Invention Products We Take For Granted

There are millions of products out in the world that have been invented that we take for granted.  We are so used to using them on a daily basis, we don’t take the time to think of how they originated.  Here are two products that we take for granted.Ball Point PenEveryone uses a pens, I bet you have a stash of them on your desk or in your desk drawer right now.  Did you know that it was invented by a man named László Bíró?  People used pens dipped in inkwells or fountain pens to write back in the day; which would lead to splotchy documents, stained fingers and writings being easily smudged.  So László Bíró with the help of his brother György, who was a chemist, created a tiny rolling ball in a socket that was put in the pen’s tip, which when the ball was rolled across the paper, it drew ink and regulating the flow.  László Bíró patented his idea in 1938 in Paris and started manufacturing the ball point pen.  Each pen sold for $12.50 and it wasn’t until László Bíró sold his patent rights to Marcel Bich (Bic pens) in 1945 that the pen started to become a more reasonable price of a couple of dollars.  The next time you reach for a pen, you’ll know where it came from.The ZipperThere are a few people who played a part in the invention of the zipper; Elias Howe, Whitcomb Judson and Gideon Sundback. Elias Howe, who invented the sewing machine, actually received a patent in 1851 for an “Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure.” However he did nothing with it nor did he market it and so loss out as being known as the “Inventor of the Zipper.”   Whitcomb Judson has received the credit of being the “Inventor of the Zipper” funnily enough his patent that he filed in 1893, never used the word zipper.  His patent was known as the “Clasp Locker,” was an intricate hook and eye shoe fastener; however it never made it big.  It wasn’t until an electrical engineer name Gideon Sundback, who was hired by Whitcomb Judson’s company, that the zipper became what it is today.  Gideon Sundback created the “Separable Fastener” that had two rows of teeth facing each other that pulled into a single piece when pulled by the slider.  The name “zipper” actually came from the rubber company, B.F Goodrich.  They decided to use Gideon’s Separable Fastener on a new type of rubber boots/galoshes and thus renamed it to “zipper.”  Next time you are zipping up remember that it was actually invented in the 1800’s.For Additional Reading:http://www.nndb.com/people/087/000166586/http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa082497.htmJessica Vann loves doing research and finding unknown facts about inventions, products and designs that no one would have necessarily thought about. She also loves learning about ideas for new products, product design and development and design innovation.