CREATIVE INSTANCES & MODERN CONVENIENCES

Looking for an effective way to apply deodorant on himself, George Thomas found his mind drifting to a ballpoint pen in action.

Eureka! The idea for a roll-on deodorant was born!

When electric typewriters first appeared on the scene, their speed was the cause of an unwelcome increase in typing errors.

Executive secretary, Betty Nesmith, thought up a way of camouflaging these typographical flaws. She developed a mixture of water-based paint and a colouring agent that blended perfectly with the paper generally being used.

This was in 1951. The idea took flight and within a few years, Betty Nesmith was working all hours to deal with the avalanche of orders for her concoction.

She established the Liquid Paper Corporation, and eventually, in 1979, sold it to Gillette for $47.5 million.

Sylvan Goldman is credited with inventing a four-wheeled vehicle outnumbered only by the ubiquitous automobile.

In 1937, as the owner of two supermarket chains, he noticed that customers generally purchased no more than what could be carried in their two arms.

Ergo, the birth of the shopping cart, or four-wheeled trolley! An immensely more comfortable way to spend more money.

It was pre-World War 1. Clarence Birdseye was a fur trader in Labrador.

Whilst catching fish in sub-zero temperatures, he observed that the fish would freeze hard and fast as soon as they were pulled free from under the ice.

What amazed him, however, was that when thawed, the fish became tender and moist, not too different from fresh fish. This cursory observation incubated within him for a decade.

What emerged eventually was the frozen food business as a multi-billion dollar commercialised venture.

Quick freezing had actually been practised for centuries by the Northern Aborigine people, but Clarence Birdseye’s insights set off a chain reaction across the globe.

[Excerpted from the 'Ideas on Ideas' edition of The Braindancer Series of bookazines by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]