Free Republic

LONDON – John Shepherd-Barron, the Scotsman credited with inventing the world's first automatic cash machine, has died after a short illness. He was 84. Shepherd-Barron died peacefully in northern Scotland's Raigmore Hospital on Saturday, .. Shepherd-Barron once said that he came up with the idea of the cash dispensers after being locked out of his bank. He also said that his invention was inspired by chocolate vending machines.

David Croslin is the President of a newly created company called "Innovate the Future." His company is seeking to assist both established and startup companies using his professional network and reputation, experience of an internationally acknowledged innovation leader to help companies grow, make the right connections, and become successful internationally.

When it comes to computer technology, thin is always in. It’s indisputable that the thinner, lighter, clearer, the better when dealing with the latest computer gadget. This keyboard is the epitome of the high standards expected of the technological version of the fashion industry. It’s based on image as well, that is, image recognition technology.

MONROE, Utah – Walter Fredrick Morrison, the man credited with inventing the Frisbee, has died. He was 90. State Rep. Kay McIff, an attorney who once represented Morrison in a royalties case, says Morrison died at his home Tuesday. McIff is from Richfield, Morrison's original hometown. Morrison sold the production and manufacturing rights to his "Pluto Platter" in 1957. The plastic flying disc was later renamed the "Frisbee," with sales surpassing 200 million discs. It is now a staple at beaches and college campuses across the country and spawned sports like Frisbee golf and the team sport Ultimate.

Eighth grader Charlie Sobcov wants to stop birds from dying in collisions with windows, but he doesn't want to ruin anybody's view. For his latest school science fair project he has invented painted, plastic decals that can be placed — discreetly — right in the middle of a window pane. "This paint is a colour that birds can see but humans can't," he said Wednesday on CBC Radio's All in a Day. "It's like putting a big stop sign in the middle of the window." The colour is ultraviolet, beyond the range of colours visible to humans. That means the...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Dr. Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade and sparked the multimillion dollar sports drink industry, died Tuesday of kidney failure. He was 80. His death was announced by the University of Florida, where he and other researchers created Gatorade in 1965 to help the school's football players replace carbohydrates and electrolytes lost through sweat while playing in swamp-like heat. A question from former Gator Coach Dwayne Douglas sparked their research, Cade said in a 2005 interview with The Associated Press. He asked, "Doctor, why don't football players wee-wee after a game." "That question changed our lives," Cade said....

Vincent DeDomenico, a pasta maker who paid homage to his hometown when he invented the Rice-A-Roni side dish, has died at age 92, his family said. Along with his brothers, DeDomenico, the son of Italian immigrants, created the packaged blend of rice and pasta during the early 1960s. It became known as "the San Francisco treat" through television advertisements that featured a catchy jingle and cable cars. After the brothers sold the Golden Grain Macaroni Co. to Quaker Oats in 1986, DeDomenico bought 21 miles of railroad track in Napa Valley and several vintage passenger cars that he put to...

Inventor from Erie, P.A. teams up with leading cancer center. The work has been quietly been going on for the last three years in a no-frills laboratory in Erie, Pennsylvania. Inventor, John Kanzius, working with Jim and Charlie Rutkowski, have been perfecting a device that will kill cancer cells with a radio frequency. This humble workspace could soon become the epicenter of one of the most stunning scientific breakthroughs in cancer treatment in years. Using the Kanzius RF machine and special nanoparticles, it appears that cancer cells can be targeted and killed without harming the rest of the body. This...

MOSCOW - Sixty years after the AK-47 went into production, Mikhail Kalashnikov says he does not stay awake at night worrying about the bloodshed wrought by the world's most popular assault rifle. "I sleep well. It's the politicians who are to blame for failing to come to an agreement and resorting to violence," Kalashnikov said Friday at a ceremony marking the birth of the rifle, whose initials stand for "Avtomat Kalashnikov." It was before he started designing the gun that he slept badly, worried about the superior weapons that Nazi soldiers were using with grisly effectiveness against the Red Army...

ROBERT Hooper's anti-gravity machine is a huge weight on his mind, and on that of his wife Pat. The part-time inventor is almost certain it can sort out the world's woes. He says the machine's free, clean and endless power could end global warming -- or it would if only someone would take him seriously and build the damn thing. "It's driving me up the bloody wall," he says.

Troy Hurtubise is facing eviction after his Trojan invention flopped.Troy Hurtubise really put everything he had into his bulletproof combat suit. He spent two years and tens of thousands of dollars developing the Trojan, hoping to sell it to the Canadian or American armed forces, or to another friendly government. Now he's broke. Last month, he promised the Trojan would give soldiers in the field affordable, lightweight protection from bullets and bombs alike. He had worked all kinds of extras into the body armour: a ventilation system and multiple lights in the helmet, pepper spray that could shoot from the...

TOKYO (Reuters) - The Japanese inventor of instant noodles, a snack that has sold billions of servings worldwide since its launch, died on Friday at the age of 96, according to an official at Nissin Food Products Co., the company he founded. Born in Taiwan in 1910 while it was under Japanese occupation, Momofuku Ando ran clothing and other companies in Taipei and Osaka early in his career. He was inspired to develop the world's first instant noodle product after coming across a long line of people waiting to buy fresh "ramen" noodles from a black market stall during the...

A Pole wins American Inventor contest 19.05.2006 Poland’s Janusz Liberkowski has won one million dollars in the American Inventor show on ABC TV. His invention is a novel car seat protecting children in car crashes from all directions. An engineer by profession, 52 year-old Liberkowski lives in San Jose, California with his wife and one-and-a-half-year old twins. His older daughter died in a car accident seven years ago, which inspired him to work on a new type of baby car seat.

The surest sign that Stanley Hiller Jr. was just a kid when he designed the first helicopter to fly successfully in the Western United States was the field on which he chose to test it in 1944: the football stadium of UC Berkeley. A novice helicopter pilot, he learned to fly the bright-yellow contraption dubbed the Hiller-copter while it was anchored to several cars. He wore what might pass for safety gear among 19-year-olds: a T-shirt and slacks.

APTOS, Calif. -- Howard "Red" Hickey, who invented the shotgun offensive formation while coaching the San Francisco 49ers, died Thursday, his son said. He was 89. Jeffrey Hickey didn't disclose the cause of his father's death. Hickey coached the 49ers from 1959-63, going 27-27-1 before resigning three games into the 1963 season. He also played for the Cleveland Rams' 1945 championship team and was an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Rams' championship club in 1951 before spending two decades as an assistant and scout for the Dallas Cowboys. The Arkansas native made history in 1960 when he combined elements...

Welsh inventor's 'mosquito' makes noisy teens buzz off A Welsh inventor claims to have found the perfect solution to rowdy youngsters: noise. Howard Stapleton says his device, the "mosquito", emits an uncomfortable high-pitched ultrasonic sound that can be heard by children and teenagers, but almost no one over 30. It has successfully driven away noisy teens from a grocery store in the Welsh town of Barry and a shop in Stapleton's home town Merthyr Tydfil, making smoking, lounging and foul-mouthed youths a thing of the past.

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) - Hal O. Anger, a pioneer of nuclear medicine who is credited with inventing the gamma camera, has died. He was 85. Anger died at his Berkeley home on Oct. 31. Called a "quiet genius" whose "instruments are still in common use today, diagnosing cancer, metabolic disorders and heart disease" by the Society of Nuclear Medicine, Anger developed his most noted invention in 1957, employing gamma radiation to depict metabolic processes within a living body. Born May 24, 1920, in Denver, Anger cultivated an interest in electronics as a boy growing up in Long Beach, where he...

October 5, 2005 -- A pep rally to be held tomorrow in Central Park for Al Gore's new cable channel for young people, Current TV, is sold out, according to the event's Web site. Tickets were free... Instructions on the site indicate that there might be some tickets at the entrance available to those who register online for a waiting list. The event, called "Take Back TV," is scheduled to run from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Central Park's Rumsey Playfield, best known as the site of SummerStage. Besides promoting the fledgling cable channel, Take Back TV is aimed...

RALEIGH, N.C. - Robert A. Moog, whose self-named synthesizers turned electric currents into sound and opened the musical wave that became electronica, has died. He was 71. Moog was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, detected in April. He died Sunday at his home in Asheville, according to his company's Web site. A childhood interest in the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments, would lead Moog to a create a career and business that tied the name Moog as tightly to synthesizers as the name Les Paul is to electric guitars. As a Ph.D student in engineering physics...

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...