The head of the US Patent Office never said 'everything that can be invented has been invented'. The line is pinned on Charles Duell in 1899, but there is no evidence for it, and his reports in fact looked forward to new inventions.
More amazing facts
- 1897 · 1898 Heroin was once sold as a cough medicine.
- 1897 In 1897 the state of Indiana nearly passed a law on the value of pi. The House voted unanimously for a bill implying pi = 3.2; it was halted in the Senate because a mathematics professor happened to be in town.
- 1898 Two lions brought a British railway in Kenya to a halt.
- 1898 Marie Curie's notebooks are still radioactive.
- 1899 The first car to break 100 km/h was electric: in 1899 Belgian driver Camille Jenatzy hit almost 106 km/h near Paris in the torpedo-shaped La Jamais Contente, 'The Never Satisfied'.
- 1900 The 1900 Paris Olympics dragged on for over five months, from 14 May to 28 October.