I would consider it distinct. The floating gate is a crucial difference, and one that makes it useless as a switching element but fantastic as a non-volatile storage element.
Wikipedia says that “only” 2.3 sextillion flash cells have been produced so far. But I think it’s likely they’ll beat the standard MOSFET over time. A modern iPhone CPU contains about 8 billion MOSFETs. But 64 GB of flash has about 170 billion FG-MOSFET cells. Flash-heavy devices already dominate so it’s probably just a matter of time before the counts catch up.
Harvey Ball was a commercial artist who designed the Smiley Face in 1963 for a program to increase employee morale at the State Mutual Life Insurance Co.
It is the yellow and black one we are all familiar with, and in my opinion has been the origin for the multitude of variations that we see - think emojis. And from those came any number of other emojis.
But as a note, people had been making similar drawings of the human face since antiquity. But Mr Ball is the originator of the one that is found around the world.
Maybe not the most important, but maybe the most popular and widespread.
As long as you specify Crayola’s introduction in 1903, sure. Crayons go back centuries, but in the late 1890s, there were several companies developing and making paper-wrapped wax crayons.
Wouldn’t Dinsdale’s comment apply to the sandwich? People had been putting fillings in bread for generations before Sandwich’s name was attached to the concept.
Art Fry from 3M became famous and rich for his “invention” of the Post-It note, but the same article was in existence prior to 1974 when 3M claimed the invention. Moore Business Forms, a company I don’t think exists any more, had slips of paper with removable pressure sensitive adhesive at least by 1973. I know one use for them was on hospital medical clipboard charts.
Also, the concept for Post-It was brought to 3M by an outside individual who claims 3M stole the concept from him. According to Wikipedia, 3M paid him a settlement after being sued.
What 3M did do better than anyone else was market the product.
Not even that.
In south africa, about 80% of the doors operate by a door handle.
The rest operate by a sliding motion, or by a pull-handle.
at most 1%, i’d say more like 0.5%, use door Knobs.
Doorknobs weren’t even invented until 1878, well after the fax machine (1843) and the Analytical Engine (1837).
My contribution is MATCHES invented by John Walker in 1826. They have remained largely the same, they are a type of self-contained “device” and they come in packs full of them.
The bread clip, invented by Floyd G. Paxton. According to wikipedia, he never did get a patent for it. Don’t feel bad for him, though. He did get patents for the machine that makes the clips, bags the bread, and applied the clip. He also still manufactures the majority of the clips in the US.
Archytas of Tarentum – the screw thread. Archytas is sometimes called the founder of mechanics and was a contemporary of Plato. So says these people. I don’t know enough to dispute them.
It would have to be a very commonplace object that everyone uses or encounters, yet because of that we rarely acknowledge it.
As the OP asks for “object”, it need not be a complicated device.
Screws. Zippers. Nails. Cloth woven from fibers.
I submit for consideration, the humble: the Brick
You find them (made out of various materials) everywhere.
In walls. In floors. Sidewalks. Roads even.
Slowly being replaced by concrete, but still everywhere
Of course the OP asks for the PERSON. " What individual designed"
For ubiquitous objects where we know the designer, the answer would simply have to be
Gideon Sundback, who designed the first actual working model of a zipper, or Whitcomb Judson who invented it but never made a product out of it.