Air Conditioning – The King of Cool Nobody is sure of the exact date of the beginning of mankind. Many historians estimate that the first evidence of controlled fire can be dated to one million years ago whilst others point to the evidence of cooked food as far back at 1.9 million years ago. One …
Post it Notes – The Accidental Billion Dollar Invention Spencer F. Silver (1941) studied chemistry at Arizona State University and then earned a doctorate in Organic Chemistry from the University of Colorado before becoming a Senior Chemist at the industrial giant 3M’s Central Research Laboratory in 1966. He was first assigned to a team of …
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Ecommerce – The World at Your Fingertips In 1974, ten years before home computing made the transition from science fiction to reality, Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) was interviewed by Australia’s ABC Network and asked how computers, which at that time were large enough to be housed in computer rooms that were around the size of …
King C Gillette was a creative entrepreneur and from the age of seventeen he dreamed of becoming an inventor and making his fortune. But there is quite a long way between dreaming of something and then actually inventing a brand new product. He was born in 1865 and Gillette’s parents, both successful inventors themselves, then …
Hoisted by their own Petard. Short stories of inventors who were killed by their creations or quest for discovery. Some of these ideas were immediately abandoned, and it is easy to see why. Others, however, are still in everyday use. The Cure for Cancer Marie Curie (1867-1934) is quite possibly the most famous woman in the …
During the 19th century, as the Industrial Revolution began to reshape Europe & America, there emerged a new and powerful type of businessman, evolving from the Neanderthal and brutish mill and plantation owners of the previous century. The modern barons were smooth, sophisticated, but no less ambitious and single-minded as their predecessor. Real estate, railroads, …
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Innovation: Awesome Inventions: Innovators & Business Ideas that Changed the World Curiosity will eventually lead to innovation. Fortunately we are an imaginative species who does a lot of wondering. Way back to when man first learned to walk upright and began communicating with each other, by pointing and shouting, we can find the earliest examples. …
A Dead Ringer – is a well-known phrase for somebody who looks just like another. In medieval Britain the medical profession was not quite as refined as it is now, and often anybody found not to be breathing was regarded as dead, when they may have been simply unconscious. (And this was also before coma’s …
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From the Author of the Internationally Bestselling Books – Red Herrings & White Elephants, Shaggy Dogs, Pop Goes the Weasel, What Caesar did for My Salad & They Laughed at Galileo From stolen kidneys to phantom hitchhikers and the missing brain of JFK, we all love a good urban legend (the more extreme the better), …
Money for Old Rope: The Origins of Some Things You Thought You Already Knew (The Big Book of Everything – Part 1) Kindle Edition Buy Now Audio Books Other Platforms Assorted eBooks From the Author of the Internationally Bestselling Red Herrings & White Elephants, Pop Goes the Weasel, What Caesar did for My Salad, Shaggy …
