US+Inventors


 * There have been many great inventors in America’s short history.**

**Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)**
[|Benjamin Franklin](January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790) was one of the greatest [|inventors]in the world. One of his greatest inventions was the lightning rod. He used electricity (which he discovered) to power it. A few of his other great inventions were the glass harmonica, bifocal glasses, and the Franklin stove. Ben Franklin never patented any of his inventions. He didn’t because he wanted them to be able to be improved.




 * Eli Whitney (1765 - 1825)**

[|Eli Whitney] was born on December 8,1765 in Westboro, Massachusetts. By April, 1793, Eli had made and built the cotton gin.

Eli died on January 8,1825. Eli Whitney was a graduate from Yale in 1792.

The [|Cotton Gin] was a device that automatically separates the cotton fibers from the other short-staple cotton fibber. This machine could make and generate about 50lbs of clean cotton a day, the cotton production was profitable in the states. Which means it benefits to a person or to there advantage.




 * [|George Crum:] (1822 - 1914)**

George Crum was the person who invented the common potato chip. He was an African American who worked in a restaurant as a chef. As most inventions are, a mistake was used in order to produce this wide known, popular snack. George was making an order of French fries for a customer, but the customer complained that the French fries were too thick and soggy, and not salty enough, and thought they would taste better if they were thinner. After many trials, George made the fries thin enough to pick up without a fork, and Potato Chips were born. At that time, they were originally called Saratoga Chips, and to this day are loved by all generations.




 * [|Thomas Edison] (1847 - 1931) [[image:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/Thomas_Edison.jpg/225px-Thomas_Edison.jpg width="225" height="352" align="right" link="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Thomas_Edison.jpg"]]**

[|Thomas Edison] was a great American inventor. Through his many inventions and innovations, Thomas Edison was able to change the world and help us get to be where we are today.

Thomas Edison was born in 1847 on February 11th. Thomas Edison's inventions and accomplishments are astounding. He invented the early telephone, the incandescent lamp, Electric Power Distribution, the Fluoroscopy, and the [|Kinetograph]. Some of his inventions are well known by people, like the light bulb. Others aren't known quite as well but equally important.

[|Fluoroscopy] is some what like a modern day [|X-Ray]. These images of X-Ray are created by radiation. Edison abandoned this project because of his near loss of eyesight. The radiation from this machine was very harmful.

The Kinetograph is a manual motion picture camera. The camera was operated manually, and if you turned the handle to fast of to slow the picture was seen either in fast motion of slow motion. This was an incredible invention and led to most of the fortune he left behind.


 * John Moses Browning (1855 - 1926)**

He was born January 23, 1855. He was born in a small town of Ogden, Utah. John has had an interest in guns for as long as he could remember. His father owned a gun shop, so John learned the art of making guns at a young age. He instantly fell in love with the job and tasks of designing guns. He also enjoyed cleaning the guns but he didn’t enjoy it as much as he as he liked to design guns. When he was 13 years old, he made his very first metal scrap gun. In 1879 he made his breech loading one-shot rifle. Then, in 1890, he started to make machine guns. Browning also made a mechanized rifle which shot 20 rounds. 52,000 and more were purchased and bought by the United States Army. He died in 1926.


 * William Seward Burroughs (1857 - 1898)**

The inventor of the calculator was William Seward Burroughs. He made his first [|calculator] in 1885, but in 1892 the calculator was improved and there was even a printer added to it. In 1898, more than 1000 machines were sold. In that same year William died. Then, in 1926, the Corporation changed the name of Burroughs “Adding Machine Company.” His corporation had made a million machines. William died in New York in the year of 1889.


 * [|Edwin Howard Armstrong] (1890 - 1954)**

He was born in 1890. He was born in New York City. He made the first trans-Atlantic radio. He was so thrilled with this he started making homemade equipment. He also made a 125 foot tall antenna in his parents backyard. Edwin was eligible for many different honors.

He died in 1954, in the place of his birth.


 * George Washington Carver (1864 - 1943)[[image:GW_Carver.jpg align="right"]]**

George Washington Carver was born sometime around 1864 on the Moses Carver plantation in Diamond Grove, MO. His father died in an accident shortly after he was born, and he was later separated from his mother when they were kidnapped by slave raiders. George was later returned to the plantation he was born on, where Moses Carver and his wife raised George as their own child. He was well educated and found that he was naturally drawn to nature even when he was a child. He spent much time out in the gardens, and as a result soon earned the nickname, "the plant doctor."

Because of his love of learning and education, Carver continued onto both high school and college. In 1894, he gained a Bachelor of Science degree from the Iowa Agriculture College, and in 1897, he earned a Master of Science degree in bacterial botany and agriculture. Upon receiving these degrees, Carver was invited by Booker T. Washington to join the faculty of Alabama's Tuskegee Institute. Carver accepted the offer and taught at the institute until his death in 1943.

George Washington Carver is most famous for all of his discoveries having to do with crops of the south. He invented 325 uses for peanuts, some of them including peanut butter, soap, and even ink. He also came up with hundreds of uses for sweet potatoes, soybeans and pecans. From these items, Carver came up with recipes and improvements for adhesives, buttermilk, chili sauce, axle grease, instant coffee, mayonnaise, paper, plastic, shaving cream, shoe polish, wood stain, and many others. All of these discoveries greatly helped the farmers and people of that time, and still greatly benefit us today.

While Carver was at the Tuskegee Institute, he put a lot of time and effort into studying plants and soil. Because of his hard work, he soon came up with a crop rotation method, which revolutionized southern agriculture. By looking at soil from plantations, Carver discovered that decades of only planting cotton and tobacco had depleted the soils of the southern United States. Many farms could simply not plant anymore because the soil was not fertile. By alternating soil depleting crops such as cotton, with soil enriching crops such as peanuts, Carver found that the soil would stay rich in nutrients and would last farmers much longer. Carver was able to convince many farmers to use his crop rotation method, and as a result, ended up saving the economy of the southern states.


 * Earle Dickson ( 1892 - 1961)**

The band-aid was invented in 1920 by E[|arle Dickson] .His idea of inventing the band-aid came from his wife because she worked in the kitchen and had so many accidents and need more and more bandages to cover her wounds. Earl got a wonderful idea. He prepared some bandages and put them in the size of squares of cotton gauze then he laid them on long strip them he concealed them with crinoline. Then all his wife had to do was use some scissors when she accidentally cut her self.

Even though he was given very little credit when the band-aid was first put out, he was not completely ignored. Then the company making his invention. The company then made him vice president and then he was eventually made a member of the board of the members. But the sad thing is he did not get to enjoy his retirement because he died on September 22,1961. The time that he passed away his company was selling over 300,000,000 dollars worth of band aids every year. Earle did not like being higher ranked so when he left, he was happier.


 * Konrad Zuse (1910-1995)**

[|Konrad Zuse] is a person who invented something that we use today, and something that you are using right now to look at this article. He invented the first computer. He built what he called the Z1, also known as the first programmed computer. The Z1 is the standard for all the different types of computes that we have today. There were many difficulties with making this, but is ended working out correctly in the end. This was before he stepped up a notch, and invented the Z3, which was the worlds first fully functional programs computer. That was in 1945. He even started his own company in 1946.


 * [|Richard James](1914 - 1974)**

Who doesn’t love slinkys? Richard James was an engineer. (1914-1974) He accidentally invented the slinky in 1943. He was developing springs for supporting sensitive equipment, on ships. He was working with springs, when one fell of his desk and rolled across the floor. He then invented a machine that could make slinkys. It could make a slinky out of 80ft of steel wire in only 10sec. His wife Betty James gave the Slinky its name, and ran the company. However, the Slinky did not go to the stores until 1978.


 * Dr. Robert Jarvik (1946 - )**[[image:http://www.jarvikheart.com/assets/Robert_Jarvik.jpg align="right" caption="Robert Jarvik, MD"]]

Many people know who Dr. Robert Jarvik is because he was in the commercial for Lipitor.

[|Dr. Robert Jarvik] was born on May 11, 1946. He is known for being the first person to invent a completely artificial lifelong heart. The artificial heart is known as the Jarvik Artificial Heart. The artificial heart was created to be used only if the natural heart is not able to pump blood by itself, even if it is connected to an assisting machine.

Preforming a [|heart transplant] is one of the most critical and dramatic medical procedures.

In 1982 the Jarvik-7 was implanted in a patient by the name of Barney Clark. During this time, the press was in Salt Lake City to get reports on this historic event.

Barney Clark was a dentist who volunteered to undergo this medical procedure. He did not expect to live more than a few days after the transplant, but was willing to be experimented on so that the information they get form the him might save people's lives in the future.


 * Joseph Gayetty**

The American inventor, [|Joseph Gayetty] was the man who created toilet paper, in 1857. It was first sold for $0.50 in packs of 500 flat sheets with his name on each package. The product originally enclosed aloe for a lubricant and was advertised as and anti-hemorrhoid medical merchandise. Before this invention, people used pages from catalogs, and leaves. Walter Alcock later developed toilet paper on a roll. This beat Gayetty’s invention. In the 1890s British companies like Perforated Paper Company and the Scott Paper Company started to make [|toilet paper]. Since then Gayetty’s product is no longer available.

[|Mary Anderson] invented the windshield wiper. She invented it in 1903 to help cars move safely in the rain. She noticed the need for the invention when she was talking a tour in a street car and the driver had to constantly wipe rain off of the windshield. She was teased by many people for her invention but she didn’t let that discourage her. She received a patent in 1905. From then on people could clear their windshields without leaving their cars. However all though this saved people from having to get out of their cars, they still needed to turn a crank in order to make the hands move. Automatic windshields weren't invented untill 1921, which we now have today.
 * Mary Anderson**

The dishwasher was originally invented by a man named Joel Houghton. He patented the dishwasher in 1850. It was a wooden machine with a hand-turned wheel that would splash water on the dishes. It was hardly a workable machine.
 * Josephine Cochran**

In 1865 Alexander obtained a patient for a device with used a hand crack with a gearing to spin a rack full of dishes through the dishwasher. Again like the first try this didn’t exactly clean the dishes.

Then in 1886 [|Josephine Cochran] said "If nobody else is going to invent a dish washing machine, I'll do it myself" and she did just that. She had invented the first practical dishwasher(that actually cleaned the dished). She thought the dish washer would be a big hit, but when it was introduced at a World’s Fair. However only hotels and restaurants were buying them. It wasn’t until the 1995’s that the dishwasher became popular with the general public. She founded a company to manufacture there dishwashers, which then became Kitchen Aid which is still around today.

__[|The Wright Brothers]__

Wilbur Wright was born in 1867 and Orville Wright followed four years later in 1871. They were born to Milton and Susan Wright. Milton Wright was a Bishop and was often gone from his family. He always brought back something for his family that cultured them of the outside world.

One time, Bishop Wright brought the family back a rubber band-powered helicopter. Wilbur and Orville loved it and built copies of the helicopter. The boys knew how to build these things because they were mechanically minded like their mother was.

When Wilbur had just graduated from high school, Susan Wright fell ill with tuberculosis. Wilbur put off his college dreams and stayed home to nurse his mother. Orville, in the mean time, was becoming more and more disgusted and disinterested in school. He finally dropped out to start his own printing business.

After Susan Wright died, Wilbur joined Orville in his printing business in 1890. Then, when bicycles were in great demand in America in 1894, the [|Wright brothers] opened a store that sold bicycles and made a ton of money off of it. The Wrights had no interest in the money and wanted to start looking into inventing an airplane.