Let’s take this one a step (or two) at a time. First there was the thermos cope (commonly known as the Galileo thermometer, after its inventor) in 1593, a device that could indicate a change in temperature but not quantify it. A scale of measurement wasn’t included until 1612, when Satori Satori developed his air …

BEFORE THE INVENTION OF THE NAIL CLIPPER, you had three basic choices when dealing with the inevitable growth of your fingernails. You could let them grow. You Could use scissors to trim them. Or you could use your teeth … but nobody wanted to see that. Its debatable when exactly that changed, although a series …

A MAN WALKED ELECTRIC FENCE AND SURVIVED. Who that unfortunate fellow was, we don’t know. But we do know that reading about the incident inspired NASA researcher Jack Cover. If electric current could be debilitating without being deadly, a device that controlled such force might be a boon to law enforcement. And so the TASER—a …