What does it mean if a person comes from the famous Scottish family clan Maclaren? For example, Andrew Maclaren, the father of Owen Finlay Maclaren, when he had to go into military service at the outbreak of the First World War, came to the barracks in a Rolls-Royce. Besides, he had his butler with him. Unfortunately, he died of typhus a few months later. So that we will never know what he wanted to amaze the world with.
Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, the inventor of the brain games for Nintendo DS, was no doubt destined to amaze the whole world with his thoughts about brain training: of humanity, ”he once told of himself. Kawashima studied medicine, was a visiting researcher in Sweden in 1991 and by then was skilled at creating images of what goes on in the brain.
The blowgun - the device to check whether you are driving under the influence - was invented in the country where the need was greatest, in the United States. Robert Borkenstein, its inventor, launched it in 1958. He was able to protect the patent well worldwide and the bag, cursed by many, turned him into a wealthy man.
Borkenstein was born in 1912 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. His parents were not wealthy and the young Robert started working in a photo shop during his school years. He came up with a new process for printing color photos, an idea he could sell for good money. In 1936 he got a job as a photographer with the police. Almost every day he had to photograph fatal accidents involving alcohol. The fact that prohibition had only just been lifted undoubtedly played a role.
Alessandro Volta, the inventor of the battery, was born in Como, Italy. His father left nothing but debts upon his death. Three of Alessandro's brothers were priests and two of his sisters went to the monastery. For many years it seemed as if the youngest child, little Alessandro, was retarded. At the age of four, he still couldn't speak. At the age of eight, he was the smartest in the class, although he had no money to pay for his textbooks. He had a talent for languages and when he was sixteen he spoke not only English, French and Spanish, but also Dutch, according to his biographers.
The Hungarian journalist and inventor László Biró had an appointment in a Slovenian spa town in early 1938 with a banker who might want to finance the development of his new pen. At the counter, Biró had used a prototype of his ballpoint pen. A small, gray man noticed and contacted him afterwards. "I'm an engineer," he said, "may I see how that pen works?" Biró gave a demonstration and explained that he was looking for a money shooter. "Come to my country, to Argentina," replied the man, "you will find such a person there." "A Hungarian is guaranteed not to get a visa for Argentina," argued Biró. The man then handed him a business card, signed it, and said that it would give him a visa at every Argentine embassy. That chance meeting in the spa town of Rogaška Slatina would completely change the life of László Biró.
The Flemish chemist Leo Hendrik Arthur Baekeland has two great inventions to his name and one of them is always forgotten. With the first invention he became so immensely wealthy that he had all the time and peace to develop the synthetic resin Bakelite as well. Baekeland was born near Ghent in 1863 as the son of a poor shoemaker-café owner. It has never been proven that he was also a descendant of the infamous gang leader Bakelandt, as legend has it. At the University of Ghent, he developed from a mediocre student to an excellent physics and chemist. His knowledge and work ethic caught the attention of Professor Théodore Swarts, who promoted him to his assistant.
The modern car has two inventors: Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler. Benz came from Baden, Germany and Daimler from neighboring Swabia. From 1880 on they both knew exactly which way to go. They lived forty miles apart and refused to seek each other out. They were two rabbits who did not want to know about each other, they invented the car twice.
Daimler built the first motorcycle in history in 1885, with two wheels and one engine. Benz patented a three-wheel railcar on January 26, 1886, Daimler followed in September of the same year with a four-wheeler. Autohistorians later agreed that the car was born in 1886, and that paternity should be equated to Benz and Daimler.
When the Spanish conquered South America in the 16th century, they discovered that Aztec women drank gallons of yam root tea to become temporarily sterile. Four hundred years later, American scientists concluded that it was progesterone, a hormone that suppresses fertility. Because US law did not allow research on women in this regard, the experts had retired to Mexico City and also founded a small company called Syntex. In 1949, 26-year-old chemist Carl Djerassi, a Bulgarian Jew who had fled Hitler, arrived there.
Willis Haviland Carrier was born on a farm in the American village of Angola, on the east coast of Lake Erie. When asked where he got his ideas from, he invariably told about an incident from his youth. One day his mother had an idea to teach her child to count. "She said I had to get a basket of apples in the cellar," he said
Carrier. She made me cut some apples in half, others into quarters, and others into one-eighth pieces. And then I had to learn to add and subtract with the slices. The pieces took on a different meaning for me. It seemed that no problem could be difficult for me anymore. Since then I have just cut every problem into pieces, until it was all very simple pieces. That way I have always been able to solve any problem. '
The chips - the potato chips, not the ones from Silicon Valley - are more than 150 years old. They were conceived in Saratoga Springs, a spa town three hours from New York. Saratoga, meaning "flowing waters," was an exclusive vacation spot around 1850. Anyone who had name and fame looked for medicinal sources. To the nouveaux riches of the American east coast, Saratoga was proof that you shouldn't go to Europe for a sophisticated spa life.
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