Word: inventors
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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DIED. GERRY THOMAS, 83, inventor of the TV dinner; in Phoenix, Ariz. He came up with the idea as a marketer for poultry company C.A. Swanson & Sons, after seeing that Pan American Airways was developing a flat aluminum tray for hot in-flight meals. Since Swanson had a post-Thanksgiving bird surplus, he devised a multi-compartment tray for the turkey and accompanying side dishes. Introduced in 1954 with a package resembling a TV set, the dinners took off, selling 10 million that year and earning Thomas a raise, a spot on Hollywood's Walk of Fame and hate letters...
...much of the entertainment at major technical meetings over the next few years," Kilby later wrote. But Kilby ended up with the last laugh, not to mention a Nobel Prize in 2000. Bragging wasn't his style, though, and he often credited Intel's Robert Noyce as the co-inventor of the integrated circuit, despite the fact that Noyce's silicon device came six months after Kilby filed his patent. (Another Kilby co-invention: the pocket calculator.) He was a consummate engineer who cared more about solving problems than getting rich or famous. For that, the information age will forever...
When the plain-paper copying process was discovered in 1938, its revolutionary potential was so little appreciated that Inventor Chester Carlson wound up selling it to the Battelle Memorial Institute, a research foundation in Columbus. In 1947, Battelle in turn sold the technology to the company that eventually became Xerox. Now Battelle has warned that Carlson's invention, which has become not only an office fixture but something of a technological wonder, will by the end of the decade be capable of duplicating the delicate shadings of U.S. currency. In a study for the Federal Reserve, Battelle predicts that...
Animation Aardman Animations www.aardman.com The official site of the studio that created Wallace, the hapless yet well-meaning, cheese-loving inventor, and Gromit, his faithful canine companion, is a treasure trove of video clips (click on Show Reel) and links to character sites including www.wandg.com, where you can get a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Wallace & Gromit's first feature-length movie, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, due in theaters in October...
DIED. CHARLIE MUSE, 87, executive for baseball's Pittsburgh Pirates who developed the modern batting helmet; in Sun City Center, Fla. At the behest of Pirates general manager Branch Rickey, he (along with inventor Ralph Davia and designer Ed Crick) came up with a plastic model to protect the batter's head. Despite initial image concerns of players, the helmets were soon adopted by the Pirates and other major league clubs...