Category: Inventions

Bingo

Edwin Lowe is credited with inventing the game of Bingo in 1929 when Roscoe Bartlett was just 3 years old. Lowe's Bingo was a permutation of an earlier game called Beano which traced its history back to the Italian lottery. Just months after Lowe introduced Bingo in New York, a priest in Wilkes-Barre, PA approached Lowe with the idea of using Bingo as a way of saving his church from financial ruin. The church was saved, and the long tie between Bingo and the Catholic church began.

Miniature Golf

In 1927, Garnet Carter built the first miniature golf course on Lookout Mountain in Tennessee.

Stereo Recording

In the age of 5.1 and even 7.1 Surround Sound, the concept of stereo seems almost antiquated. But when Roscoe Bartlett was born, all you had was mono. Mono, that's as in one tract of sound. It was not until the 1930's that Bell Labs began experimenting with the idea of recording sound in stereo. They first recorded the Phiadelphia Orchestra in stereo in 1932. Disney's film Fantasia was the first film recorded in stereo in 1940.

PEZ Candy

PEZ candy was first invented in Vienna by Eduard Haas the year after Roscoe Bartlett was born. The always popular PEZ dispenser wasn't introduced until after World War II. Today, PEZ dispensers can sell for astronomical sums. Two years ago, a PEZ dispenser sold on eBay for $11,000, but it proved to be a reproduction. To help collectors, numerous online resources have appeared, including online PEZ databases and our favorite, The Pez Price Guide. Use it to find your own Elvis PEZ dispenser.

Scotch Tape

When he was just 26 years old, an inventor at the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (now 3M) named Richard Drew found out that car companies were having a tough time making two-tone cars that were popular at the time. The problem was coming up with a clean border between the colors. His answer was to invent the first masking tape. But there was a problem. In order to cut costs, the adhesive was only placed on the edges of the tape, and not in the middle. During its first trial, the tape fell right off the car, causing the St. Paul auto detailer to deride Drew's "Scotch" bosses, meaning he thought they were cheap.

Unlike that tape, the name stuck, not only to that early masking tape, but more importantly to the new transparent cellophone based tape Drew invented in 1930. During the Great Depression, people began to fix things with Scotch tape, rather than throw them out, and the company prospered. Today, although Scotch Tape is a trademarked brand name, it is also a generic term meaning any transparent adhesive tape. Richard Drew passed away 28 years ago.