Honors for 'People Who Changed the World'
Sept. 15 -- Imagine a modern world without personal computers, animated film features or radio. Or without fiber optics, home-tests for diabetics or even titanium golf clubs.
It seems almost impossible.
That’s why seven pioneers in those fields were inducted this week into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
‘People Who Changed the World’
“We look for people who changed the world,” says David Fink, president and CEO of the Akron-based hall and museum.
“Steve Wozniak invented the first personal computer,” he says. “It’s indisputable” that he changed the world.
“Fessenden invented AM radio,” Fink adds. “He’s the first person who ever broadcast over the airwaves,” in 1906.
Walt Disney “really did invent the animated film business … and perfected the process to make those films.”
Disney, the founder of ABCNEWS.com’s parent company, is being honored for patenting the multiplane camera.
Helen Murray Free recalls thinking, “My God, we’ve changed things,” after she and her husband Alfred invented a way for diabetics to test their conditions without going to a doctor or hospital.
J. Franklin Hyde got into the hall for purified glass technology that ultimately led to fiber optics, and William Kroll created a method for processing titanium and zirconium. (For more on all the inventors, see the Hall of Fame Web link.)
A Select Few
There have been millions of men and women behind the more than six million patents the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded since 1790. This year’s seven inductees make just 161 inventors in the Inventors Hall of Fame since it was established by the patent office and the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Associations in 1973.
The first year, Thomas Edison was inducted for inventing the electric light. More recently, a Hall of Fame board has selected for induction inventors behind six key patents each year. The six get picked from candidates nominated by the public and screened twice by 38 science and professional organizations.
