Dyson Vacuum

James Dyson is best known as the inventor of the Dual Cyclone™ bagless vacuum cleaner, which works on cyclonic separation. The idea came to him when a local sawmill caught James’ eye. It spun sawdust out of the air and collected it in a chamber. Dyson used the existing sawmill as stimulation for the idea formulating in his mind and under the cover of darkness he sketched the timber yard’s giant cyclone. He asked himself if the cyclone technology he’d spotted on the sawmill would work in a vacuum cleaner? He ripped the dusty clogged bag from his old vacuum and replaced it with a crude prototype. Instead of relying on bags and filters to trap the dust, Dyson focused on cyclone technology to spin the dirt out of the air. 5,127 prototypes later: Dual Cyclone™ technology and the first vacuum that didn't lose suction. That's one of the reasons why it doesn't lose suction, picks up more dirt from your home and expels cleaner air. James Dyson learned to take risks, make mistakes and use frustration as a fuel for creativity and solving problems.

Velcro

Swiss engineer George de Mestral invented the hook-and-loop fastener in 1941. I think Velcro was an innovative idea because de Mestral saw the possibility of binding two materials in a simple fashion by replicating nature. The idea came to him one day after returning from a hunting trip with his dog in the Alps. He took a closer look at the burrs that kept sticking to his clothes and his dog's fur and tried to duplicate the hook-and-loop, taking him ten years to master. Not only is Velcro used to join children’s shoes together but also it is durable enough when made of Teflon loops, polyester hooks, and glass backing to be used on space shuttles. Leonard Duffy, noting the disadvantages of Velcro, and taking Velcro as his model, created a new product called the “slidingly engaging fastener”. Instead of loops and hooks, it has interlocking islands with undercut edges that slide together. Duffy then created a wraparound cast made from a single plastic sheet sealed with his fasteners to replace similar removable casts with Velcro straps. With the Unity Wrap, Duffy won the grand prize in NASA’s “Create the Future” invention contest. Since then the sliding engaging fastener has become available at Material ConneXion, a global materials consultancy and library of innovative and sustainable materials, and several designers and a prosthetics company have expressed interest.

Steam Powered Mechanisms

Hero of Alexandria was an ancient Greek mathematician and engineer who was a resident of Rome. He is considered the greatest experimenter of antiquity and his work is representative of the Hellenistic scientific tradition. Hero was given credit to inventing the earliest mention of steam power. But perhaps even more innovative than the mechanisms themselves was what they were used for. Hero created devices used in temples to instill faith by deceiving believers and to convert people to the said one true religion. One of Hero’s engines used air from a closed chamber heated by an altar fire to displace water from a sealed vessel. The water was collected and its weight pulled on a rope that opened the temple doors, thus convincing people they were controlled by God himself. Hero also created engines that made marble sculptures cry tears, again to persuade people of God’s existence and power.