On April 22, 1924, U.S. Patent No. 1,490,987 issued to Harry E. Soref on a lock casing:

Soref’s innovation was making the lock body from a plurality of steel laminations secured together with rivets — a construction still widely used 102 years later.

Soref was born in 1887 Bilozirka, Ukraine, and emigrated to the U.S. where he worked as a lock smith. When he was unable to find a taker for his lock design, he co-founded the Master Lock company with two friends — Samuel Stahl and Phillip E. Yolles, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to build his locks. Mr. Soref held more than eighty patents for locks and lock-making machinery.

He died in 1957 in Phoenix, Arizona, aged 70.

On April 21, 1857, U.S. Patent No. 17082 issued to Alexander Douglas on a Bustle:

While necessity may be the mother of invention, the ‘082 patent is proof that necessity is not always, the mother of invention.

The earliest U.S. patent reference to a bustle was U.S. Patent No. 4897, issued December 17, 1846, predating Douglas’ invention by nearly 11 years. Douglas’ patent was the start of a frenzy as inventors hustled to the Patent Office invention with their bustles, and 15 more bustle patents issued in the next two years: U.S. Patent Nos. 17,602, 20,263, 20,681, 20,801, 20,865, 21479, 21,806, 22,124, 22,133, 22,197, 22,242, 22,426, 22,532, 22,875 and 23,681. While inventors’ interest in bustles died down before the end of the 19th century, it has never completely gone away, with U.S. Patent No. 12582183 issuing on March 24, 2026, on a Bustle Device to Be Received Under Garments.

On March 14, 1899, U.S. Patent No. 621195 issued to Ferdinand Graf Zeppelin on a navigable balloon:

Ferdinand Graf Zeppeli was born July 8, 1838, he was a Count and general. He served as an official observer with the Union Army during the U.S Civil War, visiting the balloon camp of Thaddeus Lowe, and then made his first ascent in a balloon in St. Paul with former Army balloonist John Steiner, which was the inspiration of his later interest in aeronautics. Zeppelin’s ideas for large airships were first recorded in a March 25, 1874, diary entry.

After resigning from the Army in 1891, at the age of 52, Zeppelin devoted himself to designing an air ship. He patented the design in Germany in 1895 and in the United States in 1899. After initial succes, the name Zeppelin came to be commonly used to refer to all forms of rigid airships. Zeppelin also created the world’s first commercial airline, using his air ships.

On March 7, 1865, U.S. Patent No. 10609 issued to Charles Miller

Miller’s sewing machine which, was able to automatically make buttonholes, whip stitches, and herringbone stitches, was an improvement of his earlier patented machine (U.S. Patent No. 9139), the model of which survives in the National Museum of American History:

On March 2, 1926, U.S. Patent No. No. 1,575,263 issued to Winifred Guglielmi aka Natasha Rambova (born Winifred Shaughnessy in Salt Lake City):

Natasha was a dancer, costume designer, actress, and the second wife of silent screen movie actor RUDOLPH VALENTINO (born Rodolfo Guglielmi).

Valentino first met Rambova while filming Uncharted Seas in 1921. They become friends, and eventually a romantic relationship developed. They married on May 13, 1922, in Mexico, which resulted in Valentino’s arrest for bigamy, since he had not been divorced for a full year, as required by California law at the time. Rambova and Valentino lived separately until they were legally remarried at the Lake County Court House in Crown Point, Indiana on March 14, 1923.

On March 1, 1988, U.S. Patent No. 4,728,061 issue to Caldwell Johnson, Maxime Faget, and David Bergeron on a Spacecraft Operable in Two Alternative Flight Modes.

The patent was owned by Space Industries, Inc., which was formed by one of the co-inventors, Maxime Faget, for the purpose of building a privately owned space station called the Industrial Space Facility (ISF). Faget was a retired chief of engineering and operations at NASA. The company lobbied the United States government to be an anchor tenant in the proposed space station, and the Reagan Administration requested funding from Congress, which was never approved. The company merged with Calspan Corporation, which in turn merged with General Dynamics Corporation,

On February 28, 1893,  Edward G. Acheson received U.S. Patent No. 492,767 on the Production of Artificial Crystalline Carbonaceous Materials (silicon carbide):

Edward Acheson worked with Thomas Edison before setting up his own lab, where he began a search for an industrial abrasive. While attempting to make artificial diamond, he heated a mixture of carbon and clay, and found that the mixture small blue crystals he named carborundum, believing them to be a carbonized form of corundum. He later found out the material was silicon carbide. In 1894, he started the Carborundum Company in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, to produce grindstones, knife sharpeners, and various abrasives. Two years later, on May 19, 1896, obtained a patent for an electric furnace suitable for making carborundum  Electrical Furnace (U.S. Patent No. 560,291). Two years after that, on December 6, 1898, he obtained a patent for an improved article of carborundum (U.S. Patent No. 615,648). In 1926, the U.S. Patent Office named carborundum as one of the 22 patents most responsible for the industrial age.

In the mid 1890s, Acheson discovered that overheating carborundum produced almost pure graphite — a useful lubricant. On September 29, 1896, he obtained U.S. Patent No. 568323 on the Manufacture of Graphite.

Acheson was central to establishing at least five industrial corporations, along the way receiving a total of 70 patents.

On February 26, 1991, U.S. Patent No. 4,995,379 issued to Joan Brooks of New Orleans, Louisiana, on an Instant Face LIft:

As the ‘379 patent admits, the basic idea was old, being disclosed in U.S. Patent Nos. 3,782,372 and 4,239,037, but suffered from the unsettling defect of deforming the user’s face when he/she turned his/her head.

On January 27, 1970, U.S. Patent No. 3,492,131 issued to James M. Schlatter on Peptide Sweetening Agents (aspartame):

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved aspartame for use in certain foods in 1981, soft drinks in 1983, and as a general-purpose sweetener for foods and beverages in 1996. The European Union approved aspartame in 1994 as a food additive. It is currently approved for use in more than 100 countries.

Aspartame, like other artificial sweeteners, was discovered by accident when the researcher licked his fingers to separate some papers and noticed the sweet taste and investigated. Apparently to be successful in the artificial sweetener business, you have to be a little casual with personal hygiene, and a bit lax in laboratory safety procedures.

On January 25, 1799, Eliakim Spooner, received U.S. Patent Nos. X232 on a MACHINE FOR PLANTING CORN, BEANS, ETC, and X231 on a MACHINE FOR CUTTING CORN, BEANS, ETC. X232 was the first U.S. patent on a planter.

The records of these patents, issued before the Patent Office assigned them numbers, were destroyed in a patent office fire, so little is known beyond the titles. A little more is know about Eliakim: he was born April 7, 1740, in Dartmouth, Bristol, Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was a farmer. He served in the Revolutionary War as a private, Captain John Wheeler’s company, in Colonel Ephraim Doolittle’s regiment, and marched from Petersham on the Lexington alarm, serving 2 1/2 days. He married Bathsheba Warner on 28 July 1764, in Worcester, Massachusetts Bay Colony, and they had two sons Eliakim Spooner, Jr., who died young, and Alfred Spooner. Eliakim Spooner, Sr. died January 3, 1820, in Woodstock, Windsor, Vermont.