected computer networks.

WWW resources are organized to allow users to move easily from one resource to another. Users generally navigate through the WWW using an application known as a WWW browser client. The browser presents formatted text, images, sound, or other objects, such as hyperlinks, in the form of a WWW page on a computer screen. The user can click on a hyperlink with the cursor to navigate to other WWW pages on the same source computer, or server, or on any other WWW server on the network. The WWW links exist across the global Internet to form a large-scale, distributed, multimedia knowledge base that relates words, phrases, images, or other information. Smaller-scale implementations may occur on enterprise internets.

WWW pages are formatted using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and information is transferred among computers on the WWW using a set of rules known as Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Other features may be added to web pages with special programs, such as Java, a programming language that is independent of a computer's operating system, developed by Sun Microsystems. Java-enabled web browsers use applets that run within the context of HTML-formatted documents. With applets it is possible to add animation and greater interactively to web pages.

The World Wide Web was developed in 1989 by English computer scientist Timothy Berners-Lee to enable information to be shared among internationally dispersed teams of researchers at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (formerly known by the acronym CERN) near Geneva, Switzerland. It subsequently became a platform for related software development, and the numbers of linked computers and users grew rapidly to support a variety of endeavors, including a large business marketplace. Its further development is guided by the WWW Consortium based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Fascinating facts about the invention of the Internet by Vinton Cerf in 1973.

INTERNET

The Internet is a worldwide network of thousands of computers and computer networks. It is a public, voluntary, and cooperative effort between the connected institutions and is not owned or operated by any single organization. The Internet and Transmission Control Protocols were initially developed in 1973 by American computer scientist Vinton Cerf as part of a project sponsored by the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and directed by American engineer Robert Kahn.

The Internet began as a computer network of ARPA (ARPAnet) that linked computer networks at several universities and research laboratories in the United States. The World Wide Web was developed in 1989 by English computer scientist Timothy Berners-Lee for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

"The DESIGN of Internet was done in 1973 and published in 1974. There ensued about 10 years of hard work, resulting in the roll out of Internet in 1983. Prior to that, a number of demonstrations were made of the technology - such as the first three-network interconnection demonstrated in November 1977 linking SATNET, PRNET and ARPANET in a path leading from Menlo Park, CA to University College London and back to USC/ISI in Marina del Rey, CA." . - Vinton Cerf explains the timing:

Internet, interconnection of computer networks that enables connected machines to communicate directly. The term popularly refers to a particular global interconnection of government, education, and business computer networks that is available to the public. There are also smaller internets, usually for the private use of a single organization, called intranets.

Internet technology is a primitive precursor of the Information Superhighway, a theoretical goal of computer communications to provide schools, libraries, businesses, and homes universal access to quality information that will educate, inform, and entertain. In early 1996, the Internet interconnected more than 25 million computers in over 180 countries and continues to grow at a dramatic rate.

How Internets Work
Internets are formed by connecting local networks through special computers in each network known as gateways. Gateway interconnections are made through various communication paths, including telephone lines, optical fibers, and radio links. Additional networks can be added by linking to new gateways. Information to be delivered to a remote machine is tagged with the computerized address of that particular machine.

Different types of addressing formats are used by the various services provided by internets (see Internet address). One format is known as dotted decimal, for example: 123.45.67.89. Another format describes the name of the destination computer and other routing information, such as "machine.dept.univ.edu." The suffix at the end of the internet address designates the type of organization that owns the particular computer network, for example, educational institutions (.edu), military locations (.mil), government offices (.gov), and non-profit organizations (.org). Networks outside the United States use suffixes that indicate the country, for example (.ca) for Canada.

Once addressed, the information leaves its home network through a gateway. It is routed from gateway to gateway until it reaches the local network containing the destination machine. Internets have no central control, that is, no single computer directs the flow of information. This differentiates internets from other types of online computer services, such as CompuServe, America Online, and the Microsoft Network.

The Internet Protocol
The Internet Protocol is the basic software used to control an internet. This protocol specifies how gateway machines route information from the sending computer to the recipient computer. Another protocol, Transmission Control Protocol, checks whether the information has arrived at the destination computer and, if not, causes the information to be resent.

Even though computer interaction is in its infancy, it has dramatically changed our world, bridging the barriers of time and distance, allowing people to share information and work together. Evolution toward the Information Superhighway will continue at an accelerating rate. Available content will grow rapidly, making it easier to find any information on the Internet. New applications will provide secure business transactions and new opportunities for commerce. New technologies will increase the speed of information transfer, allowing direct transfer of entertainment-on-demand. Broadcast television may be replaced by unicast, in which each home receives a signal especially tailored for what its residents want to see when they want to see it

Fascinating facts about the invention of the ENIAC Computer by John Mauchley and J. Presper Eckert in 1945.

ENIAC COMPUTER

In 1936 British mathematician Alan Turing proposed the idea of a machine that could process equations without human direction. The machine (now known as a Turing machine) resembled an automatic typewriter that used symbols for math and logic instead of letters. Turing intended the device to be used as a "universal machine" that could be programmed to duplicate the function of any other existing machine. Turing's machine was the theoretical precursor to the modern digital computer.

In the 1930s American mathematician Howard Aiken developed the Mark I calculating machine, which was built by IBM. This electronic calculating machine used relays and electromagnetic components to replace mechanical components. In later machines, Aiken used vacuum tubes and solid state transistors (tiny electrical switches) to manipulate the binary numbers. Aiken also introduced computers to universities by establishing the first computer science program at Harvard University. Aiken never trusted the concept of storing a program within the computer. Instead his computer had to read instructions from punched cards.

John Mauchley, an American physicist, and J. Presper Eckert, an American engineer, proposed an electronic digital computer, called the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC), which was built at the Moore School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The computer was based on some concepts developed by John Atanasoff, a physics teacher at Iowa State College. ENIAC was completed in 1945 and is regarded as the first successful, general digital computer. It weighed more than 27,000 kg (60,000 lb), and contained more than 18,000 vacuum tubes.

Roughly 2000 of the computer's vacuum tubes were replaced each month by a team of six technicians. Many of ENIAC's first tasks were for military purposes, such as calculating ballistic firing tables and designing atomic weapons. Since ENIAC was initially not a stored program machine, it had to be reprogrammed for each task.

Unfortunately, although the conceptual design for EDVAC was completed by 1946, several key members including Eckert and Mauchley left the project to pursue their own careers, and the machine did not become fully operational until 1952. When it was finally completed, EDVAC contained approximately 4,000 vacuum tubes and 10,000 crystal diodes.

In light of its late completion, some would dispute EDVAC's claim-to-fame as the first stored-program computer. A small experimental machine (which was based on the EDVAC concept) consisting of 32 words of memory and a 5-instruction instruction set was operating at Manchester University, England, by June 1948. Another machine called the electronic delay storage automatic calculator (EDSAC) performed its first calculation at Cambridge University, England, in May 1949.

EDSAC contained 3,000 vacuum tubes and used mercury delay lines for memory.Programs were input using paper tape and output results were passed to a teleprinter. Additionally, EDSAC is credited as using one of the first assemblers called "Initial Orders," which allowed it to be programmed symbolically instead of using machine code.

Eckert and Mauchley eventually formed their own company, which was then bought by the Rand Corporation. They produced the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC), which was used for a broader variety of commercial applications. The (UNIVAC I), was also based on the EDVAC design. Work started on UNIVAC I in 1948, and the first unit was delivered in 1951, which therefore predates EDVAC's becoming fully operational.

Eckert and Mauchly later lost the patent on their machine when it was claimed that another early experimenter, John Atanasoff, had given them all the ideas about ENIAC that mattered.