"The little-known secrets behind the men & women who shaped America"

These Inventors Receive Some Dubious Awards for Their Inventions

By Paul Niemann

[December 27, 2007]  Inventors are no more bizarre or unusual than the average person. Every inventor, though, has made at least one blunder in his inventing career. Today we roast a few inventors whose gaffes are worthy of special recognition.

Some of the awards are loosely based on well-known sayings, while others were created specifically for this story. Either way, these awards aren't the kind that most people would be proud to win.

Here, then, are the winning inventors, along with their awards:

• The "No One Knew I Was an Inventor" award goes to Charles Lindbergh, who was the anonymous co-inventor of the heart fusion pump. His pump made it possible for surgeons to perform open-heart surgery.
  
  Runner-up for this award is a two-way tie between Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain. Lincoln remains the only U.S. president to receive a patent, while Mark Twain once earned more money from one of his inventions than from his writings that year.

• The "Annie Oakley / Whatever You Can Do, I Can Do Better" award goes to Stephanie Kwolek. Inventing what many would consider a man's product while working in a man's world at DuPont, Ms. Kwolek invented Kevlar in 1965. She began working at the company to pay for her schooling, in which she planned to become a fashion designer. Instead, her Kevlar has saved the lives of more than 2,000 police officers.
  

• Next we present the "What Were You Thinking When You Let Them Name Your Invention After You?" award to Joseph Guillotin, whose family changed their last name after he died.
  

• The "I'll Do Whatever I Can to Save Money" award goes to the inventor of the calliope, Joshua Stoddard, who lived with his parents until he was 30. 
  

• The "Keen Sense of the Obvious" award goes to Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle. Mr. Kalashnikov once said of his very LOUD invention, "I shot with it a lot. I still do. That is why I am hard of hearing." Say what?
  

• The "I Almost Lost My Life While Inventing That Product" award goes to Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. This award could also be named the "I Didn't Die While Inventing This but Several of My Employees Did" award. I will spare you the details on this one.
  

• Then there's the "I Tried to Improve My Reputation by Creating Awards and Naming Them After Myself" award. See Nobel, above.
  

• The "Everyone Thought I Was an Inventor but I'm Not" award goes to Rube Goldberg. Rube was the cartoonist who drew complex contraptions that would require a minimum of a dozen steps to perform a simple task such as picking up a golf ball. The irony is that Rube never invented anything in his life.
  

• The "I Passed Up a Fortune When I Invented This Thing" is a two-way tie between Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, and Joshua Lionel Cowen, inventor of the "electric flowerpot." Berners-Lee could have patented the Web and made money each time someone visits an online site, but his desire was for everyone to be able to benefit from the Web, so he chose not to patent it.
  
  
  
  Joshua Lionel Cowen, of Lionel train fame, let his friend Conrad Hubert have his electric flowerpot invention for practically free. Conrad Hubert converted the electric flowerpot into a flashlight and founded Eveready Battery, and the rest is history.

Well, that's our list of award-winning inventors for now. Sadly, we are out of space, so we'll stop here. Happy New Year!

[By PAUL NIEMANN]

Paul Niemann may be reached at [e-mail].

Copyright Paul Niemann 2007

(Other columns)