by Lawrence Bush on March 29, 2012
Hymen Lipman of Philadelphia was granted a patent for a pencil with a rubber eraser on its end on this date in 1858. Both the graphite and the eraser of Lipman’s pencil could be sharpened. Lipman also founded the first envelope company in the U.S., in 1843, and bought a patent for the postcard, created in 1861 by John P. Charlton; Lipman’s cards had a decorated border and no images, and became the first authorized cards that could be mailed, in 1870. (The U.S. Post Office would issue its own three years later.) In 1862, Lipman sold his pencil patent to Joseph Reckendorfer for a hefty $100,000, and Reckendorfer proceeded to sue the Faber pencil company for patent infringement — but in 1875 the Supreme Court ruled the patent invalid because Lipman’s invention was simply a combination of two already known entities. The modern pencil was likely invented in the late 16th century; before then, the penicillum was “a small brush . . . constructed of a hollow wood tube filled with neatly arranged animal hairs,” according to Jamie Phillips of the Pennsylvania Center for the Book. March 30 is National Pencil Day.
“The combination, to be patentable, must produce a different force or effect or result in the combined forces or processes from that given by their separate parts. There must be a new result produced by their union; if not so, it is only an aggregation of separate elements.”—U.S. Supreme Court,Reckendorfer v. Faber, 1875
by Lawrence Bush on September 17, 2011
Siegfried Marcus, who invented the first vehicle propelled by an internal combustion engine — that is, the first car — in 1870, was born in Germany on this date in 1831. Marcus held 130 patents in sixteen different countries and created ignition devices, telegraph systems, and several different car models — though he never sought a patent for a car, only for the engines he built. Marcus died at age 67 in 1898. He was world-renowned until the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda removed his name from the German Encyclopedia and named Daimler and Benz instead as the first creators of the automobile.
“He often told us how he drove his auto for the first time on Mariahilferstrasse and was stopped by the police because he was driving without a horse. [A] stethoscope for doctors was also his invention, and he also told us about his firearm that could shoot 30 bullets per minute. He told us about so many other inventions that I cannot recall them all.” —Clementine Schmid, a friend of the inventor’s granddaughter
by Lawrence Bush on July 29, 2011
Vladimir Kozmich Zworykin, a pioneer of television technology who was one of the first experimenters to use cathode ray tubes, was born on this date in Russia in 1889. He was experimenting with cathode-ray television as early as 1911. He left Russia via an Arctic expedition and came to the U.S. in 1918, where he worked for Westinghouse and filed his first patent application for “Television Systems” in 1923. In the 1930s, Zworykin directed the new television laboratories in Camden, New Jersey for David Sarnoff’s RCA. That lab developed the iconoscope, a television camera tube that was the backbone of television technology for its first ten years; the first iconoscope broadcast was of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
“I hate what they’ve done to my child…I would never let my own children watch it.”—Vladimir Zworykin
by Lawrence Bush on June 21, 2011
The first successfully engineered long-playing record was unveiled to the public at the Waldorf Astoria on this date in 1948. Made of nonbreakable vinyl plastic and designed for the new speed of 33-1/3 revolutions-per-minute, the LP was the creation of a team led by Dr. Peter Carl Goldmark of Columbia Records. LPs presented up to 40 minutes of music, which made possible the modern record album. Goldmark, an immigrant from Hungary, also developed the first color television technology, an early electronic video recorder, and nearly 160 other inventions in communications technology. President Jimmy Carter presented him with the National Medal of Science in 1977.
“The average LP has about 1,500 feet (460 m) of groove on each side, or about a third of a mile.” —Wikipedia
Hymen Lipman of Philadelphia was granted a patent for a pencil with a rubber eraser on its end on this date in 1858. Both the graphite and the eraser of Lipman’s pencil could be sharpened. Lipman also founded the first envelope company in the U.S., in 1843, and bought a patent for the postcard, created in 1861 by John P. Charlton; Lipman’s cards had a decorated border and no images, and became the first authorized cards that could be mailed, in 1870. (The U.S. Post Office would issue its own three years later.) In 1862, Lipman sold his pencil patent to Joseph Reckendorfer for a hefty $100,000, and Reckendorfer proceeded to sue the Faber pencil company for patent infringement — but in 1875 the Supreme Court ruled the patent invalid because Lipman’s invention was simply a combination of two already known entities. The modern pencil was likely invented in the late 16th century; before then, the penicillum was “a small brush . . . constructed of a hollow wood tube filled with neatly arranged animal hairs,” according to Jamie Phillips of the Pennsylvania Center for the Book. March 30 is National Pencil Day.