On November 20, 1866, James L. Haven and Charles Hittrick received U.S. Patent No. 59,745 on a Whirligig or Bandalore, or what we today call a Yo-yo:  

This was not the first yo-yo — they have been known since at least 440 B.C., but it is the first patent on an improvement to a yo-yo.

The yo-yo business has had its ups and downs in the U.S. In 1928, Pedro Flores, a Filipino immigrant, opened the Yo-yo Manufacturing Company in Santa Barbara, California. Shortly thereafter entrepreneur Donald F. Duncan purchased the Flores Yo-Yo Corporation. In 1946, the Duncan Toys Company opened a yo-yo factory in Luck, Wisconsin. The Duncan yo-yo was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1999.

In a trademark case in 1965, a federal court held that “yo-yo” had become a part of common speech and that Duncan no longer had exclusive rights to the term. The expenses incurred in this legal battle as well as other financial pressures, the Duncan family sold the company name and associated trademarks Flambeau, Inc., which operates the company today.

On November 19, 1895, U.S. Patent No. 549,952 on a paper pencil issued to Fredrick E. Blaisdell:

 Frederck Elijah Blaisdell was born in 1864 at Chicago, Illinois. Disinterested in his family’s newspaper business, he left his family in Chicago, and spent some time in Philadelphia, before ending up in London. He obtained a job as a clerk, and one night while working late and alone the only pencil he had split and broke the wood around the lead so that all he had was the lead itself. As he continued working, the lead kept breaking. He finally tore off a strip of newspaper and wrapped it spirally around the lead which kept the lead from continually breaking and allowed him to complete his work. As the point of the lead would wear down, he would untwist some more of the spirally wrapped paper until he had another point working.

This gave him his big idea for his greatest invention, the Blaisdell Pencil. He found financing and patented the idea, and Blaisdell pencils were manufactured and marked for decades.

On November 18, 1997, U.S. Patent No, 5,687,752, issued on a Dining Table Having Integral Dishwasher.

The patent details numerous advantages, not the least of which is eliminating the “tedious task of carrying dishes to the sink”:

Numerous advantages are realized with the construction of the present invention. For example, the user no longer has to bend over to load dishes into the dish-carrying racks of the dishwasher. Additionally, the dishwasher may be placed within a kitchen counter top or table. If the dishwasher has a dining surface projecting from the top of the basin (e.g., is placed within a table), household members simply place their dirty dishes in the raised rack assembly rather than having to perform the tedious task of carrying dishes to the sink. Moreover, the inventive dishwasher is space conscious, which is primarily attributable to the elimination of the side opening and corresponding swinging door.

On November 14, 1967, Theodore H. Maiman received U.S. Patent No. 3,353,115, on a Ruby Laser System — the first functioning laser:

In April 1957 Jun-ichi Nishizawa proposed the concept of a “semiconductor optical maser.” Charles H. Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow of Bell Labs began work the same year on “optical masers,” and filed a patent application in 1958. At a conference in 1959, Gordon Gould coined the term “LASER” in the paper he presented “The LASER, Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.” However, it was Theodore H. Maiman who operated the first functioning laser on May 16, 1960, at Hughes Research Laboratories, ahead pf Townes, Schawlow, and Gould.

On November 12, 1856, Henry Bessemer received U.S. Patent No 16,082 on the Manufacture of Iron and Steel:

After the issuance of the patent was announced in the September 1856 Scientific American, William Kelly wrote a letter to the magazine in October 1856 describing his earlier experiments and suggesting that Bessemer’s process may have been derived from Kelly’s work. Keely applied for an obtained U.S. Patent No. 17,628 on June 23, 1857.

The financial panic of 1857 resulted in Kelly’s bankruptcy, and he was forced to sell his patent. Kelly’s patent and Bessemer’s patent were licensed for steelmaking in Pennsylvania, at the Cambria Iron Works. Kelly received only about 5% of the patent royalties paid to Bessemer, and Bessemer’s name was used for the process, as Bessemer already had a well-known steel making operation in England, and Kelly, although a trained metallurgist, was little known.

The Bessemer Process was an important method of making steel for nearly a century, until it was replaced by the open-hearth process.

There is a long history of celebrating our veterans in the patent collection. U.S Patent No. D3103 issued on July 14, 1868, to J. P Reynolds on an Emblem Design for veterans:

U.S. Patent No. D9129 issued to A.J. Dallas on a Badge for veterans

U.S. Patent No. D16768 issued to Charles Hall for a Memorial Plaque for veterans:

U.S. Patent No. D18,517 issued to Fred Arnold on a Veteran’s Grave Designator:

U.S. Patent No. D53251 issued to Isaac Nicholson for an Emblem, Button, Ring, Pin, or Article of Similar Nature for veterans:

U.S. Patent No. 1,429,506 issued to Frederick Herr on a Door Mat Operated Animated Figure, featuring a veteran:

U.S. Patent No. 1,466,112, issued to Paul Biersach on a Grave Marker for veterans:

U.S. Patent No. D87,962 issued to Willam Gardner on a Badge for Spanish War Veterans:

On November 10, 1970, Samuel Young received U.S. Patent No. 3,538,508 on a Combination pillow and Crash Helmet:

The patent explains that the device “is useful as a courtesy pillow for the comfort of airline passengers, and doubles as a crash helmet which may be put over the head of the passenger when he is forewarned of an impending crash landing.”

The pillow never caught on, but one can imagine the eerie sight the FAA and NTSB would encounter investigating a crash and finding all these bodies with their heads in a cloth envelope.