Free Republic

PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. (AP) - Gerry Thomas, credited with inventing the TV dinner more than a half-century ago and giving it its singular name, has died at the age of 83. Thomas died Monday, Terry Crowley at Messinger Mortuary said Wednesday. He had a long bout with cancer, relatives told The Arizona Republic. Thomas was a salesman for Omaha, Neb.-based C.A. Swanson and Sons in late 1954 when he had the idea of packaging frozen meals in a segmented tray. "It's a pleasure being identified as the person who did this because it changed the way people live," he said...

Jack Kilby, the US inventor of the integrated circuit which formed the basis of the computer chip, has died aged 81, after a battle with cancer. The discovery that transistors could be shrunk on to a single block of silicon paved the way for personal computers, mobile phones and microwave ovens. Experts rank his contribution to invention alongside those of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. It spawned a multi-billion dollar industry and earned him a Nobel Prize. Jack Kilby grew up in Kansas and fulfilled his ambition to become an engineer at the University of Illinois. He joined Texas Instruments...

A WACKY inventor from Marlow Bottom may quit the village amid fears that he is the victim of a hate campaign after his house was vandalised. Lyndon Yorke named Britain's most eccentric man was dismayed to find a World War Two gun turret, which had adorned the roof of his garage, smashed on the ground. Just three days earlier, the 55-year-old had received an anonymous letter claiming to speak on behalf of neighbouring residents, which asked him to remove the aircraft memorabilia because it was causing house prices to plummet.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Philip Morrison, one of the inventors of the atomic bomb and an early leader in the search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, has died. He was 89. Morrison, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, died in his sleep at his home Friday, the university announced Monday. "Phil was a great physicist," said Marc Kastner, chairman of the physics department at MIT. "He was spectacular at explaining physics to the public, too." Morrison was the host of "The Ring of Truth," a six-part series aired by PBS, and a book review editor for...

We licked the beaters and didn't have anyone telling us we were going to become deathly ill from eating batter with raw eggs in it! At Easter time, we had our dyed Easter eggs in a nest on the counter and they sat out at room temperature for the week after Easter. We would peel one whenever we felt like it. I Can't Believe We Made It"! If you lived as a child in the 40's, 50's, 60's or 70's. Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have... As children, we would ride...

Inventors Find Niche in Office Toys Sat Mar 5, 2005 By Jan Paschal NEW YORK (Reuters) - If your bonus wasn't big enough, tell MoneyMan. Or if you'd like to tell your boss where to go, download your disgust -- without fear -- on BossMan. Sure, they're plastic and just 6 inches high. These new action figures -- and techie counterpart GeekMan -- are "everyday superheroes" that give adults a way to let off steam or get some laughs out of the absurdities of the workplace. "We're geeks. So we started with GeekMan," said Shirley Yee, 29, who creates the...

DETROIT -- Robert Kearns, the inventor of intermittent windshield wipers, has died of cancer, according to family members. He was 77. Kearns died Feb. 9 at his home in suburban Baltimore and was buried in Michigan on a misty Valentine's Day. "It was going just enough to have the wipers going on intermittent. I thought, `How appropriate,'" Kearns' daughter, Maureen Kearns, told the Detroit Free Press for a story published Friday. Kearns was born in Gary, Ind., and grew up in suburban Detroit. He was a member of the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency,...

Some of you may have heard of this guy when I posted about his Bear-proof Suit. Others may have seen him on t.v. with his Fire paste. It is now my pleasure to bring you the latest product of this modern Edison. Well, no, not Edison. I don't think Edison was a nutjob. Anyway, enjoy the rubber science for what amusement it's worth. Troy Hurtubise has done the seemingly impossible with his newest invention and defied all known rules of physics, he says. The Angel Light—Hurtubise claims the concept came to him in a recurring dream—can reportedly see through...

An Israeli invention that provides early warning for earthquakes could enable every homeowner to rest easier. The size of a shoebox and costing $170, the sensor device is the brainchild of Meir Gitlis, who has been inventing things since... well, he was a child.

Ancel Keys, the University of Minnesota public health scientist whose nutrition and diet research ultimately fed thousands of soldiers and saved countless people from heart disease, died Saturday. He was 100. Perhaps best known as the creator of the K ration, the ready-to-eat meal U.S. troops carried in World War II, Keys had a knack for taking on some of the largest public health issues of the 20th century at just the right time. He led a landmark study on starvation that helped guide relief efforts in postwar Europe. Major studies on coronary disease helped put him on the cover...

<p>Tim Berners-Lee directs the World Wide Web Consortium, a forum established to lead the Web to its full potential.</p> <p>ESPOO, Finland (AP) -- The MIT scientist credited with inventing the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, has been awarded the first Millennium Technology Prize.</p>

ESPOO, Finland - The scientist credited with inventing the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, has been awarded the first Millennium Technology Prize. The award, a euro1 million cash prize, equivalent to $1.2 million, is among the largest of its kind, and was awarded for the first time. It was established in 2002 and backed by the Finnish government. Berners-Lee is recognized as the creator of the World Wide Web while working for the CERN (news - web sites) Laboratory in the early 1990s, the European center for nuclear research near Geneva, Switzerland. His graphical point-and-click browser, "WorldWideWeb," was the first...

Pots of soybeans don't bubble on Stan Gasperson's stove anymore. The creator of a soybean-based hair dye has cooked up something else -- a product made from corn, rosemary and other herbs that Gasperson claims grows hair. RestHAIRation is actually an entire hair care system featuring shampoo, conditioner and spray gel. The owner of Creative Cuts at 813 E. Grove St., Bloomington, took more than two years to develop the products. He tested RestHAIRation on about 2,000 willing participants, including himself. "Rogaine is the only hair growth product approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Because FDA won't approve...

Harold von Braunhut, Seller of Sea Monkeys, Dies at 77 By DOUGLAS MARTIN Harold von Braunhut, who used comic book advertisements to sell whimsical mail-order inventions like Amazing Sea Monkeys, tiny shrimp that pop to life when water is added, died on Nov. 28 at his home in Indian Head, Md. He was 77. His wife, Yolanda, said that he died after a fall but that the exact cause was not known. Mr. von Braunhut was to quirky inventions what Barnum was to circuses. His X-Ray Specs, which advertisements said allowed wearers to see through flesh and clothing, are still...

PHILADELPHIA -- Philadelphia artist Jim Reed grew up figuring that everyone's grandfather had invented something. So he didn't feel like his grandfather John Mauchly was in any way out of the ordinary, even though Mauchly is widely credited with having invented the computer. Reed remembers watching the television broadcast of Neil Armstrong's 1969 walk on the moon. As Armstrong scuffled across the dusty lunar surface, his grandfather fielded congratulatory phone calls from people who knew the space mission wouldn't have been possible without computers. But Reed also remembers a grandfather who was "depressed, harassed by a series of legal struggles...

Troy Hurtubise says he doesn’t feel the heat, even with a 2000° C blowtorch flame blazing at his head. Hurtubise has invented a physics-defying substance called fire paste, which he claims eliminates the cross-transfer of heat and prevents anything coated in the substance from burning up. Not only does the paste stop heat from getting through, it cools to the touch within 20 seconds of the fire source being removed. When dry the paste, Hurtubise said, is non-toxic four times lighter than aluminum, more heat resistant than titanium, and costs only pennies to make. Don’t take his word for it...

Care packages of candy bars and beef jerky are a welcome taste of home to soldiers in Iraq, but an inventor has something they could really use: a way to make them invisible to the eyes of the enemy. Ray M. Alden has designed a system of tiny lenses and mirrors he says could be used to camouflage almost any object - a tank, a Humvee or an individual soldier - in any environment.With such a device,fighting forces would have less to fear from the urban combat they still face in the treacherous alleys of Iraqi cities, where they are...

<p>Inventor Dean Kamen promised that his superscooter would change the world. Then reality hit - hard.</p> <p>It would be premature to call the most talked about scooter in the history of humankind a huge bust. But the Segway has always been ahead of its time. For a decade, Dean Kamen fiddled and tested and tinkered with his invention, finally stage-managing its public unveiling in December 2001. He figured 2002 would be the year that the Segway Human Transporter launched a transportation revolution. Executives at companies like FedEx and Amazon.com would behold his high tech superscooter and wonder how they'd managed all these years without it. The US Postal Service and police departments across the nation would overwhelm the company with orders. And behind Segway's institutional customers, Kamen envisioned a long line of consumers from around the globe, checkbooks in hand. Maybe not all 6 billion of us would clamor at once to own one, but to him that seemed only a matter of time. After all, he was hawking the Segway as not merely a faster way to get from here to there but also a solution to urban congestion, air pollution, and dependency on fossil fuel. To prepare for the onslaught, Kamen leased a 77,000-square-foot factory near his home in Manchester, New Hampshire,and began puzzling through the logistics of running round-the-clock shifts. He hired scores of lobbyists, who spent much of last year trying to persuade state legislatures to rewrite their laws to permit his scooter to operate on city sidewalks. Before he'd sold a single one, Kamen blithely forecast that by the end of 2002, his enterprise would be stamping out 10,000 machines a week. Meanwhile, his best-known backer, venture capitalist John Doerr, predicted Segway would rack up $1 billion in sales faster than any company in history.</p>

JERUSALEM (AP) - Uzi Gal, inventor of Israel's most famous contribution to the arms industry - the Uzi submachine gun - has died at age 79. Relatives said Gal died Saturday in Philadelphia. He will be buried Thursday in Kibbutz Yagur, a collective farm near Haifa where he lived for many years. The 9-mm weapon has became a mainstay of armies and secret services from Jerusalem to Washington. It has also proven popular among criminals in many countries and has appeared in many action movies. Over 1.5 million Uzis have been manufactured, and exports of the weapon has earned Israel...

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - The man credited with inventing clumping cat litter and perfecting Liquid Paper correction fluid was remembered on Thursday by family and friends as a gifted scientist whose work found wide use. Polymer chemist William Mallow also worked on the space shuttle's heat-resistant tiles, developed a way to artificially age Scotch whiskey and improved the rubber skin used on robot dinosaurs at Walt Disney World. Mallow, a native of Akron, Ohio, died of leukemia at age 72 in a San Antonio hospital on Tuesday. He worked for the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio until his 1998...