VELCRO: Swiss engineer Georges de Mestral was exercizing his dog in the Alps one summer’s day in 1941. He got annoyed at the thistle seeds sticking to his clothes and the dog’s fur. Looking closer, he found tiny hooks on the seeds were wrapping themselves around loops on the clothing and fur. He recreated the effect using nylon and polyester. The name Velcro came from French words for velours (velvet) and crochet (hook).
GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM: GPS was developed by the U.S. Air Force in 1978 to pinpoint bombing targets. The system, commonly called sat nav, now uses four satellites to set the position of any vehicle equipped with a device. Today a driver can find which exit to take without having to read road signs or a map.
BARCODES: In 1948, American student Bernard Silver overheard a food store boss complaining about his inability to quickly and accurately track what was being sold at the company’s tills. Bernard and a fellow student adapted the Morse Code system of dots and dashes to come up with lines of different length and were granted a patent.
It took IBM another 24 years to develop the idea into a commercial success. Today barcodes make possible supermarket self-service checkout lines.
MICROWAVE OVEN: American defense contractor Percy Spencer was working on aircraft radar in 1946 when he noticed a chocolate bar in his pocket had melted. He realized microwaves from the radar must have done it.
The idea was quickly developed into a safer version. The first microwave went on sale to caterers in 1947 for $40,000 – equivalent to $3.8 million today.
POST-IT NOTE: Spencer Silver was working for a Minnesota manufacturing company in 1969 when he was given the job of coming up with a heavy-duty glue. He failed – his glue did not even leave a mark on the surfaces to which it loosely stuck to.
Four years later colleague Arthur Fry was looking for a way to mark places in his hymn book. Ordinary bookmarks fell out, while gluing them in place damaged the book. Then he recalled Spencer’s unsticky glue and together they devised PostIt Notes.