German inventions

Putting a screw in the wall used to be a laborious procedure that entailed dipping hemp yarn in an adhesive made from animal blood. In 1926 the process evolved to using a piece of metal to cover the screw and hold it firmly in place. In 1957 Artur Fischer designed a plastic anchor from which plastic strips stuck out of the anchor and into the wall. The invention allows screws to be simply twisted into the wall.

Neither babies nor parents can resist the allure of a good pacifier. For ages children have found items, both hard and soft, to suck on. It was only in 1949 when dentists Adolf Mueller and Wilhelm Balters recognized the damage and wearing effects of a hard pacifier on the gums and palate that they invented a rubber pacifier ideal for small, developing mouths.

In an effort to shield herself from the winds of the Baltic Sea, Elfriede Maltzahn designed the first covered wicker beach chair in 1882. The piece of furniture allowed Maltzahn to sit comfortably on the beach despite her rheumatism. She commissioned basket maker Wilhelm Bartelmann to create the chair. A year later he brought it to the market and founded the first wicker beach chair company.

After World War II, Adolf Dassler revolutionized the soccer shoe by replacing the leather knots on the bottom with metal cleats. The move proved the deciding factor in the 1954 World Cup finals in Bern. During a rainstorm the German players' shoes didn't absorb as much water as their opponents', and left them quicker on their feet. The advantage helped Germany win the so-called "Miracle of Bern" and Dassler's company, Adidas, world recognition.

Today the pain reliever and anti-inflammatory medication, Aspirin, is known worldwide. In 1897, chemist and pharmacist Felix Hoffmann became the first person to create a powder form of the powerful substance, acetylsalicylic acid, which could be sold on the market. Nearly 50,000 tons of this substance, known better as Aspirin are produced, 12,000 of which come from Hoffmann's Bayer Company.

Melitta Bentz solved the problem facing many coffee aficionados when she made the world's first coffee without leaving coffee grounds in the bottom of the cup. Bentz took blotting paper from her children's school notebooks and poked a hole in the paper. She then placed it in a pot, poured coffee powder into the paper and added water. What resulted was a coffee filter. On July 8, 1908, Bentz filed for a patent for the invention.

In the early 1900's, tea was put in paper or detergent bags, which could leave an unpleasant aftertaste. To solve this problem, Adolf Rambold tested different materials until he found a neutral tasting one made of hemp and thermoplastic fibers. This material was folded into little tea bags with a clamp on top to hold in the tea. Over 220 billion tea bags manufactured annually since then.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits in Erlangen were originally testing ways to provide for better quality phone conversations. Instead what they found was a format of music player that revolutionized the music world. The new technology made it possible to listen to music practically anywhere with an MP3 player.

The owner of a "company manufacturing materials to preserve orderliness," Louis Leitz first started work on a filing system for administrative records in 1871. In 1896 Leitz's work began to take form into what we recognize today at the modern file folder.