- Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11 1847 - October 18 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who developed many devices which greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph and a long lasting light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention, … - Henry Ford
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 - April 7, 1947) was the founder of the Ford Motor Company and father of modern assembly lines used in mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. He was a prolific inventor and was awarded 161 U.S. patents. As sole owner of the Ford Company he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. - John Marshall
John Marshall was a British businessman and politician. John joined the family business when he was seventeen. Five years later his father Jeremiah died and John became the controlling partner in the company. He also inherited a new house, a warehouse, and £7,500. Shortly before his father's death John heard that two men from Darlington, John Kendrew, a glass-grinder, and Thomas Porthouse, a watchmaker, had registered a patent for a new Flax Spinning Machine. - Jet Black
Jet Black (born Brian John Duffy; 26 August, 1938 in Ilford, Essex, United Kingdom) is an English drummer and one of the founder members of punk rock / new wave band The Stranglers. He is of Irish ancestry and currently lives in Gloucestershire. - Dennis Crouch
Dennis D. Crouch (born April 30, 1975 in Columbia, South Carolina) is an American patent attorney who worked for McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP (MBHB) in Chicago, Illinois, until 2007. He recently accepted a position as an associate professor at the University of Missouri School of Law in Columbia, Missouri. In 1997, he received his B.S.E. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University. - John Walker
John Walker (29 May 1781 - 1 May 1859) was an English chemist from Stockton-on-Tees, who in 1826 accidentally invented the friction match by mixing potassium chlorate and antimony sulfide. The first recorded sale from his store was 7 April 1827 under the name 'friction lights'. He refused to patent his invention preferring instead to pursue his scientific studies. He did not divulge the exact composition of his matches. He had a local reputation as a botanist, … - John Moore
A man named John Moore underwent treatment for cancer of the spleen at the University of California, Los Angeles hospital when he was diagnosed with hairy cell leukemia after he was told that local hospitals were unable to treat him. His physician, Dr. Golde, quickly realized the medical and commercial potential of Mr. Moore's cells. Repeated withdraw of "blood, blood serum, skin, bone marrow aspirate, and sperm" was performed on Mr. Moore. - Karl Benz
Karl Friedrich Benz, for whom an alternate French spelling of "Carl" is used ocassionaly, (November 25, 1844, Karlsruhe, Germany – April 4, 1929, Ladenburg, Germany) was a German engine designer and automobile engineer, generally regarded as the inventor of the gasoline-powered automobile. Other German contemporaries, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach, also worked independently on the same type of invention, but Benz patented his work first and, after that, … - John Arnold
John Arnold (born 1736 in Bodmin, Cornwall; died 1799 in London) was a watchmaker who developed and patented escapement and balance spring designs. He is known to have lived for a period at Well Hall House in Eltham, southeast London. In 1736, Arnold constructed what was then the smallest repeating watch, which was set in a ring and given to George III. He then turned his attention to the production of ever more precise chronometers. - Drew
Drew is the creator of the webcomic "toothpaste for dinner" and co-creator of "Married to the Sea", alongside wife, Natalie Dee. He was a research chemist, holding several patents, although he now works on the webcomic full time, and is a resident of Columbus, Ohio. Drew recently revealed himself to be the entity behind the electronic musician KOMPRESSOR (previously only known by the alias "Andreas K."). - Elias Howe
Elias Howe was an American inventor and sewing machine pioneer. He was born in Spencer, Massachusetts. Contrary to popular belief, he did not invent the sewing machine. Many other people, including Walter Hunt, had worked on the idea of such a machine before him. However, Howe refined the others' ideas into a functional machine. On September 10, 1846, he was awarded the first United States patent for a sewing machine using a lock stitch design. - Ronald A. Katz
Ronald A. Katz (born in 1935 or 1936) is an inventor and president of Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing LP. His inventions are primarily in the field of automated call center technology. Katz has developed a portfolio of more than 50 US patents covering his innovations. His inventions are related to toll free numbers, automated attendant, automated call distribution, voice response unit, computer telephone integration and speech recognition. - John Wright
John Wright was a surgeon from Birmingham, England who invented a process of electroplating involving potassium cyanide. The process was patented in 1840 by Wright's associate George Richards Elkington. - Thomas Johnson
Thomas Johnson was the mechanic of William Radcliffe. Radcliffe was an English inventor who created the dressing frame-one of the key technological innovations that helped propel the textile industry of Britain to pre-eminence; and started the Industrial Revolution. The dressing frame - which allowed a power loom to run continuously - was patented under the name of Johnson. - David Levy
David Levy - inventor with over a dozen patents, he also served as "Inventor in Residence" to Arthur D. Little Consulting. He received his B.S., M.S. (1987) and Ph.D. (1997) in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. He is a Manhattan Beach, California native, but now resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1989, he started his first company TH, Inc., without venture capital to license his own patents. In 1999, Levy started a new company, Digit Wireless, … - James Young
James Young, a Scottish chemist, was born in Glasgow, the son of a joiner and carpenter. At the age of 19 he began to attend evening classes at the nearby Anderson's College (now Strathclyde University) and in 1832 became assistant to Professor Thomas Graham and followed him to University College, London in 1837. While at Anderson's College he met and befriended the famous explorer David Livingstone. - Bruce Lehman
Bruce A. Lehman (born September 19, 1945) served from August 5, 1993 through 1998 as the Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks. Nominated by President Clinton on April 23, 1993, and confirmed by Senate on August 5, 1993. During this short period of time, he was responsible for significant changes to the United States patent law. - Samuel Hopkins
Samuel Hopkins was an American inventor from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On July 31, 1790 he was granted the first U.S. patent, under the new U.S. patent statute just signed into law by President Washington on April 10, 1790. Hopkins had petitioned for a patent on an improvement "in the making of Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process." The statute did not create a Patent Office. Instead a committee of the Secretary of State, … - Artur Fischer
Artur Fischer (born 1919 in Tumlingen, Black Forest Germany) is an inventor. He has 1080 patents and invented fischertechnik. - Gordon Gould
Gordon Gould was an American physicist who is widely (but not universally) credited as the inventor of the laser. He is best known for his thirty-year fight with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to obtain patents for the laser and related technologies, and his court battles with laser manufacturers to enforce the patents he obtained. - John Browning
John Moses Browning (January 21 or January 23, 1855 – November 26, 1926), born in Ogden, Utah, was an American firearms designer who developed myriad varieties of weapons, cartridges, and gun mechanics, many of which are still in use around the world. He is arguably one of the most important figures in the development of modern automatic and semi-automatic firearms and is credited with 128 gun patents — his first (for a single shot rifle) was granted October 7, 1879. - T. John Ward
T. John Ward is a United States federal judge most famous for the large number of patent cases brought before him. His court is in Marshall, Texas. He serves in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. - Samuel Smith
Samuel Smith (born on September 13, 1927) is an United States chemist who co-invented Scotchgard with Patsy Sherman while an employee at the 3M company in 1952. He was born in New York City and received his B.S. from the City College of New York and his M.S. from the University of Michigan in 1949. He is the holder of 30 U.S. patents and retired from 3M in 1998. Mr Smith is an inductee in the National Inventors Hall of Fame. - Mary Anderson
Mary Anderson (1866- 1953) was a real-estate developer, rancher, viticulturist and inventor of the windshield wiper blade. Anderson was granted her first patent for an automatic car window cleaning device controlled inside the car, called the windshield wiper in November of 1903. Born on the Burton Hill Plantation in Greene County at the start of Reconstruction, she moved with her widowed mother and sister the booming town of Birmingham in 1889. - Oliver Evans
Oliver Evans (13 September, 1755 - 15 April, 1819) was a United States inventor. Evans was born in Newport, Delaware. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to a wheelwright. Evans' first invention was in 1777, when he designed a machine for making card teeth for carding wool. He went into business with his brothers and produced a number of improvements in the textile industry. - Jacob Davis
Jacob Davis was born to Jewish parents in Latvia and came to Reno, Nevada in June 1868. A tailor, Davis used small copper rivets to reinforce and strengthen items including harnesses. In 1871, a woman approached Davis to make pants for her husband, who was quite large. Davis decided to use the copper rivets to reinforce the pants for men. At the time, Davis used white duck, a canvas-type material he had bought from Levi Strauss & Co a San Francisco merchant. - Robert Adler
Robert Adler (December 4 1913 - February 15 2007) was an Austrian-American inventor who held numerous patents. - Thomas Davenport
Thomas Davenport (b. 9 July 1802 - 6 July 1851) was a Vermont blacksmith who lived in Forestdale Vermont. With his wife (Emily Davenport), and a colleague (Orange Smalley), he invented the electric motor and electric locomotive circa 1834 in Brandon, Vermont. Thomas Davenport received the first patent on an electric machine in 1837, U. S. Patent No. 132. - Paul Pantone
Paul Pantone is an inventor who claims to have invented Global Environmental Energy Technology (GEET), a technology that replaces the standard carburetor of an internal combustion engine. A U.S. patent was issued to Pantone for a "Fuel pretreater apparatus and method" on 18 August 1998. The system supposedly triples fuel efficiency and cuts pollution by 90% by simply transferring exhaust heat to the fuel intake. - Peter Durand
In 1810, Peter Durand was granted a patent by King George III of England for his idea of preserving food in "vessels of glass, pottery, tin, or other metals or fit materials." Durand's patent was based on 15 years of experimentation by a Frenchman, Nicolas François Appert, who developed the idea of preserving food in bottles. Durand took Appert's idea one step further and replaced the breakable glass bottles with cylindrical tinplate canisters. - John Wilkinson
John "Iron-Mad" Wilkinson (1728 - 1808) was an English industrialist who suggested the use of cast iron for many roles where other materials had previously been used. His "iron madness" reached a peak in the 1790s, when he had almost everything around him made of iron, even several coffins and a massive obelisk to mark his grave. John Wilkinson was born in Clifton, Cumberland, the son of Isaac Wilkinson, who was then the potfounder at the blast furnace there, … - James Parker
James Parker was a British clergyman and cement manufacturer who invented one of pioneering new cements of the late eighteenth century. In 1791, he was granted a patent "Method of Burning bricks, Tiles, Chalk". His second patent in 1796 "A certain Cement or Terras to be used in Aquatic and other Buildings and Stucco Work", covers Roman cement, a term used in a 1798 pamphlet advertising his cement. He set up his manufacturing plant on Northfleet creek, Kent. - John Boyd Dunlop
John Boyd Dunlop (February 5, 1840 - October 23, 1921), born in Scotland, was inventor who founded the rubber company that bears his name, Dunlop Tyres. He was born on a farm at Dreghorn, North Ayrshire, and studied to be a veterinary surgeon at the Dick Vet, University of Edinburgh, a profession he pursued for nearly ten years at home, moving to Belfast in what is now Northern Ireland, in 1867. - Joseph Aspdin
Joseph Aspdin was a British cement manufacturer who obtained the patent for Portland cement on 21 October 1824. - John F. Duffy
John Fitzgerald Duffy is currently Professor of Law at The George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. He is a Legal Commentator and Author who has written numerous articles and co-authored a scholarly book on Patent Law (listed at his GWU Webpage below). He previously served as law clerk to The Honorable Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, The Honorable Stephen F. Williams, … - John Gorrie
John Gorrie, (October 3, 1802 - June 29, 1855) physician, scientist, inventor, and humanitarian, is considered the father of refrigeration and air conditioning. He was born on the Island of Nevis to Scottish parents on October 3, 1802, and spent time with his mom in South Carolina. He received his medical education at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District of New York in Fairfield, New York. - Mark Dean
Mark Dean (born March 2, 1957) is an inventor and a computer scientist. He holds three of the nine original IBM patents upon which personal computers were based. He led the team that developed the ISA bus, and he led the design team responsible for creating the first one-gigahertz computer processor chip. Born in Jefferson City, Tennessee, Dean holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tennessee, … - Samuel Morey
Samuel Morey (October 23, 1762 - April 17, 1843) was an American inventor, who invented an internal combustion engine and was a pioneer in steamships who accumulated a total of 20 patents. Born in Hebron, Connecticut but moved to Orford, New Hampshire, with his family in 1768. He later moved across the Connecticut River to Fairlee, Vermont, but was buried in Orford in 1843. Lake Morey in Vermont is named in his honor. - Daniel Ravicher
Daniel Ravicher ("Dan") serves as Executive Director of the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) and Legal Director of Software Freedom Law Center. - Hugo Junkers
Hugo Junkers (3 February 1859 - 3 February 1935) was an innovative German engineer, as his many patents in varied areas (gas engines, aeroplanes) show. The name Junkers is mainly known in connection with aircraft, which were produced under this name for the Luftwaffe during World War II. By then, however, the Nazi government was running his businesses, and Hugo Junkers himself was gone.
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