WHO INVENTED THE TRAFFIC SIGNAL?

Garrett Augustus Morgan (March 4, 1877 - August 27, 1963), was an African-American inventor and businessman. He was the first person to patent a traffic signal. He also developed the gas mask (and many other inventions). Morgan was born in Paris, Kentucky, and was the son of former slaves (and the 7th of their 11 children). His formal education ended during elementary school. As a a teenager (in 1895), Morgan moved north to Cincinnati, Ohio, looking for opportunity. His incredible ability to repair machinery led to many job offers from factories. In 1907, he started his own sewing equipment and repair shop. His business expanded in 1909; he employed 32 people, who used equipment that Morgan made (and invented) himself. In 1920, Morgan went into the newspaper business, starting the "Cleveland Call." He was very successful, and eventually bought a car. While he was driving along the streets of Cleveland, he realized how unsafe intersections were, and was determined to make driving safer. Morgan patented a traffic signal on November 20, 1923 (U.S. patent No. 1,475,024, issued in 1923) - this was the first traffic signal patented, but not the first invented. His traffic signal was a T-shaped pole with arms (but with no lights) that has three signs, one or more of which popped out at a time: a red "stop," a green "go," and another red "stop in all directions." This last signal let pedestrians cross the street. It was controlled by an electric clock mechanism. This device became very popular, and was used all around the USA. Morgan sold his device to the General Electric Corporation for $40,000 (a huge sum at that time). His device was used until the three-light traffic light was developed. Morgan developed many other inventions, including a safety hood and smoke protector for firefighters (patent No. 1,113,675, in 1912), a gas mask (patent No. 1,090,936, in 1914). He also developed a zig-zag sewing machine attachment, a hair straightener, hair dying lotions, de-curling hair combs (patent No. 2,763,281, in 1956), and other inventions.

WHO IS GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER?

George Washington Carver (1865?-1943) was an American scientist, educator, humanitarian, and former slave. Carver developed hundreds of products from peanuts, sweet potatoes, pecans, and soybeans; his discoveries greatly improved the agricultural output and the health of Southern farmers. Before this, the only main crop in the South was cotton. The products that Carver invented included a rubber substitute, adhesives, foodstuffs, dyes, pigments, and many other products.

WHO INVENTED THE POTATO CHIP

Inventor of Potato Chips The potato chip was invented in 1853 by George Crum. Crum was a Native American/African American chef at the Moon Lake Lodge resort in Saratoga Springs, New York, USA. French fries were popular at the restaurant and one day a diner complained that the fries were too thick. Although Crum made a thinner batch, the customer was still unsatisfied. Crum finally made fries that were too thin to eat with a fork, hoping to annoy the extremely fussy customer. The customer, surprisingly enough, was happy - and potato chips were invented! Crum's chips were originally called Saratoga Chips and potato crunches. They were soon packaged and sold in New England - Crum later opened his own restaurant. William Tappendon manufactured and marketed the chips in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1895. In the 1920s, the salesman Herman Lay sold potato chips to the southern USA (selling the chips from the trunk of his car). In 1926, Laura Scudder (who owned a potato chip factory in Monterey Park, California) invented a wax paper potato chip bag to keep the chips fresh and crunchy - this made potato chips even more popular.

Who Invented the CD Player?

James T. Russell, a senior scientist at the Pacific Northwest Laboratory, invented the technology for the compact disc in 1965. By 1985, Russell had earned 26 patents for various innovations with CD-ROM technology. History Russell earned a Bachelor's of Arts in Physics from Reed College and worked as a physicist for General Electric before landing a job at the Pacific Northwest Laboratory in Richland, Washington. Function As a music lover, he was frustrated that vinyl records were easily damageable, so he sketched out plans to record music onto a photosensitive platter that would be read by a laser. Time Frame In the 1970s, he continued to improve the compact disc technology, leading companies like Sony & Philips to purchase licenses for mass production. Benefits The CD Player caught on when manufacturers started making portable CD players in 1984. Fun Fact Russell has a total of 54 patents, including 11 patents for Optical Random Access Memory, better known as ORAM. Famous Ties The first album released on CD was the Swedish pop sensation ABBA's "The Visitors."

WHO INVENTED THE CELLPHONE

Picture could have been first prank call...by Cooper! Do you remember a time when cell phones were rare? Today, it's hard to imagine a world without them. Even if you don't own one yourself, you probably see dozens of people talking on a cell phone every day. The rate at which we adopted the devices is astounding. But who invented them? To get the answer to that question, we need to look back more than a century. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876. And then in 1900, on December 23 on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., an inventor named Reginald Fessenden accomplished a remarkable feat: He made the first wireless telephone call. He was the first to transmit the human voice via radio waves, sending a signal from one radio tower to another. Fessenden's work paved the way for broadcast radio but it also provided the foundation for cell phones and networks. In 1947, an engineer named William Rae Young proposed that radio towers arranged in a hexagonal pattern could support a telephone network. Young worked under another engineer named D.H. Ring, who led a team at Bell Laboratories, which was part of AT&T at the time. Young's design allowed for low-power transmitters to carry calls across the network. It also accounted for handoffs, which is when a caller moves from one tower's broadcast radius to another. But though the theory was sound, the technology to make it happen was lacking. It would take more than 10 years for the next development. While the world waited for further developments in cellular technology, companies like AT&T offered some customers the chance to use radio telephones. These devices were primitive compared to today's cell phones and resembled walkie-talkie transceivers. Only a few calls -- sometimes as few as three -- could be made on the system at a time. Callers would sometimes have to wait for another conversation to end before completing a call, which also meant that private conversations were practically impossible. The phones were expensive and some weighed up to 80 pounds (36.3 kilograms) -- not the sort of device you can carry around in your pocket! By the 1960s, Bell Labs engineers Richard H. Frenkiel and Joel S. Engel developed the technology that could support Young's design of a cellular network. But as AT&T sought permission from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to develop a cellular network, a competitor made a bold and cheeky move in 1973. That competitor was Martin Cooper, who at the time was an executive with Motorola, one of AT&T's competitors. Cooper led a team that designed the first practical cell phone. It was called the Motorola DynaTAC, and it still wasn't a tiny device -- it was 9 inches (22.9 centimeters) long and weighed 2.5 pounds (1.1 kilograms). Cooper decided to make one of the first cellular telephone calls to professional rival Joel Engel at Bell Labs. That's right -- the first cell phone was involved in what some might refer to as a prank call! It would take many more years to build out cellular networks and drive down production costs to make cell phones a viable commercial product. But after more than a century of research and development, the considerable investment has paid off.

Who Invented the Charcoal Briquette?

Ellsworth B. A. Zwoyer of Pennsylvania patented a design for charcoal briquettes in 1897. (See the image to the right) After World War One, the Zwoyer Fuel Company built charcoal briquette manufacturing plants in the United States with plants in Buffalo, NY and Fall River, MA.There are stories circulating that Henry Ford invented the very first briquette in 1920 with the help of Thomas Edison. However, the 1897 patent obviously predates this and Ford and Edison both knew Zwoyer. Ford is the man who popularized the gas-powered car in America and invented the assembly line for automobile manufacturing. Ford created a briquette from the wood scraps and sawdust from his car factory. E.G. Kingsford bought Ford's briquette and placed it into commercial production.

WHEN WAS BARBECUING INVENTED

To barbecue means to slow-cook meat at a low temperature for a long time over wood or charcoal. In America, barbecue (or BBQ) originated in the late 1800's during Western cattle drives. The cowboys were fed the less than perfect cuts of meat, often brisket, a tough and stringy piece of meat that required five to seven hours of cooking to tenderize. Other barbecue meats used were pork butt, pork ribs, beef ribs, venison and goat.However, barbecue was not invented in America and no one knows who invented the barbecue. The word 'Barbecue' might come from the Taino Indian word 'barbacoa' meaning meat-smoking apparatus. 'Barbecue' could have also originated from the French word "Barbe a queue" which means "whiskers-to-tail." No one is sure of the correct origins of the word.