Bright Ideas Drove Invention of Mundane Things

Right now Steve Jobs is being remembered as the man who made technology personal and pleasing. But as time passes the iPod, iPhone and iPad will become part of our lives, no longer remarkable. This is the same journey that other inventions took, from bright, new concept to items in everyday use.

The London Science Museum is taking a close look at ordinary items like pencils, paperclips and zippers to highlight the geniuses behind their invention. In the exhibit, Hidden Heroes: The Genius of Everyday Things visitors get the story behind the items in life we take for granted, like rubber bands.

The companion online exhibit includes 44 common objects like light bulbs and clothespins and is a great way to learn the history and innovation of things we see all the time.

When a graphite deposit was discovered in northern England in the 16th Century, the pencil was born. The material which was first mistaken for lead (hence the term lead pencil) was first used by shepherds to mark their sheep. Then children began using it in school so they could erase their mistakes. In 1779 Carl Wilhelm Scheele proved that graphite is actually carbon not lead.

In the 1950s a couple of engineers were monkeying around with a new type of wallpaper with a textured plastic surface. On a plane trip, Al Fielding and Marc Chavannes noticed that the clouds around them seemed to cushion the plane as it descended. That’s how they got the idea for sealing air into plastic to use in packing. That’s the story of the birth of Bubble Wrap.

William Middlebrook invented the paper clip in 1899, drawing his inspiration from a 17th Century British physicist. Using Robert Hooke’s principle of elasticity, he had to wait until machines that cut and bent steel were invented. Then he created the utilitarian and aesthetic marvel we use to keep papers from separating.

Martin Keyes was fascinated by what he could do with left over wood chips. He learned how to make pulp by adding steam. Then he figured out he could mold the fibrous material into any shape. That’s how the egg carton hatched.

Without Gideon Sundback our pants would fall down. He is the man who invented the zipper. Cleverly figuring out that to stay closed a good zipper needed to have identical teeth on both sides with a convex top and a concave bottom. When they are pushed together the stack vertically like soup bowls in a cupboard. Every child knows how to use a zipper. But few people have solved the puzzle of how it works.

By mixing caoutchouc with sulfur, Charles Goodyear discovered how to vulcanize rubber. About the same time British Rubber baron Thomas Hancock began licensing the process and one of his licensees created the rubber band. Stephen Perry’s invention has demonstrated the combined the elasticity of rubber with simple, elegant appeal that has remained largely unchanged for over 150 years.

Not every bright idea has remained the same over time.

Building off the innovation of the zipper Robert Vergobbi applied the mechanism to plastic bags using heat or adhesive in 1954 and not to store food but to carry pencils. Then a clever 5th Grade student named Robert LeJeune discovered that sealed plastic bags can store food and slow the spoiling process. Nine years later Dow Chemical patented the Ziploc bags and the rest is history.

Just because the complexity of products and technology is increasing rapidly doesn’t mean that the simpler things all around us don’t have stories to tell.

The things we marvel at today will be forgotten in the future or relegated to the same footing as the tin can, tea bag or bar code.

Photo: Rubber Band Ball, by Sam Hunt.