American Inventors and Inventions

Student: Ghiţă Corina-Maria

Master: Anglo-American Studies, 2nd year

Benjamin Franklin – The Master of Lightening

Born in Boston in 1706, Benjamin Franklin organized the United States’ first lending library and volunteer fire
department. His scientific pursuits included investigations into electricity, mathematics and mapmaking. He
helped draft the Declaration of Independence and the U.S Constitution, and negotiated the 1783 Treaty of Paris,
which marked the end of the Revolutionary War.
Inventions that revolutionized Europe and the World
 Bifocals
A modern replica pair of the type of split bifocal spectacles known to have been worn by
Benjamin Franklin in the mid 1780s
Bifocals are eyeglasses with an upper and lower half, the upper for distance, and the lower for
reading. Bifocals are commonly prescribed to people with presbyopia, a condition that Franklin
suffered. Franklin wrote, in August 1784 to his friend George Whatley, that he was "happy in the
invention of double spectacles, which serving for distant objects as well as near ones, make my eyes as
useful to me as ever they were."
 Electricity
Franklin did not, of course, invent electricity, but he discovered many things about it, previously
not understood.
Before Franklin started his scientific experimentation, it was thought that electricity consisted
of two opposing forces. Franklin showed that electricity consisted of a "common element" which he
named "electric fire." Further, electricity was "fluid" like a liquid. It passed from one body to another
— however it was never destroyed. In a letter to Peter Collinson, Franklin wrote that the "fire only
circulates. Hence have arisen some new items among us. We say B (and other Bodies alike
circumstanced) are electricised positively; A negatively; Or rather B is electricised plus and A minus ...
These terms we may use till philosophers give us better."
Franklin's work became the basis for the single fluid theory. When something is being charged, such as
a car battery, electricity flows from a positive body, that with an excess charge, to a negative body, that
with negative charge. Indeed, a car battery has plus and minus signs on its terminals.

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Franklin wrote Collinson in another letter that: "I feel a Want of Terms here and doubt much whether I
shall be able to make this intelligible." Not only did Franklin have to posit theories, he also had to
create a new language to fit them. Some of the electrical terms which Franklin coined during his
experiments include:
 battery  conductor  positively
 charge  plus  negatively
 condensor  minus  armature
They are still the terms we use today.
 Lightning Rod

Once Franklin had an understanding of the behavior of electricity, he set about to protect houses from
the destructive forces of lightning. A lightning rod, simply, is a rod attached to the top of a building,
connected to the ground through a wire. The electric charge from lightning strikes the rod and the
charge is conducted harmlessly into the ground. This protects houses from burning down and people
from electrocution.
 Glass Armonica
A popular entertainment in England in the early 18th century was playing music on upright
wine goblets, with tones made by rubbing one's fingers around the lip of glasses filled with different
quantities of fluid. In 1761, Franklin created a mechanized version, and called it the Armonica (after
the Italian word for harmony.) Franklin worked with London glassblower Charles James to build his
Armonica, and it had its world premiere in early 1762, played by Marianne Davies.
Franklin's foot-treadle-operated instrument held 37 glass bowls. The musician touched the rims
of the bowls with fingered moistened from the water trough. The bowl-rims were color-coded,
according to the note. For example, C's are red, D's orange, E's yellow, etc.
John Moses Browning- The Man Behind the Gun
With over 30 million firearms based on his designs, John Moses Browning is one of America's
most accomplished weapons inventors. Browning invented and patented the gas-operated return
mechanism for rifles, which eliminated the need to load each shot by hand. With his invention, every
time a person pulled the trigger a new round could be fired.
The son of a Mormon gunsmith, inventor John Moses Browning developed a keen
understanding of guns from an early age. In 1879, Brown received his first patent for his breech-

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loading, single-shot rifle, and upon the death of his father, he and his brother took over the family
business.
But Browning was less interested in the act of producing firearms as he was in inventing them.
After Winchester got a hold one of Browning's rifles, the company decided to purchase the rights –
sparking a 19-year relationship in which Browning would sell them 43 more designs.
Ultimately, John Moses Browning's inventions helped revolutionize the firearms industry in
America with some of the country's most commercially successful guns – including the lever-action
repeating rifle, semi-automatic shotgun, .22 caliber rifle, the Browning 1919 .30 caliber and M2 .50
caliber machine guns (MGs), and the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). Perhaps his most famous
weapon, the BAR was adopted by the military and famously used by soldiers in World War I.
Samuel Colt
Born in 1814 he was an American inventor and industrialist from Hartford, Connecticut.
Nothing says "Old West" more than Samuel Colt's revolver invention. Originally patented in 1836,
many historians have gone so far as to say that Colt's invention changed the course of American history.
Born to a Connecticut farmer in 1814, inventor Samuel Colt developed a fascination with guns
at an early age. He spent much of his leisure time tinkering with his father's firearms, and the
"impossibility" (or so it was thought at the time) of creating a gun that could fire multiple rounds
captured young Sam's imagination.
At the age of sixteen, during a missionary trip to Africa, Samuel Colt received the inspiration
for his iconic American firearm. As he watched the wheel of the ship turn, the budding innovator
observed how the wheel's spokes were aligned with a clutch that could lock them into place at any
time. Thus, the idea for the Colt revolver was born.
After patenting his revolving handgun and receiving a ringing endorsement from U.S. president
Andrew Jackson, Colt's revolver still failed to take off. His manufacturing company went bankrupt, and
historians generally believe sales lagged because the revolving gun invention was a bit ahead of its
time.
Eventually, the start of the Mexican War triggered renewed interest in Colt's revolver invention
and, during the Civil War, Samuel Colt became a major supplier of handguns for the Union army.
Robert Fulton - The Man Who "Steamed" the Boat
Much like Henry Ford, Robert Fulton didn't actually invent the machine he is most commonly
associated with (the invention of the first steamboat is generally credited to John Fitch). But, like Ford,
Fulton's efforts and innovations are what helped to successfully shape and commercialize the steamboat
invention.
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 Born in Pennsylvania in 1765, inventor Robert Fulton's initial aspirations were to become a
portrait painter – gaining fame and recognition after painting his friend Benjamin Franklin. Then, while
studying art in London, Fulton's focus shifted to canal and shipbuilding. Though he started out
designing steam-powered ships, Fulton ended up making a name for himself by constructing
submarines for the British and French navies.
Upon returning to the US, Fulton went back to work on his idea for the steamboat invention. He
took a special English steam engine, made some improvements to it, and tested models to develop the
ideal shape. Ultimately, Fulton's ship, the Clermont, made its debut in 1807 – steaming upriver from
New York to Albany. After obtaining his patent in 1809, Robert Fulton was soon running steamboat
services on six major rivers and the Chesapeake Bay.
Charles Goodyear - The Man Who Put "Vulcanized" in "Rubber"
By the mid 1830s, it seemed as though the rubber industry in America was going under. The
problem with the new material was that it was unstable – becoming completely solid and cracking in
the winter, then melting into goo in the summer. Miraculously the industry was saved by inventor
Charles Goodyear (1800-1860) – a man with no knowledge of chemistry who worked stubbornly and
tenaciously to develop vulcanized rubber.
After incidentally learning about rubber's fatal flaw, Charles Goodyear became determined to
invent a way to make the substance more stable. Without a steady job, he lived for years off of
advancements from investors. When his experiments with rubber continually failed, Goodyear reduced
his family to poverty, was jailed for debt and derided by society as a mad man.
Undeterred, inventor Charles Goodyear finally found that, by uniformly heating sulfur- and
lead-fortified rubber at a relatively low temperature, he could render the rubber melt-proof and reliable.
He patented the process in 1844, licensed it to manufacturers and was ultimately hailed as a genius.
Goodyear died July 1, 1860, while traveling to see his dying daughter. After arriving in New York, he
was informed that she had already died. He collapsed and was taken to the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New
York City, where he died at the age of 59. He is buried in New Haven at Grove Street Cemetery.
In 1898, almost four decades after his death, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company was founded and
named after Goodyear by Frank Seiberling.
On February 8, 1976, he was among six individuals selected for induction into the National
Inventors Hall of Fame.
In Woburn, Massachusetts, there is an elementary school named after him. The Government of
France made him a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 1855.

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 The ACS Rubber Division awards a medal named in Goodyear's honor, the Charles Goodyear
Medal. The medal honors principal inventors, innovators, and developers whose contributions resulted
in a significant change to the nature of the rubber industry.

Eli Whitney (1765-1825) - Inventor of the Cotton Gin

If some people are born with the natural ability to invent, Eli Whitney certainly was one of
them. From a young age, Whitney had an innate understanding of machinery. The Yale graduate would
later use this talent to invent the Cotton Gin, a mechanical device that transformed the economy of the
pre-civil-war South.
When inventor Eli Whitney arrived in the South in 1793, only green seed cotton could be grown
inland. Problem was: the process of removing seeds from the cotton was extremely laborious. So
Whitney devised a machine that automatically separated the seeds from cotton much faster than people
could with their hands (in only one hour, Whitney's invention de-seeded a day's worth of cotton). When
word got out about the Cotton Gin, plantation owners began planting as much green seed cotton as the
land would allow.
Though Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin invention in 1794, by that time the
invention was being pirated and used all over the country. Ultimately, Whitney left the South with very
little to show for the invention that had made croppers millions. However, upon his return to the North,
he re-invented American manufacturing with the idea of mass production.

Cyrus McCormick - Inventor of the Mechanical Reaper

Not long after Eli Whitney invented the Cotton Gin, Cyrus McCormick invented another
significant agricultural invention that revolutionized farming: the mechanical reaper. Prior to this
invention, reaping was a painstaking process (done by hand with a scythe) that limited a farm's harvest.
The initial idea and design for the reaper actually came from Cyrus McCormick's father, Robert,
who worked on the invention for 16 years. In 1831, twenty-two-year-old Cyrus took over his father's
project and, within six weeks, he had built, field-tested, remodeled and successfully demonstrated the
world's first mechanical reaper. McCormick's invention automatically cut, threshed and bundled grain
while being pulled through a field by horses.
In 1834, inventor Cyrus McCormick took out a patent on his invention and, soon after, began
manufacturing the reaper himself. Despite the amazing potential of the invention, most farmers
remained uninterested.
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 McCormick spent years making improvements to the mechanical reaper invention and coming
up with business innovations to boost sales (including credit for purchases, performance guarantees,
replacement parts and advertising). All his work eventually paid off – by 1851, Cyrus McCormick's
reaper invention was an international sensation.
Thomas Alva Edison - The Man Who "Turned on" the Light
He was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly
influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-
lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park", he was one of the first
inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large-scale teamwork to the process of
invention, and because of that, he is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research
laboratory.
Edison is the fourth most prolific inventor in history, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as
well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. He is credited with numerous
inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications. These
included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car, electrical power,
recorded music and motion pictures.
His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his early career as a telegraph operator.
Edison developed a system of electric-power generation and distribution to homes, businesses, and
factories – a crucial development in the modern industrialized world. His first power station was on
Pearl Street in Manhattan, New York.

Samuel F.B. Morse (1791-1872) - Telegraph and Morse Code

Like a lot of other American inventors, Samuel F.B. Morse was fairly eclectic in his interests.
He was a well-known portrait painter and the first president of the National Academy of Design. He
also ran for office several times, patented three new pumps and studied electricity. Ultimately, his
interests would lead him to his most famous accomplishment: inventing the electric telegraph.
Inspired by a conversation he overheard about electromagnetism on a ship ride from Europe, inventor
Samuel Morse conceived the idea for an electric telegraph (though, unbeknownst to him, the idea was
not exactly new). The concept of his invention was that pulses of electricity could be used to
communicate information over wires.

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 Though not part of the original design, the invention came to include a dot-and-dash code that
used different numbers to represent the letters of the alphabet. In time, this newly invented code would
become known as "Morse Code."
With the aid of some partners, Samuel F.B. Morse applied for a patent for his new invention and
went to work building a prototype. Not long after, Morse was transmitting ten words per minute with
the device at a New York exhibition.
In May 1844, Morse sent a message ("What Hath God Wrought!") from Washington to
Baltimore using the first inter-city electromagnetic telegraph line in the world. Soon after, the telegraph
invention would become commonplace across the United States and, eventually, throughout the world.

Dr. Jonas Salk (1914-1995) - Inventor of the Polio Vaccine

While there is still no actual cure for Polio, thanks to inventor Dr. Jonas Salk there is a way to
prevent it. Before Salk invented the vaccine for Polio, America was forced to live in fear of the
infectious viral disease that put Franklin Roosevelt in a wheelchair.
Polio attacks the nerve cells and sometimes the central nervous system, which can cause paralysis or
even death. After being appointed head of the Virus Research Lab at the University of Pittsburgh in
1947, Dr. Jonas Salk devoted himself to finding a way to curb the devastating virus. Less than five
years later, he invented a vaccine and decided to test it out.
After working successfully on a sample group that included Salk, his wife and their three sons,
a nationwide testing of the vaccine was launched in April 1954. The impact was dramatic: in 1955 there
were 28,985 cases of polio in the U.S. and by 1957 that number had decreased to 5,894.
Since he wanted it to be distributed freely to everyone, Dr. Jonas Salk never patented his polio vaccine.
Though an oral vaccine developed by Dr. Albert Sabin gained popularity in the early 1960s,
Salk's vaccine is now returning to favor because of its lowered risk factor. Today, in the U.S., cases of
polio are extremely rare and The World Health Organization hopes the disease will be eradicated
worldwide in the near future.
Of course, that didn't stop inventor Dr. Jonas Salk from keeping busy – his last years were spent
searching for a vaccine to combat AIDS.
Willis Carrier (1876-1950) - The Man who "Conditioned" the Air
If someone made a list of everyday inventions that Americans just couldn't live without, Willis
Carrier's invention might be at the top. Without Carrier's invention, movie theaters, sports arenas and

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working environments would be a lot less comfortable, and how could anyone sleep during those hot
summer night? In case you haven't guessed, Carrier is the inventor of air conditioning.
Inventor Willis Carrier was an engineer from the east coast (not the deep south as one might
expect), who started out working for a heating company. In 1902, Carrier was given the task of
decreasing the humidity in a printing shop where the intense heat was causing the inks to run and bleed.
hile attempts to create cooling systems had been attempted many times before, none were very
successful. But Carrier managed to solve the problem, inventing a mechanical humidity controller that
passed air through a filter, then over coils containing a coolant (the same basic design used in air
conditioners today).
Word soon spread about Willis Carrier's invention and the number of commercial clients
interested in the technology grew steadily. Carrier continued to improve his invention and, in 1915, he
founded the Carrier Engineering Corporation (still a major producer of cooling equipment).
Increasingly, air conditioning gained in popularity – making its way from factories into theaters,
department stores and other businesses. By the end of World War II, air conditioners had even made
their way into many American homes.

Henry Ford (1863 - 1947) - Inventor of the Moving Assembly Line

Contrary to popular belief, Henry Ford did not invent the automobile. While his Ford Motor
Company did produce the vehicle that initiated a new era in personal transportation (the Model T), the
invention of the first automobile is generally credited to Karl Benz of Germany. In fact, Henry Ford's
most important contribution was actually the invention of the moving assembly line.
Prior to Ford's invention, factory employees would work in groups to build one car at a time. By
installing a moving assembly line in his factory, workers instead began to build cars one piece at a time
– with each individual responsible for a specific job. This division of labor allowed cars to be produced
both more quickly and efficiently. With the addition of the world's first automatic conveyor belt, Henry
Ford's factory in Michigan was soon producing a car every 93 minutes.
Ford's assembly line invention accelerated the American Industrial Revolution, and factories
continue to employee the concept to this day. Among Henry Ford's other notable accomplishments was
increasing the minimum wage for his workers from $2.34-a-day to $5-a-day, while cutting shift lengths
from 9 hours to 8 hours. This wage increase was designed to make automobiles affordable and
accessible to the common man – a dream we now see realized on the roadways everyday!

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Orville & Wilbur Wright - Inventors of the Airplane
On December 17, 1903, a pair of inventors from Ohio named Orville and Wilbur Wright flew
the world's first airplane. The invention, known as the Wright Flyer, took to the skies for 12 seconds,
flying a distance of 120 feet. Though only five people were there to witness the flight, the invention
would eventually become one of the most important of the twentieth century – one that would unite
people throughout the United States and the world.
Inventors Orville and Wilbur Wright took a great interest in flight and invention from an early
age. Running a successful bicycle business afforded the Wright brothers enough income to follow their
dream of inventing a flying machine.
What began with the design and flight of kites, soon moved into gliders and then more elaborate
aircraft inventions. Relying mostly on trial and error, the Wright brothers eventually designed a
powered airplane with a 12-horsepower engine.
After their successful flight in Kitty Hawk, N.C. (an area chosen based on its weather patterns),
Orville and Wilbur Wright went on to develop their invention into the first practical airplane. They
obtained a patent in 1906, started their own business (the Wright Company) and began building and
selling more sophisticated airplanes.
The Wright brothers' invention is so technically and culturally significant that the National Air
and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., keeps the Wright Flyer on permanent display.

Gary Kildall (1942-1994) - PC Software

A West Coast pioneer wrote the first software for a microprocessor, and then created a disk
operating system for it. His creations for the personal computer underlie every desktop or laptop system
in use today.The descendent of Norwegian immigrants who ran a school for nautical navigation, Kildall
was born in 1942. He was an indifferent student who liked to spend his time rebuilding old cars, but he
attended the University of Washington in his hometown of Seattle, planning to become a math teacher.
Instead, he became fascinated with computers -- at that time, mostly mainframe devices that occupied
whole rooms and were programmed with punch cards. He would eventually earn a Ph.D. in the new
field of computer science.
When Kildall's draft notice for Vietnam arrived, he began training as a Naval officer. In 1969,
the Navy tapped him to teach computer science at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey,
California. There, he grew interested in the first programmable chip, and soon went to work for the
microprocessor's manufacturer, Intel. Access to revolutionary hardware would spark Kildall to create
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revolutionary software.
Kildall's first effort was to create a programming language, PL/M, that could be used to write
applications for microprocessors. Intel would use PL/M for decades. In 1973, Kildall wrote a software
control program he called CP/M, which allowed files to be read and written to and from an eight inch
floppy disk -- the first disk operating system for a microcomputer. Three years later, Kildall and his
wife Dorothy formed a research and mail-order sales company, Intergalactic Digital Research, to design
and market software for personal computers. Kildall rewrote CP/M to be usable on different types of
computers, innovating a system called BIOS, or Basic Input/Output System. By 1978, the company
was making $100,000 a month, and by 1983, revenues hit $44.6 million. For a time, Kildall's product
would be the standard operating system on most PCs.

Raymond Damadian - MRI Scanner

An underdog physician showed chemists and physicists a new way to look inside the human
body and diagnose illnesses.
Raymond Damadian made an important contribution to the fields of science and medicine when
he built the first nuclear magnetic resonance (N.M.R.) body scanner in July 1977. Born in New York in
1936, Damadian studied violin at the Julliard School of Music and worked summers as a tennis pro on
Long Island. He turned away from music when it became clear he would never find fame as a soloist. A
math and science whiz, Damadian studied mathematics and chemistry as an undergraduate, then,
aspiring to cure cancer, he became a doctor.
Damadian's research interests led him to experiment with N.M.R. technology, exposing atomic
nuclei to a magnetic field in order to cause the emission of radio waves at consistent frequencies.
Damadian was instrumental in adapting this technology for use on the human body where, as a scanner,
it could detect abnormal tissue. An abrasive, aggressive personality, he alienated potential funders and
scientists studying N.M.R., who looked down upon him for being "only" a physician, not a Ph.D. But
Damadian perservered in his research, and in his belief that the technology had an important
application in practical medicine.
In 1974, he received a patent for his Magnetic Resonance Imaging (M.R.I.) technique and
several years later, he conducted the first successful body scan. Perhaps because he over-hyped his
discovery, or because early M.R.I. scans looked primitive, Damadian had no luck attracting research
funding. So he went commercial, selling his first N.M.R. scanner in 1980. He successfully sued

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General Electric for patent infringement in 1997, winning a $128.7 million judgment. But by that time,
his company, Fonar, had annual revenues of $13 million.
Safe and accurate, the scanner continues to be used today to examine soft tissue and detect a
variety of medical conditions. Sixty million patients worldwide benefit from its images. Damadian
continues to advance the technology of the instrument and has been acknowledged for his efforts with
major awards, although he was shut out of a share in a Nobel Prize. His original M.R.I. machine is
housed in the Smithsonian.
Bibliography
Carlisle, Rodney, Scientific American Inventions and Discoveries : All the Milestones in Ingenuity
From the Discovery of Fire to the Invention of the Microwave Oven, Wiley, New York, 2004

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