Twelve Notable American Inventions | Nature

THE granting of patents in the United States was provided for in the Constitution, and on April 10, 1790, Congress specified how patents were to be issued. It was, however, not until an act of July 4, 1836, that the Patent Office was established under a Commissioner. In that year, too, the Patent Office started numbering serially the patents issued. In connexion with the centenary of these events, a list of twelve of the inventions that have done most to change life in America, together with the inventors’ names, has been drawn up. The list is as follows: The telephone, Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922); the electric telegraph, Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791-1872); the electric light, the cinema and the gramophone, Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931); the commercial steamboat, Robert Fulton (1765-1815); the aeroplane, Wilbur Wright (1867-1912); the airbrake for trains, George Westinghouse (1846-1916); the linotype machine, Ottomar Merganthaler (1854-99); the sewing machine, Elias Howe (1819-67); the cotton gin, Eli Whitney (1765-1825); the vulcanization of rubber, Charles Goodyear (1800-60); a practical reaping machine, Cyrus McCormick (1809-84); and aluminium manufacture, Charles Martin Hall (1863-1914). The compilation of any such list is always a matter of great difficulty, but there can be no question that the inventors and inventions here recalled are truly representative of the great contributions to mechanical progress by men of American nationality.