Jewish inventions

By Sarit Gervais and Kosherica |

How about The Teddy Bear?

Did you know that the teddy bear owes its existence to a Jewish couple?

Morris Michtom, a Brooklyn candy shop owner, and his wife, Rose, created a stuffed toy bear in honor of Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt. It all began when Roosevelt went on a hunting trip in 1902 but failed to locate a single bear. His assistants reportedly cornered and tied a black bear to a tree for the American president to shoot.

A big game hunter, Roosevelt refused to kill the bear because it would be unsportsmanlike, according to the National Park Service. A political cartoonist turned the fateful hunting trip into satire. When the Michtoms saw the cartoon, they decided to make a new toy and call it “Teddy’s Bear.” Their invention was wildly popular.

Meanwhile, across the ocean, a German family named Steiff created stuffed toy bears with shoe-button eyes and an embroidered nose.

Yakity-Yak Talking Teeth

Thank another Jewish inventor for providing lots of laughs with his Yakity-Yak Talking Teeth. In the 1940s an ad for a false-teeth holder called a “tooth garage” amused Eddy Goldfarb. He imagined a pair of dentures chomping, sputtering down the road and parking in their proper place.

That image inspired Goldfarb to create a wind-up toy known as chattering teeth. When his gag chompers debuted in 1950, the packaging read, “Amazing! They Walk, They Talk, They’re Alive!” Even as a youngster in Chicago, Goldfarb was inventing toys and crafting action figures from the cardboard inserts in laundered shirts.

Sam Born, The Candy Man

The novelty business also appealed to a candy maker born in 1891 who received his education in Berdichev, Ukraine, at the city’s rabbinical school. When Sam Born’s family moved to France, he landed a sweet job in a candy store and learned the business.

In 1910 Born emigrated to the U.S. and was responsible for many innovations including the technology to produce chocolate sprinkles, known as Jimmies; the hard chocolate coating used for Eskimo Pies; and was given the keys to the city of San Francisco in 1916 for inventing a machine that mechanically inserted sticks into lollipops called the Born sucker machine.

He began to manufacture candy in 1923, calling his company Just Born because the products were so fresh. His company created Mike and Ike, Hot Tamales, and Peanut Chews, earning him a spot in the Candy Hall of Fame.

The Ballpoint Pen

Laszlo Biro, a Hungarian-Argentine inventor, came up with the idea for the modern-day ballpoint pen. He worked as an editor for newspapers in Hungary and had a problem with ink from fountain pens, which smudged and took a long time to dry. Meanwhile, he noticed, the ink in newspaper printing presses didn’t smudge and dried quickly.

He tried putting the same ink in a fountain pen, but couldn’t get it to flow into the tip. So Laszlo Biro worked with his brother, a chemist, and developed a new tip with a ball that moved freely in a socket. The Biros presented the first working ballpoint pen at the Budapest International Fair in 1931.

Instant cameras

Edwin Land, cofounder of the Polaroid Corporation, made it possible for pictures to be taken and developedalmost immediately. In 1947 he demonstrated the Polaroid Land Camera, which could produce a finished print in 60 seconds. Land’s photographic process soon found many applications in business, science and the military. Before he died in 1991, the New Englander had received more than 500 patents for his innovations in light and plastics.

Word-processing computer

Pioneer Evelyn Berezin was born in New York in 1925 to Jewish immigrants from Russia. She designed the first true word-processing computer. She also developed the first automated airline reservation system. United Airlines put her invention into service in 1955. It served 60 cities throughout the United States with a one-second response time and with no central system failures in 11 years of operation, according to the Computer History Museum.

Berezin received her BA in physics from New York University in 1945 and an Atomic Energy Commission fellowship for graduate study there in 1946. Her interest in physics stemmed from reading her brother’s science-fiction periodicals.

Mobile phones

Credit engineers at Motorola’s Israel research and development center for coming up with the original cell-phone technology. “From the tool that guards your mobile identity to a new keyboard solution, Israeli expertise keeps your phone from getting bigger yet staying cutting edge,” according to ISRAEL21c.

Video games

Who can believe that video games already have been around for 50 years? Ralph Baer, whose family fled Germany just before World War II, helped pave the way for the game systems we know today. The Jewish engineer began to investigate how to play games on a television in 1966. Then he and two colleagues created several test units. The result was the Brown Box, a prototype for the first multiplayer, multiprogram video game system. Baer licensed it to Magnavox, which released the design as the Odyssey in 1972.

Camera phone

Remember life before smartphones and selfies? Baby Boomer Philippe Kahn does. He was born in Paris in 1952 to Jewish immigrants of modest means. His mother was a Holocaust survivor. The birth of his daughter in 1997 triggered the birth of a new technology. Kahn wanted to take a picture of the baby and send it to friends directly from the hospital. While in the waiting room, he succeeded! He fired up his computer, wrote some lines of codes, synchronized them with his Motorola mobile phone and digital camera and created the world’s first camera phone.

Google

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, now Silicon Valley billionaires, developed Google as computer science graduate students at Stanford University. Page envisioned a World Wide Web search engine that could rank hyperlinks based on how often other pages linked them. Brin helped turn the idea into PageRank, the algorithm foundation of Google Search. The product went live on Stanford’s network in 1996.

Jewish minds have created many more inventions that touch our lives, from cherry tomatoes to the remote control. But that’s another story.

ANOTHER STORY: 10 AWESOME ISRAELI INVENTIONS

We have an enormous list of inventions coming from Israel, many of which are important enough to have changed the world. The list is vast and spreads to every possible aspect: physics, medicine, science, robotics, biotech, defense, optics, energy, economics, computer science software, physical exercise, agriculture and breeding consumer goods and appliances, and the list goes on. Some of my favorite inventions are in computers such as the USB flash drive, the first laser keyboard, the first PC microprocessor and apps galore. I spent 2 days researching and validating each of them. The result is mind boggling. A tiny country, so young and with a population so relatively small, indeed produced inventions, that not only scientists and medics are familiar with but even you and I use in our daily life.

Here's another list of 10 of our favorites:

USB flash drive

This brilliant and practical, external drive is used by everyone with a computer. Anyone who wishes to store files in a compact little carry-on plug in device, can download and store files until needed, or transfer them to another computer when ready to use. It’s tiny, easy to carry in one’s pocket and it’d hard to imagine life without it.

Waze

My favorite GPS based travel app leads me to all destinations, giving turn-by-turn info, up to the moment traffic events, routes to take or avoid. At least 100 countries make use of it, and since I discovered it I said goodbye to any other motorist app.

The PillCam

A camera so futuristic it’s something that prevents intrusive surgeries, biopsies and allows doctors to view your insides. The PillCam is an average sized capsule, easily swallowed and records images of digestive tract with the tiny camera inside it.

It’s used now all over the world, and without trauma tells the medical pro information which just a few years back was possible only by cutting the patient open. The images it produces are so clear that an MRI machine, though amazingly thorough with exposing damage or disease in areas of the body can’t even come close to the visual precision and clarity.

Epilady

Originally came from a Kibbutz in Israel, and since 1986 became the home epilator of many hairy beauties, who got tired of shaving and prickly ingrown hairs after waxing. It sold 30 million units.

BabySense

This device was developed in Israel to monitor a baby’s breathing. It has prevented a great many deaths with sleeping babies. It has an auditory and visual alarm, which is activated the second it senses irregularities of movement or breathing in sleeping tots. The parents or babysitter is warned by a loud sound plus visual alerts thus the most horrific tragedies are averted.

Viber

Brilliant, money saving app, it’s ready to upload to any smart phone. Incredibly this app allows you to make calls all over the planet using Wi-Fi. It’s high speed and allows you to keep in touch without breaking the bank. Used in free Wi-Fi spots you get to speak to anyone, anywhere.

The Cherry Tomato

Delicious, pretty and sweet, two Israeli professors from the Hebrew University modified the regular tomato and created this beautiful, beloved staple.

Modern drip irrigation

Invented in the early 60’s, allowing the often parched earth to hydrate through drip irrigation. This saves sorely needed water, while fertilizing the roots of plants through a network of plastic pipes. Earth is full of places where water is scarce and this brilliant invention helped keep the areas from becoming inhabitable and dying.

Water

Israel found a way of creating drinking water out of air. This technology, developed by the Israeli company EWA, is producing water out of thin air by using a condenser. It absorbs the humidity from the air, holds it in silica-based granule then condenses it into pure water. The extra beauty is that 85% of energy used is pumped back into the system. In other words, an existing

resource is used to create a much-needed resource, without which we can’t exist.

Solar Energy

Solar Energy by Pythagoras solar, does the same thing for heat and uses the sun for energy and warmth, while saving on the cost of conventional means. Their unique invention of a glass panel generates power, is also transparent, therefore can be integrated into construction and building.

Milk

Israel found a way to used technology in a most amazing way. Israeli cows produce far more milk than other countries: about 10.5 tons a year. Far exceeding Germany by 50% and the taste is delicious and clean. Based on a combination of air conditioning, hygiene and constant monitoring and pedometers, which tell whether the animals get fidgety. It’s been found that relaxed and comfortable cows produce far more milk, thus the use of research, animal behavior science and the monitoring equipment’s were used again, to make a naturally occurring thing better. The huge flow of delicious milk and dairy products are a testament to this clever use of technology.

Physical exercise

Not unlike eastern or Russian Martial Arts, Israel developed one of its own. It’s called Krav Maga, and many of my friends are devout practitioners. It’s powerful and was developed for the Israeli army making it a serious workout.

Feldenkreis is a method developed for perfect posture, effecting the inner organs and general feeling of the body and mind. It’s gentle and to my mind, even more powerful in it’s quiet way than the rambunctious Martial arts, Israeli or otherwise. Acting and Ballet schools include it in their curriculum since it’s body enhancing and elongates the spine, often preventing spine curvature that comes with age. Feldenkreis practitioners look younger and their stature tends to be more regal.

This is a short condensed list, picked out of at least 50 intensely brilliant inventions and life changing Israeli contributions. I chose them because they are most likely to interest lay people and that are of practical use.

If you are into technological discoveries, computer sciences and electronic engineering you’ll be a like kid in a candy store. Psychological and medical research invented in Israel is taught and replicated in the best Universities world-wide. Explore more Israeli inventions via Wikipedia here.