National Inventors Hall Of Fame 2010: See The 16 New Inductees
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WASHINGTON -- The inventors of Post-it notes and the technologies that led to video games, modern scuba diving equipment and GPS technology are among the 16 new members of the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
The 2010 honorees will be inducted Wednesday afternoon at the Commerce Department. Previous members include Edward Calahan, for inventing the stock ticker, and Samuel Blum for his contribution to the invention of LASIK eye surgery.
Roger Easton said his group was trying to solve a different problem when they created the technology that formed the foundation for GPS. "It started really with a problem very different from GPS," he said of the research on time signals. "Some weeks later the idea came that why don't we use it for navigation?" he said in an interview.
Ralph Baer developed early video game technology while working for a defense contractor. Before inventing the system that became known as the Magnavox Odyssey home video game system, co-workers often asked him how they would make any money from the project. "People thought I was wasting my time and the company's money for that matter," said Baer, who is still working in the gaming industry. "There's no way anybody could have predicted how fast this industry would take off."
The Akron, Ohio-based hall was founded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Associations. It has inducted members since 1973 and will have honored 421 inventors with the new class, which includes 6 living and 10 deceased inventors.
See the full list of 2010 inductees below:
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Huffington Post/AP NATASHA T. METZLER First Posted: 05/31/10 06:12 AM ET Updated: 05/25/11 05:00 PM ET