Charles Pappas – författare

On July 20, 1969, Americans had their eyes and ears glued to their TVs and radios. NASA’s successful moon landing left the nation in awe. This moment inspired inventors and engineers across the nation. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 moon landing, we share with you 20 patents that were inspired by the space race and how they reshaped the world. Featuring the original patent schematics from the US Patent and Trademark Office, blast off with the inventions inspired by the moon landing including:Memory foam Freeze-dried food Firefighting equipmentEmergency "space blankets"DustBustersCordless toolsProtective paint (Used on both the Statue of Liberty, a gigantic Buddha in Hong Kong and the Golden Gate) Cochlear implantsLZR Racer swimsuitsCMOS image sensorsMoon dust as fuel for space travel Carbon nanotubesPocket calculatorsOther patents in the book reflect the general surge in space-related inventions in that era:Dispersed space based laser weaponToy ray gunsFlying saucersPropulsion systemsLasersThe modem Integrated circuitAstro Lamp (Later called the Lava Lamp)

On July 20, 1969, Americans had their eyes and ears glued to their TVs and radios. NASA’s successful moon landing left the nation in awe. This moment inspired inventors and engineers across the nation. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 moon landing, we share with you 20 patents that were inspired by the space race and how they reshaped the world. Featuring the original patent schematics from the US Patent and Trademark Office, blast off with the inventions inspired by the moon landing including:Memory foam Freeze-dried food Firefighting equipmentEmergency "space blankets"DustBustersCordless toolsProtective paint (Used on both the Statue of Liberty, a gigantic Buddha in Hong Kong and the Golden Gate) Cochlear implantsLZR Racer swimsuitsCMOS image sensorsMoon dust as fuel for space travel Carbon nanotubesPocket calculatorsOther patents in the book reflect the general surge in space-related inventions in that era:Dispersed space based laser weaponToy ray gunsFlying saucersPropulsion systemsLasersThe modem Integrated circuitAstro Lamp (Later called the Lava Lamp)

Every time you chew a stick of Juicy Fruit, eat a hamburger, slip on a nylon, plug your phone into a wall socket, flick on a TV, withdraw money from an ATM, lick an ice-cream cone, switch on a computer, ride an escalator, play a DVR, watch a movie about dinosaurs, or pop a tranquilizer, you’re doing something that originated at a world’s fair or trade expo. In fact, each new technology and every novel product that rocked America and rolled the world, from the Colt revolver and the Corvette to fax machines and flush toilets, started at trade fairs, a $100 billion industry that includes world expos, trade shows, and state fairs. More than just promoting material things, however, trade fairs popularized and evangelized every social movement and cultural concept, too, including Manifest Destiny, the closing of the frontier, Nudism, Nazism, Fascism, eugenics, female suffrage, temperance, and technocracy. While there have been notable works on world’s fairs by Robert Rydell, Erik Larsen, Erik Mattie, and others, they only capture a fragment of the whole mosaic of these shows—a mosaic that makes the glitziest Las Vegas spectacle look like an Amish barn-raising. This amusing book covers, for example, the World’s Fair that featured a nudist colony (1935); Salvador Dali’s half-naked lobster women, their virtue barely secured by well-placed crustaceans (1939); a model of the Liberty Bell made of Oranges (1893); one of Thomas Edison’s lesser-known inventions, the prefabricated concrete home (1907); and the Bayer Company’s experiment with selling heroin. More memorable and culturally iconic debuts discussed here include electricity, radios, the Volkswagen and the Corvette, television, the X-ray machine, air conditioning, and even nylon stockings. Dozens of short, illustrated chapters take the reader through over 150 years of world and trade fairs, from the vibrators displayed by sexual health advocates at the 1900 World’s Fair to the first true IMAX film at Expo ’70 in Japan.

Paris is the physical memory of seven World Expos that took place in the city from 1855 to 1937. These Expos left behind monuments like the Eiffel Tower, the Musée d'Orsay, the Grand and Petit Palais... But many traces are more subtle: your suitcase today is an evolution of the trunk Louis Vuitton won a gold medal with at Paris’ Exposition Universelle in 1867, and the typical Parisian bistro chairs were designed during those years when a multitude of cafés and restaurants flourished because of the Expos, including icons like Le Procope.A cocktail of travel guide and history book, Nobody Sits Like the French tells these stories and many more, pointing out the marks the Expos left behind. From now on, you’ll know that every time you sip a glass of burgundy, drink from Baccarat crystal, admire a Manet or a Gauguin, and even enjoy the benefits of a working sewer system in Paris, you owe it to a World Expo there.

On July 20, 1969, Americans had their eyes and ears glued to their TVs and radios. NASA’s successful moon landing left the nation in awe. This moment inspired inventors and engineers across the nation. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 moon landing, we share with you 20 patents that were inspired by the space race and how they reshaped the world. Featuring the original patent schematics from the US Patent and Trademark Office, blast off with the inventions inspired by the moon landing including:Memory foam Freeze-dried food Firefighting equipmentEmergency "space blankets"DustBustersCordless toolsProtective paint (Used on both the Statue of Liberty, a gigantic Buddha in Hong Kong and the Golden Gate) Cochlear implantsLZR Racer swimsuitsCMOS image sensorsMoon dust as fuel for space travel Carbon nanotubesPocket calculatorsOther patents in the book reflect the general surge in space-related inventions in that era:Dispersed space based laser weaponToy ray gunsFlying saucersPropulsion systemsLasersThe modem Integrated circuitAstro Lamp (Later called the Lava Lamp)