John Thompson - Inventing the Language of Multimedia

John Henry Thompson’s most famous invention is not something you can hold in your hand, and it’s not something the vast majority of people will ever see. But millions have used the things it has helped create.

Thompson is the inventor of the Lingo programming language, part of the Director authoring tool. Developed by Macromedia, Director is a software tool that has been widely used in games, kiosks, multimedia-based e-learning, demos, and more. With it, creators can combine a variety of formats – video, text, photos, graphics, animation – with programming logic and create interactive multimedia. It has been used frequently in kiosks, CD-ROMs, and, through a version called Shockwave, on the Web.

Thompson’s inventive instincts were propelled by his interests in both creative expression and computer programming. “I was always drawing and painting in my spare time,” he told one interviewer.

Morgan Safety Hood and Smoke Protector,

Morgan Traffic Signal

An inventor and businessman from Paris, Kentucky, Garrett Morgan was the son of former slaves who spent his early childhood attending school and working on the family farm with his brothers and sisters. While still a teenager, Morgan left his family home and moved to   north to Cincinnati, in search of opportunity. While Morgan's formal education never took him beyond elementary school, he was determined to improve himself and hired a private tutor in English grammar. In 1895, Morgan moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he went to work as a sewing machine repair man for a clothing manufacturer. News of his proficiency for fixing things and experimenting traveled fast and led to numerous job offers from various manufacturing firms in the Cleveland area.
    In 1907, the inventor opened his own sewing equipment and repair shop. It was the first of several businesses Morgan would establish. In 1909, he expanded the enterprise to include a tailoring shop that employed 32 employees. During this time, Morgan invented a zigzag stitching attachment for manually operated sewing machine and his company turned out coats, suits and dresses, all sewn with equipment that Garrett Morgan himself had made.

Potato Chips

     As a world food, potatoes are second in human consumption only to rice. And as thin, salted, crisp chips, they are America's favorite snack food. Thus, every time a person crunches into a potato chip, he or she is enjoying the delicious taste of one of the world's most famous snacks – a treat that might not exist without the contribution of black inventor George Crum.

The son of an African-American father and a Native American mother, Crum was working as the head chef in the summer of 1853 at the Moon's Lake House, a resort in Saratoga Springs, New York. At work one hot summer day in August, Crum was in his kitchen when a patron ordered a plate of French-fried potatoes. Cooked to perfection, the potatoes were delivered to the customer, who, turning his nose up, complained that the potatoes were too thick and too soft. Crum cut and fried a thinner batch, but these, too, met with disapproval. Exasperated, Crum decided to rile the guest by producing French fries too thin and crisp to skewer with a fork. Slicing potatoes paper thin, Crum over fried them to a crisp and seasoned them with an excess of salt. Crum then gave the chips to the customer, who, to his surprise loved them.