Alexander Graham Bell’s patent for the telephone was issued on March 7, 1876,
by the U.S. Patent Office. Three days after receiving his patent. Bell succeeded
in getting his invention to work when he accidentally spilled some acid. He spoke
the famous sentence, “Mr. Watson…Come here…I want to see you”. His assistant Thomas Watson, listening at the receiving end of the device in an adjoining room,
heard the words from Bell clearly and rushed to his aide.

 
Thomas A. Watson

The master copy of Bell’s patent for the telephone

  
           Jules Gabriel Verne (February 8, 1828 – March 24, 1905)

French author Jules Verne is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand
Leagues Under the Sea (1870), A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864),
and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). He wrote about space, air, and
underwater travel before the invention of such means of transportation. Jules
Verne is often referred to as the “Father of Science Fiction”. Some of his books
have been made into live-action and animated films and TV shows.  

Eskimo Pie, the chocolate-covered vanilla ice cream bar wrapped in foil, was the invention of Danish Immigrant Christian Kent Nelson, who was a school teacher
and the owner of a candy store. He got the inspiration for Eskimo Pie in 1920 in
Onawa, Iowa when a young customer couldn’t decide between ice cream or a
chocolate bar. After experimenting with various ways of coating bricks of ice
cream with melted chocolate, Nelson began selling his discovery under the
name of “I-Scream Bars”.

In 1921, he filed for a patent and obtained an agreement with local chocolate
maker Russell C. Stover to mass-produce them under the new trademark
name “Eskimo Pie” (a name suggested by Mrs. Stover). After a patent was
issued to the Eskimo Pie Corporation on January 24, 1922, Nelson soon
franchised the product. One of the earliest advertisements for Eskimo Pie
appeared in the November 3, 1921 issue of the Iowa City Press-Citizen,
shown below.

Christian Kent Nelson

Thomas Crapper was a plumber and founder of Thomas Crapper & Co. in London
who, contrary to popular beliefs, did not invent the flush toilet. He did however do
much to pioneer the popularity of the toilet, and developed some important related inventions,such as the ballcock or float valve, thus producing the first one-piece
pedestal flushing toilet. 
 

George J. Laurer, an engineer at IBM, is considered the inventor of the
U.P.C. or Uniform Product Code in 1973. In June of 1974, the first U.P.C.
scanner was installed at a Marsh’s supermarket in Troy, Ohio. The first
product to have a bar code included was a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit
chewing gum.