28 Interesting Facts about Inventors - mental_floss List Show Ep. 329 | Mental Floss

Hi, I'm John Green. This is my salon. Welcome to Mental Floss Video. And did you know that

Alfred Nobel was inspired to start the Nobel Prize when he read his own obituary in a newspaper

that ran it by mistake? Nobel didn't like the headline, The Merchant of Death is Dead, a reference to the fact that

he invented dynamite, so he found a new legacy for himself. The internet may tell you that

this is a myth, but it's not. See the video description below for proof. Anyway, that's

That's the first of many interesting facts about inventors I'm going to share with you

today in this video, brought to you by our friends at GEICO

Inventor of vaccines and pasteurization Louis Pasteur was the head of the science program

at a French school during the mid-1800s. He once told students that anyone caught smoking would be expelled

73 of the school's 80 students resigned. Steve Jobs has claimed that taking calligraphy courses in college was one of the reasons that the earliest Macintosh computers were successful

They were the first ones with beautiful typography. Take that, opponents of cursive. Just kidding, I'm also an opponent of cursive

John Harvey Kellogg and W.K. Kellogg, who invented cornflakes, ran a medical facility called the Battle Creek Sanitarium in the late 1800s

Some of their patients included Amelia Earhart, Mary Todd Lincoln, and Henry Ford

Speaking of Henry Ford, when President Woodrow Wilson asked him to run for a seat on the

Senate Ford responded with a letter that read if they want to elect me let them do so but I won make a penny investment He lost the election Another inventor turned politician was Samuel Morse who created the telegraph and Morse

code and he was also kind of the worst. For instance, he ran for mayor of New York with the slogan

No immigrants, no Catholics. Alexey Pajotanov invented Tetris in 1984, but because he lived in the Soviet Union at

the time, he had to cede its rights to the government. He did eventually receive royalties in the 90s, but the Tetris theme song is still in the public domain, which is why you're hearing it right now

By the way, I'm sorry we didn't pay your royalties, Tetris guy, but we didn't pay the Duck Hunt people royalties either

A man named Yoshiro Nakamatsu has 3,377 patents, which is about three times what Thomas Edison accumulated

Some of his patented inventions include a toilet seat lifter, a self-defense wig, and a musical golf putter

Also, he claims to have invented the basic technology for the floppy disk, which is all fine and good, but where would we be without musical golf putters

In 1893, a woman named Margaret A. Wilcox invented an early car heater

She also had a patent for a washing machine that would wash both clothes and dishes. Why didn't that happen

The inventor of the breadclip, Floyd Paxton, thought of the idea when he was on an airplane and needed to reseal a bag of snacks, so he created one on a whim out of a piece of plastic

Needless to say, this was before planes had Wi-Fi. Among his many eccentricities, Nikola Tesla hated pearls

He wouldn't speak to a woman who was wearing them, and if his secretary came to work wearing pearls she was sent home for the day He also once fell in love with a pigeon presumably because they never wear pearls But let move on Benjamin Franklin had many hobbies including taking popular tunes and rewriting their lyrics

to turn them into drinking songs. In 2012, fifth grader Clara Lazen created a model for an undiscovered molecule, tetranitratoxycarbon

Her teacher sent a picture of it to a chemist, and now it has been published in scientific journals

Garrett Morgan, who lived from 1877 to 1963, invented many things with only an elementary school education

He created some of the earliest gas masks and hair straightening creams

He also improved pre-existing sewing machines and traffic signals. We have a sewing machine on our wall. We love it so much it's guarded by a lion

The lint roller was created by Nicholas McKay after he struggled to clean his suit before chaperoning a high school dance

A man named Paul Brown invented the upside-down squeeze bottle in 1991

he sold his product to everyone from shampoo companies to ketchup companies to NASA

And then four years later, he sold his company for $13 million

A similar inventor, Robert Taylor, came up with the idea to put soap in a pump bottle

And to make sure that no one stole his idea, he bought about a hundred million of those pump bottles

Then after cornering the market for pump bottles in about six months, he made about $25 million

Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavon were trying to develop a 3D plastic wallpaper when they

accidentally invented something else, bubble wrap. Douglas Engelbart designed the computer mouse but the invention never made anybody rich because its patent expired before it became a commonly used technology Some advice for inventors out there be ahead of your time but not too far ahead of your time

Paul Winchell invented the first mechanical artificial heart. He was also the original voice of Tigger from Winnie the Pooh and Gargamel from the Smurfs

Alright, let's speed up. The snowmobile was invented by Joseph Armand Bombadier, who started working on it when he was just 19 years old

Marguerite Knight was only 12 when she invented a device for textile mills that would stop them if they got stuck

Leo Fender, who invented the first mass-produced electric guitar, never learned to play the guitar

John Landis Mason invented mason jars. He also created the first screw-top salt shakers

Before that, you just poured salt onto your food willy-nilly. The guy who invented the saxophone was named Adolph Sax

A man named Heinrich Dreiser invented both heroin and aspirin. And the inventor of the smiley face symbol, Harvey Ball, was paid just $45 for the design

And finally, I return to my salon to tell you that I don't know who invented the fire hydrant

because it's believed that the patent for the fire hydrant burned in a fire

Thanks for watching Menopause Video, which is made with the help of all of these nice people. And thanks again to Geico, who made this video possible

Hopefully, we've inspired you to invent a convenient ketchup holder and become a millionaire

As we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome