Word: inventor
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...university has no idea under what circumstances it was donated. Or what about a giant rhinoceros skull? Is that worth keeping? How about the samples of earth dug up from the English Channel, pre-Chunnel? Hundreds of beautiful hand-drawn lecture slides made by the scientist Sir Ambrose Fleming, inventor of the diode? Or the slides of microscopic fossils, which don't seem to take up much space until you consider there's a quarter million of them in storage...
...greater degree of income equality, but it's certainly no guarantee. To take one small example, if we, as a society, decide that new areas of knowledge are eligible for strict patents and copyrights - and that that knowledge can then be cloistered within the lineage of the inventor - it will be easier for a parent to pass wealth onto a child and, as a consequence, keep that family richer than others. Economic systems matter. But we're still the ones in control...
After Alfred Nobel's death in 1896, his executors discovered that the inventor of dynamite had secretly set aside about 35 million Swedish kronor (about $225 million today) for the creation of five annual prizes to honor those who bestowed the "greatest benefit on mankind" in science, literature and diplomacy. On Oct. 9, President Barack Obama won the most coveted and controversial of them all: the Nobel Peace Prize...
Though Edison is usually cited as the father of the lightbulb, it's more accurate to give Edison credit as the creator of the first commercially viable lightbulb. As early as 1820, inventors were homing in on the principles that would lead to the first electric illumination. An English inventor, Joseph Swan, took their early work and developed the basis of the modern electric lightbulb in 1879 - a thin paper or metal filament surrounded by a glass-enclosed vacuum. When electricity runs through the filament, the bulb glows. Edison refined the design, trying filaments made out of platinum and cotton...
...called the Anchor Bar. The wings were the brainchild of Teressa Bellissimo, who covered them in her own special sauce and served them with a side of blue cheese and celery because that's what she had available. Except for the occasional naysayer who claims to be the true inventor, these facts are reasonably undisputed. The rest of the story is anybody's guess...