The Post-Heroic Generation: American Independent Inventors, 1900–1950

By World War I, the public (and later, many historians) had come to believe that teams of anonymous scientists in corporate research and development (R&D) laboratories had displaced “heroic” individual inventors like Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell as the wellspring of innovation. However, the first half of the twentieth century was actually a long transitional period when lesser known independents like Chester Carlson (Xerox copier), Earl Tupper (Tupperware), Samuel Ruben (Duracell batteries), and Edwin Land (Polaroid camera) continued to make notable contributions to the overall context of innovation. Accordingly, my dissertation considers the changing fortunes of American independent inventors from approximately 1900 to 1950, a period of expanding corporate R&D, the Great Depression, and two world wars. Contrary to most interpretations of this period, I argue that individual, “post-heroic” inventors remained an important, though less visible, source of inventions in the early twentieth century.

NTC Ceramics: Past, Present and Future

In contrast with metals, the resistivity of ceramics decreases with increasing temperatures. This phenomenon was first discovered in 1833 by Faraday and remained a mere scientific curiosity until 1930, when Samuel Ruben proposed the fabrication of a pyrometer device, which explored the negative temperature coefficient (NTC) of resistance exhibit by Cu2O. Eight decades later, NTC ceramic thermistors constitute an important business segment for most electroceramic manufacturers. Here, we present a review of the most significant scientific and technological advances, which lead to the enormous commercial success of NTC thermistors. This review concludes with an outlook into future possible applications of NTC ceramics, providing that some current technological shortcomings (such as ageing) are resolved.