Michael Jackson:
Dennis
Um, read the article in the link in the OP?
Of course not! That would be cheating.
Paul Winchell, a well known ventriloquist in the 50s and 60s patented an artificial heart among other items.
Of course Jarvik denies any similarity in the devices.
Me. Kinda.
Well, me and the rest of the team. Dates back to my time as a lab worker. Named as inventor on the patent and given a ceremonial one pound note* (which I probably still have somewhere, and which I think related in some way to my formally handing over all intellectual property rights to my employer. Though I think they owned them anyway.)
j
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- yep, that long ago.
In my haste to trumpet my own achievements I had not read the article about Michael Jackson and his “specially designed shoes that gave the illusion of his leaning beyond his center of gravity.”
Interesting. This video claims to date from 1900. Believable, as it’s subject died in 1928.
Incidentally, it’s from Little Titch that we get the words titch, titchy etc (at least according to Stephen Fry on QI).
j
I don’t know how many magicians and other entertainers have used such gimmicks, some even closer to Jackson’s patent, but they may not have used that trapezoidal wedge design for the cleat. Or like many patents, it wasn’t original but no one ever patented it or challenged whoever did. I imagine Jackson’s patent offers very limited protection for the same design, not the same results.
I suppose titch and titchy are more well known in the UK than here in the US.
I suppose, as well, if that was recorded in 1900, it may just be the case that Little Titch is the first performer of that type of act to have been filmed. Who knows how far back this sort of act goes.
I’ll buy that. Means quaintly small.
j
According to a poster published by the UP Patent office, Lincoln is the only president to hold a patent. You’d think that Thomas Jefferson, who invented several items, would have at least one, but apparently he wanted to make his inventions free.
Mark Twain has a couple of patents
https://www.uspto.gov/about-us/news-updates/mark-twain-granted-his-first-patent-december-19-1871
He patented a Bra Strap !
I hold four patents, myself. And have applied for a couple more through my current employer.
Threads like this seem to be intended to solicit contributions from others.
Former NFL kicker (and member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame) Jan Stenerud patented a design for a kicking tee (and marketed that tee) in the early 1980s, specifically constructed to be easier to use for soccer-style kickers. The tee had offset pegs for holding the ball, with a lower peg on the side of the tee where the kicker’s toe would be swinging past (the lower peg kept the kicker from striking the tee itself with his toe).
The idea behind Jackson’s shoes was that they were completely hidden and did not hinder normal walking and dancing. When needed, the singers lined up along a faint line on the stage and slid the shoes into the fixed cleats, all as part of the choreography. They all leaned forward together and the audience was astonished at the result.
Dennis
My name is on a patent, but it’s one of those company-owned patents which has the name of a more or less random selection of engineers who worked on the related project. I was amused to discover that once you have a patent, you receive a whole new class of junk mail, from scammy companies that want to sell a framed copy of your patent or some useless “certificate”, printed on genuine cardboard.
According to this article, Boston Guitarist Tom Scholz “…has nearly 36 patents to his name.”
Apparently Julie Newmar has three patents, one for a type of “brassiere” and two with the identical title “Pantyhose with shaping band for cheeky derrier relief”.
Konrad Adenauer, first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, was a hobby inventor and had, among others, patents for a soy sausage (very prescient!) and a bread for “time of need” (Notzeitbrot), baked with maize.
Heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson patented a type of wrench.
And while I don’t think there was ever a patent, aviator Charles Lindbergh helped develop (along with Nobel Laureate Alexis Carrel) an early perfusion pump, which was designed to keep organs alive outside the body.