One of the world’s greatest conveniences was conceived amid its greatest hardships. Sylvan Goldman, son of immigrant pioneers, invented the shopping cart. His brilliantly simple idea was born in Oklahoma during global economic calamity and as the Great Plains were recovering from ecological disaster. “The simplest inventions are always the most fascinating,” Larry O’Dell, the...
John Philip Holland’s brilliance transcended time, distance — and depth. Widely proclaimed “the father of the modern submarine,” Holland was born in Ireland and moved to the United States as a young man with the audacious idea of building a “submergible torpedo boat” that could fight silently beneath the waves. He succeeded in remaking maritime...
Fred Morrison launched a leisure lifestyle with his fantastic plastic flying saucer. His contribution to recreation all over the globe gained air only after he dodged death by piloting fighter-bombers in the skies over Europe in World War II. Morrison, a Southern California beach boy, first called his spinning discs Flyin’ Cake Pans and then...
Eugene Polley should be ther most popular man on the planet. He left a legacy of leisure that billions of people lean upon each and every day, often for hours on end. Polley, a self-taught mechanical engineer from Chicago, invented the television remote control in 1955. He envisioned a future in which we never had...
