Inventions during the War

The 'clasp locker' had been invented in the 1800s by Whitcomb Judson and was itself a development of the 'automatic, continuous clothing closure' invented by Elias Howe. Neither of these inventions caught on and Sundback improved the design by adding more teeth. He called his new invention the 'separable fastener' but we know it better as the modern zip

Despite being invented by an Englishman, Arthur Wynne, crosswords did not appear in Britain until 1922 when one was published in Pearson's Magazine

Seiichi Kito, also of Los Angeles, and Makoto Hagiwara of San Fransisco both say that they invented the fortune cookie and dispute the Hong Kong Noodle Company's claim. In 1983 a federal judge of the Court of Historical Review ruled that the actual inventor was Hagiwara. Whoever invented them, the cookies are based on the Japanese tsujiura senbei rice cakes which contain a 'fortune' hidden in their folds rather than placed inside

Sheffield is now famous for its stainless steel manufacture, as a look at a typical cutlery set will attest. Brearly marketed his new invention as 'Staybrite'

The first electric toaster was invented in Britain by Crompton and Co in 1883. However, it toasted only one side of the bread at a time and needed to be watched in order to stop the toast from burning. Strife's design was a vast improvement

Morgan's device was known as the 'safety hood and smoke protector' and was a forerunner to the gas masks used in the war. He also invented the traffic signal and a zig-zag stitching device for sewing machines. All this from a man whose parents were slaves

The Superheterodyne receiver converts a radio signal to a more easily processed intermediate frequency. They are still used in modern televisions and radios

Although patented by Phelps Jacob, bras were not new. Archaeologists have found bras in Austria which carbon dating shows to be from the late Middle Ages

Lee de Forest was a pioneer in the development of radio. He invented the Audion, triode vacuum tube and has over 180 patents to his name. In 1916 he broadcast the first radio advertisements and the first radio report about an American election on his experimental radio station. De Forest was the first to use the term 'radio' and it caught on, replacing the older phrase, wireless telegraphy

An executive of the company which developed Pyrex said, "...we had a number of prior trademarks ending in the letters ex. One of the first commercial products to be sold under the new mark was a pie plate and in the interests of euphemism the letter r was inserted between pie and ex and the whole thing condensed to Pyrex