PAPER CLIP The design is perfect. There's been little improvement since Norwegian Johan Vaaler got his American patent in 1901. Only about 20% are actually used to clip papers.
POST-IT One of the top five best-selling office supplies. To make Post-its, introduced in 1980, 3M had to develop the adhesive, primer, backside coating and new manufacturing equipment
TELEVISION A Russian-born American scientist, Vladimir K. Zworykin, demonstrated the first practical TV in 1929. But it took RCA, which owned NBC, 10 years before making the first national broadcast and producing its first line of TVs. In 1951 (the year I Love Lucy debuted) the networks extended broadcasting from the Northeast to the whole country.
TV REMOTE First came the remote, then came the couch potato. The wireless Space Commander, which used ultrasonics to activate television controls, was invented by Robert Adler in 1956 and remained an industry standard for 25 years. Remotes now work by using an infrared light beam.
LA-Z-BOY CHAIRS The recline of civilization began in 1928 when two cousins, Ed Shoemaker and Ed Knabusch, invented a comfortable wood-slat porch chair, choosing the name La-Z-Boy. They then decided to upholster the chair so it would sell year-round. La-Z-Boy Inc. had sales of more than $1 billion in fiscal 1998.
TV DINNER In 1954 Swanson & Sons succeeded in freezing a meal of compartmentalized portions, so that the housewife could just remove the complete meal from its box, which looked like a television, and heat it in the oven.
BROWNIE BOX CAMERA In 1900 Eastman Kodak introduced the camera that popularized amateur photography. The price: $1; a six-exposure packet of film cost 15[cents]. Some of the century's great photographers, such as Ansel Adams, began with a Brownie.
SAFETY RAZOR King Gillette created the first safety in 1903. He saved millions of necks, and grateful shavers made him fantastically rich. He supplied 3 million razors and 36 million blades to the American troops in World War I.
COMPUTER The revolution started in 1951 with UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer), the first commercial computer in the U.S. Built in 1951 for Remington-Rand Corp., it contained 5,000 vacuum tubes. Today's chip-powered machines, sold by the millions, pack more power than UNIVAC into a laptop.
METAL TENNIS RACQUET Rene ("Le Crocodile") Lacoste, the 1920s French tennis champ turned clothing entrepreneur, invented a steel tennis racquet in 1963. It was distributed in the U.S. by Wilson as the T-2000 and quickly revolutionized the game.
CELL PHONE The first cellular phone was developed in 1973 by Martin Cooper at Motorola, and a test of 1,000 such phones followed in Chicago. The Federal Communications Commission authorized cellular service in 1982, and we haven't shut up since. More than a third of all households in the U.S. subscribe.
AUTOMATIC WASHING MACHINE Among those credited with making electric washing machines around 1910 was Alva J. Fisher. The machines used wringers to remove water from clothes. Truly automatic machines appeared in the 1930s. An early ad for a GE washer read, "If every father did the family washing next Monday, there would be an electric washing machine in every home by Saturday night."