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Posted on 07/03/2026 6:36:35 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
You know about the lightbulb and the iPhone. This is the unknown story of another ingenious creation that changed a nation.
Over the past 250 years, America has produced the world’s most valuable inventions.
The lightbulb. The internet. The telephone and the iPhone. Since the founding of the United States, we have built airplanes, refrigerators and Costco. We dreamed up the microchip and we gave the world chocolate-chip cookies.
But the greatest American innovation that you won’t ever find on a list of America’s innovations might just be one that you see every day.
It’s an unsung idea that changed a nation and spread all over the world—and it was driven by one guy.
In the 1950s, around the time Jonas Salk cracked the polio vaccine, a metallurgist named John V. N. Dorr became the champion of a different lifesaver: a white line on the right side of the road.
For years, Dorr told anyone who would listen—and everyone who wouldn’t—about his simple way of making highways safer. A line on the side of the road, he argued, would give drivers somewhere to aim their eyes at night other than oncoming headlights. It was both cheap and incredibly effective, which made it a brilliant investment. Over time, his revolutionary stripe of paint would reach billions of people and guide drivers across the planet.
To this day, you depend on it without knowing anything about it.
“I’ve never found anybody that knew about it,” said Barbara McMillan, Dorr’s great granddaughter.
It was also unknown to me until I wrote about another ingenious creation...
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
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Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
Those white lines helped me drive to Alaska safely. If the line disappeared, slow down, frost heave ahead!
Can’t remember where I saw this today, but I like it:
Socialism thinks of how to slice up one pie among ever more people more equitably.
Capitalism is all about baking more pies.
Botts’ bots were an even better invention when it comes to road safety.
The invention of the sewing machine doesn’t get enough credit. The first mass produced sewing machines were invented by Americans Elias Howe and Isaac Singer and they became wealthy.
Even today, most people are touching something sewn by a sewing machine 23 hours and 50 minutes a day. The 10 minutes is while showering.
I saw a video that had orange glow in the dark lines on the highway.
And your headlight high beams were activated by your left foot on a button on the floor board.
A few months back I flashed my lights to an oncoming pickup truck because it had four headlights. It turned on the other TWO. Six headlights on the front. Totally blinding me.
After he passed he flipped on two more on the back top of the cab facing backwards.
It was some big F250 size truck.
FYI, I have a 2011 Tacoma. Nothing against pickup trucks .
Everyone should have one .
Which reinforced driving one-footed after the clutch went away!
I don’t like the word, “Capitalism.”
I was invented by Communists to belittle the Free Market. You can’t say a ‘Free Market’ is a bad thing, so you have to make up a word you can smear.
Capitalism isn’t even right. Capitalism, technically. suggests it’s all about money. It’s not and never has been. The Free Market is about earning value based on providing value to people who want it. Nothing could be freer.
Yeah, the big trucks with all the extra lights are especially annoying. It must be a very special person who drives like the person you just mentioned. The rest of us should just get off the road, because it really belongs to him.
I like it - and I also like the places that add the rumble strips on the right and in the center line areas so, in snow or other bad weather, you can tell if you are crossing the lines even though you can’t see $#!t.
Biggest problem is that, if they ain’t kept fresh, the idiot assist cars that have “auto lane centering” don’t work so good.
Does this bike make my butt look big?
I remember driving into Denver one night on a new asphalt just before the lines were painted. That was one awful experience, & this was before the new, excessively bright headlights.
I miss the old hood ornaments some times!
..................
My grandmother was said to drive by aiming her hood ornament.
Used to drive home at night in an area that was famous for it’s ONE, TWO, or THREE line fog. No right solid lines in the area. Challenging.
They've also started "texturizing" the paint, turning them into audible lines. Much gentler than traditional rumble strips.
You’ve got to admit, the standard trans and clutch are a great anti-theft device......
Most guys that have that many lights use them for plowing snow in the winter
Especially when they have big lights on the rear.
So you can see when you are backing up.
I plow my driveway with a Cab Tractor
The first thing I do when I get in the cab is turn on every light. Including the flashers.
I have to dump snow across the road from my driveway.
It is amazing how impatient some drivers are.
I have had multiple people drive around me because they didn’t want to wait ten seconds
I had one guy last year go around me when I was backing up.
I only have Eight lights on the tractor. Then he beeps his horn at me.
Some people are just A holes.
I wear my sunglasses at night, so I can, so I can
Watch you weave then breathe your story lines
I wear my sunglasses at night, so I can, so I can
Keep track of the visions in my eyes
I wear my sunglasses at night, so I can, so I can
See the light that’s right before my eyes
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