fishart™
A selection of original creative intellectual property art based on historical patents.
Stethoscope
Prior to the Reiger stethoscope, there were bell-type stethoscopes and diaphragm-type stethoscopes, but no one had combined the two. This invention was the first to use a valve that allowed a physician to switch between the bell and diaphragm.
Vacuum Tube
The Fleming valve was the first practical vacuum tube and the first thermionic diode, whose purpose was to conduct current in one direction and block current flowing in the opposite direction. It was the forerunner of all vacuum tubes, which dominated electronics for 50 years.
Chinese Typewriter
In the early 1900s it was completely impractical to produce a typewriter with the tens of thousands of Chinese characters needed for ordinary writing. The Yutang invention solved the problem by overprinting portions of the characters, sufficient to form about 90,000 characters.
Battery
The Weston cell is a wet-chemical cell that produces a highly stable voltage suitable as a laboratory standard for calibration of voltmeters. Invented by Edward Weston in 1893, it was adopted as the International Standard for EMF from 1911 until superseded by the Josephson voltage standard in 1990.
Refrigeration Unit
In 1918, Rueben Bechtold and Alfred Mellowes produced a refrigeration machine compact enough to fit under an appliance. Before that, the units were too large and so placed outside the home. Their company was unsuccessful, but was bought by General Motors and renamed Frigidaire, which improved this design to build the first household refrigerators.
Telephone
Francis Blake invented a carbon microphone in 1877 for use in the telephone. Alexander Bell hired him, and his work with Emile Berliner produced a microphone that was standard with the Bell company for many years.