Practical genius has often gone unrewarded

There is a compelling fascination in the magic moment at which an original idea crystallizes in someone's head and a new invention is born. Sometimes the moment comes after months or years spent searching for a solution to a clearly-defined problem; in other cases a need is perceived and in answer provided for it almost simultaneously. But a flash of inspiration does not necessarily bring a happy or a prosperous future. For many gifted inventors, legal wrangles over patents have soured the original joy of their discoveries; others, as employees of large corporations, never saw any of the profits made from the commercial exploitation of their ideas. Still others made large fortunes from their inventions, yet have continued to live their lives much as before.

Wired up

The creator of the first wire coat-hanger received not a cent for his ingenious invention. In 1903, Albert J. Parkhouse (Left) was working for a company in Jackson, Michigan, manufacturing wire lampshade frames. The firm was too mean to provide enough hooks for its employees to hang up their coats, so one day, rather than throw his coat on the floor, Parkhouse twisted a piece of wire into the now familiar shape of a hanger. His employer noticed what he had done, immediately grasped its potential and patented the idea. Parkhouse just went on working on the shop floor of the factory.

Keeping time

In the early 19th century, many inventors were competing to produce a practical and reliable metronome - a device that helps musicians learn to play in a steady rhythm. Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel (Left), a German organ-builder living in Amsterdam, finally solved the problem in 1814. He placed two weights on a clockwork-driven pendulum, one fixed and one sliding, on opposite sides of a pivot. Each time the pendulum swings, it produces a clicking noise. The position of the sliding weight affects the speed of the pendulum, so musicians can adjust the metronome to produce a series of clicks at the speed they wish to play. Unfortunately for Winkel, he demonstrated his invention to Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, a German rival in the same field. Maelzel unscrupulously patented the metronome in his own name and began mass production. The gadget, which still uses the principle devised by Winkel, has been known as the Maelzel Metronome ever since.

Seeing in the dark

One dark and foggy night in 1933, Percy Shaw (Left), a road-repairer from Yorkshire, England, was struck by the sight of a cat's eyes gleaming brightly in the light of his headlamps. This everyday experience inspired him to develop a revolutionary form of road-marking for night driving - a convex lens backed by an aluminium mirror. These are embedded in a rubber pad, which is mounted in a cast-iron housing set into the road. The lens and mirror are positioned so as to direct reflected light from car headlamps back to the driver. A year after he first had the idea, Shaw was ready to patent his invention. He opened a factory to manufacture his 'catseyes' in 1935. Although the invention made him rich and famous, his style of life was completely unaltered. He continued to lead a simple existence in a small house in his native Halifax, and spent only a faction of his vast accumulated wealth.

Riding on air

The pneumatic rubber tyre was first invented by a London engineer, Robert W. Thomson (Left), in 1845, for use on the wheels of carriages. The invention failed to catch on at first - rubber was expensive at the time, so Thomson's idea was not marketable. In 1887, the pneumatic tyre was re-invented by John Boyd Dunlop, a Scottish-born veterinarian, who had a flourishing practice in Ireland. Dunlop noticed how his son's tricycle jarred its rider as the solid rubber tyres bumped over the unevenly paved streets of Belfast. He substituted rubber tyres filled with air and patented his invention the following year. Dunlop's pneumatic tyres were an immediate success with bone-shaken cyclists and should have made him a millionaire. But he sold his interest in the business in 1896, and gained nothing from any of the subsequent developments of his invention, such as the automobile tyre - a multi-million-dollar business that made his name famous throughout the world.

The duck that astounded Paris

In 1738, Jacques de Vaucanson presented duck to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris. Like any duck, this one rose upon its legs, threw its neck to the right and left, plumed its wings, made gurgling noises, played in the water with its bill, took food from people's hands and occasionally excreted. But this duck was completely mechanical.

Unfortunately, Vaucanson's duck no longer exists, only the description and drawings of it he published. The gilded-copper duck 'digested' food, but only after a fashion - it dissolved food in its stomach, but absorbed no energy in the process, and needed to be wound up.

Vaucanson must have been an inventor of considerable genius; the same year, at the age of 29, he demonstrated an automation that could faultlessly play 12 'airs' on the flute. He also built a shepherd that could play 20 tunes on his pipe with one hand and beat a drum with the other.

However, he did not restrict his talent to such whimsical projects. Applying himself to the challenge of building a machine to weave silk, he eventually designed an important forerunner of the modern automated loom. It was guided by perforated cards and powered by animals or falling water.

Gripping stuff

While hunting, Georges de Mestral, a Swiss aristocrat, was inspired to create an alternative to the zip by the burs that attached themselves to his clothes and to his dog. Examining the burs under a microscope, he realised they were covered in thousands of hooks and tried to reproduce the effect. The result, patented in 1956, was two strips, one with tiny loops to which the little hooks on the other clung. Although his fastener was made from nylon, de Mestral named it Velcro, from the French velours, 'velvet', and croche, 'hooked'.

Why is failure good for creativity?

You learn from your failures, said Charles Kettering, the engineer who invented the automobile self-starter and who, at his death, had developed more major inventions than any other American except Thomas Edison. He used to point out : "From the time a kid starts kindergarten to the time he graduates from college, he will be examined three or four times a year, and if he flunks once, he's out. Now an inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. An inventor treats his failures like practice shots."

The founder of IBM, Thomas J. Watson, gave the same kind of advice, "The way to succeed is to double your failure rate." Two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling said that the trick in coming up with good ideas is to think up a great many ideas and just get rid of the bad ones.

Tickets, Please

In its early days horse-drawn rail was used almost exclusively to carry freight, but passengers rode on the Swansea to Oystermouth rail service shortly after it began operating in 1807. As train travel developed, it quickly became a matter of class. Panelled coaches, which had well-padded seats, allowed first-class passengers to relax in comfort. Second-class coaches were simpler in style but usually had seats, while passengers in third-class open wagons were showered with soot spewed out by the engine.

The first railway station opened at Liverpool Road, Manchester, in 1830, complete with a waiting room and separate booking halls for the first and second class passengers. A booking clerk named Thomas Edmondson, who worked on the Newcastle & Carlisle Railway, invented preprinted tickets in 1837 to save him writing out the same details for each traveller. For passengers unable to read, some railways issued tickets with pictures that represented major towns: a sack of cotton for Manchester, a fleece for Leeds, after their main industries.

As more rail services were set up, timetables became necessary. The first was published in 1838 by the London & Birmingham Railway. In 1839 George Bradshaw, a Manchester printer, produced the first timetable of all services. The growth of timetabled railway operations led to standard time being adopted throughout the UK. However, they gave 'no guarantee of punctuality', as the South Yorkshire Railway admitted in 1851.

Biro: Ball-Point Inventor

A sharpened quill (the shaft of a feather) was the standard writing instrument for over 1000 years before the fountain pen was invented in 1884. Then in the 1930s, Ladislao Biro, a Hungarian artist and journalist, invented the ball-point pen in Budapest. He fled when the Second World War broke out, eventually reaching Argentina.

With the help of his brother Georg, a chemist, he perfected the pen and manufactured it in Buenos Aires during the war. In 1944 he sold his interests in the invention to one of his backers who produced the Biro pen for the Allied air forces, because it was not affected by changes in air pressure. Ladislao Biro disappeared into obscurity, although his name became a household word throughout the world.

Air Conditioned Fact

Fanning air over blocks of ice to cool a room, a task performed by slaves for an 8th-century caliph (Khaleefah) of Baghdad, was one of the methods employed in the ancient world to subdue heat. The first true air conditioner, featuring humidity control, powered ventilation as well as mechanical refrigeration, was patented in 1902 by the American inventor Willis Carrier. The addition of a dust filter in 1906 to improve the air in textile mills led to the term 'air conditioning'.

Air conditioning was initially invented by Willis Carrier to help a Brooklyn, New York, printer to get decent colour during hot, humid weather. Air conditioning wasn't used for cooling people until 1924 when it made its debut at the J L Hudson Department Store in Detroit, Michigan.