Word: patently
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Still, the intuitive flash did not occur to any of the scientific greats of the day, but to the 26-year-old patent examiner on the fringes of physics. That insight was shown in two remarkable papers that appeared during 1905 in the German scientific journal Annalen der Physik. The title of the first ? "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" ? did not begin to reflect its eventual significance. Later it would become known as Einstein's special theory of relativity...
Before the scientific world could even begin to digest these assertions, the journal published still another communique from the young patent examiner. Einstein had devised an equation that accounted for Brownian motion, the random, zigzagging movements of microscopic particles within liquids (named after the Scottish botanist Robert Brown, who first observed it in 1827). Einstein suggested that the specks were being jostled by molecules in the liquid, an idea that finally convinced many early 20th century skeptics of the atomic nature...
After seven years Einstein at last merged from the patent office and won a succession of academic posts in Prague and Zurich. Finally, on the ve of World War I, in spite of his distaste for Germany's pervasive militarism, he accepted a professorship at the University of Berlin and an appointment to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute as head of a newly created center for theoretical physics...
...plowing. For millennia, farmers have turned over the land with plows before tilling it, cultivating it and putting in seed. Now, machines are available that combine several operations in a process called minimum tillage. One machine, on which Garst and a partner hold the patent, cuts a V-shaped furrow in unplowed land and simultaneously drops in seed. Says Garst: "In a sense, we have gone back to the pointed stick...
...tool, the company had test-marketed it and converted about 75% of its wrenches to his design. Sears went on to sell 26 million of the wrenches for a profit of about $44 million. Roberts sued. In December 1976 a federal jury decided that Sears had obtained Roberts' patent fraudulently. The jury awarded him $1 million. Last week, after Sears had fought the decision all the way to the Supreme Court and lost, Roberts, now a 33-year-old grocer in Red Bank, Tenn., collected his money. What will he do with it? "I'll do some more...