Elevator
Elisha Otis invented the safety elevator while working at a factory and needing to get wood scraps to the top of it. Look at the picture above. It is Elisha Otis’ original patent for the elevator, plus a few marks I added to it to help you understand it a little better. The safety elevator would fall a few inches in the event of a rope break, whereas an elevator without the safety mechanism would fall and kill the passenger(s). Otis had trouble marketing it, but he presented it at the Chicago world fair, and that gave it publicity. The skyscraper became possible because of the elevator.
Syringe
Alexander Wood was inspired by a bee’s stinger, which injects venom into the victim, to invent the syringe, which works in a similar way. It makes a small puncture, and the doctor pushes the fluid in with a lever. Here is a syringe:
This is safer than cutting a hole in the skin and a vein to pour medicine into it. A tiny puncture could do it.Syringes went from glass and metal, to disposable plastic syringes for use in the home or the veterinarian’s hospital.
Bessemer Process
In 1853 France was again at war, this time allied with the Ottoman Empire and England against Russia. This was the Crimean War. France wanted steel cannon instead of iron, because steel was stronger and more reliable. The trouble was that steel was in short supply, so Napoleon III asked Henry Bessemer to invent a new way of making steel. Pig iron was the by-product of the blast furnace and the bloomery before it. While conducting experiments with iron and other metals, Bessemer accidentally left some pig iron next to the furnace which, when he went to push it in, was steel! The hot air from the furnace was enough to make the unusable pig iron into strong steel. More supply means lower prices, which means higher demand. Train rails could be made with steel instead of iron, which made the rails last longer, which reduced maintenance costs.
Egg Beater
The egg beater is a very simple, yet effective, invention. It uses human power and a mechanical advantage to mix watery batters, or to beat eggs. It later evolved into the mechanical mixer, powered by electricity, and that caused a boom in baking, because it could be done on an industrial level. KitchenAid was born out of the egg beaters evolution, and it is one of the most popular mixer brands in America, even today.