Test your I.P.I.Q. (Archive)

Where did the idea for VELCRO come from?

George de Mestral invented VELCRO after taking his dog for a walk in the mountains and coming home covered in burrs. Inspecting the burrs, he noticed that they had little hooks that caught in the loops of the fabric of his pants. The hook and loop system of VELCRO was ultimately based on the burr. The word VELCRO is a combination of the words velour and crochet.

What is a “Separable Fastener”?

The “Separable Fastener” was the patent for the modern day zipper. The “zipper” was first used on boots (galoshes) and tobacco pouches and only later was it used for clothing. The patent issued in 1917.

Could something as simple as a Pizza Saver be patented?

Yes. In fact, there is a patent for the circular moulded plastic thing, also known as a “pizza saver.” Its advantage is that it prevents a pizza from hitting and sticking to the inside of a pizza box top. The pizza saver was invented by Carmela Vitale in New York. The invention is United States Patent No. 4,498,586 and it issued on February 12, 1985.

Why do we use the “@” symbol in email addresses?

The “@” symbol was initially used in email addresses so that a person receiving an email from a friend in a small local network could tell who was “at” which computer on the network. The sender’s name appeared before the “@” symbol and the name of the computer they were using appeared after it. The first email was sent from one computer to another right next to it and the message was “QWERTYUIOP.”

Why is the two-piece swimsuit called a Bikini ?

The Bikini is named after the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific where the United States had a nuclear bomb test site. The French designer Louis Réard introduced this daring piece at a fashion show in Paris in July, 1946.

How did the trade-mark SKI-DOO come about?

In the late 1950s Joseph-Armand Bombardier developed a small vehicle for individual use that he called the SKI-DOG that was capable of traversing snowy terrains. However, a typo was made in the brochures given to distributors and the “g” was mistakenly printed as an “o”. The name SKI-DOO stuck.

How do they get the filling into a Fig Newton cookie?

In the 1890s, James Henry Mitchell invented a machine comprising a funnel within a funnel. The inner funnel provided filling and the outer funnel provided dough. When the filling and dough were squeezed out a very long filled cookie was created that was cut into bite size pieces. Kennedy Biscuits used the machine to mass-produce its Fig Newton Cookies.

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