invention
Discoverers who found light in urine and hydrogen in the air.
Big Chief Mason
The one person on earth who knew Garrett Morgan's 1914 smoke hood really worked was Garrett Morgan, inside it, in disguise as a Native American assistant to a white man selling it as his own.
Fifty Copies
The only Black member of the Edison Pioneers, the man who drafted Bell's telephone patent and fixed the lightbulb, wrote love poems on the side.
Egg Yolk, Rose Oil, Turpentine
One night in October 1537, a French army surgeon ran out of the boiling oil he was supposed to pour into gunshot wounds, and improvised a dressing of egg yolk, rose oil, and turpentine.
The Man With an Instinct for the Regrettable
What are the odds that the same man invented leaded gasoline and the chemical that punched a hole in the ozone layer?
The Man Who Counted the Hurdy-Gurdies
The man who designed the first computer spent a quarter of his working life fighting street musicians. Guess which project he finished.
The Man Who Refused to Lose a Thought
What does a Victorian mathematician invent when he refuses to lose a single thought to the dark?
The Half-Sovereign
What do you do when the greatest engineer of the Victorian age inhales a gold coin during a magic trick for his children?
The Man Who Chased His Own Equation
What do you do when the blackboard you've been chalking equations onto turns out to be a moving cab?
The Chair That Would Not Let Him Eat
What does a Renaissance physician discover when he rigs his dining chair to yank the table away the moment he has eaten his ration?
The Cure He Boiled Away
In 1747 he proved two oranges and a lemon cured scurvy. Then he spent forty years boiling the cure into a syrup that didn't work.
The Reluctant Emperor
What kind of emperor reads fourteen languages, pays his own train fares, and orders a hundred telephones on the spot?
The Steersman Goes Home
What does it look like when the man who taught Wall Street to predict the future can't predict where he parked?