FAMOUS CANADIAN INVENTORS

Canada has had its fair share of inventors and discoverers.

You may have heard of Dr. James A. Naismith, of Almonte, who was at the International YMCA Training School at Springfield, Massachusetts, when he was asked to create an indoor winter training game with no body contact. Using peach baskets hung up at each end of the gymnasium, he came up with a team game relying upon skill but not strength - basketball.

While in Canada, Alexander Graham Bell developed his "speaking telegraphs", or telephones, as they are now called. He was one of several men who were working on the same idea. The year was 1876.

Many Canadians have won the Nobel Prize since they were begun in 1900 by Alfred Nobel to honour those who have enriched human life in the fields of chemistry, physics, medicine, literature, economics and peace. Recent winners since 1985 have included John Polanyi, Sydney Altman, Rudolph Marcus and Michael Smith for Chemistry; and Richard Taylor and Bertram Brockhouse for Physics.

In 1999, the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel was awarded to Robert A. Mundell for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas.

Can you name the Canadians who invented or discovered the following: insulin, marquis wheat, the imax projector, trivial pursuit, and PUZZ-3D.

What did the following Canadians invent or discover: Tim Collings, Peter L. Robertson, John McIntosh, Charles Coll, Joseph-Armand Bombardier, and Wallace Turnbull.

Keep your eyes open for news about recent Canadian inventions and discoveries. You will be amazed!

YOU BE THE INVENTOR

In most cases the inventions that you see everyday came about because someone was faced with a problem, and said to themselves «there must be a better way to do this! » They then went about trying to come up with a solution.

Next time you go shopping for groceries give some thought to the simple grocery cart. Did you know that there were no grocery carts until around 1925 when a man by the name of Goldman introduced them.

Prior to that time shoppers used their own baskets to pick up a few items from their neighbourhood store. Obviously, they needed to make many trips during the week to pick up all the food for their family. Mr. Goldman thought that there must be a way for people to buy more groceries at a time, and in turn, spend more money in the store. Hence the simple grocery cart, a large wire basket in a frame on wheels, was born.

But that's not the end of the story. No one used the carts because it was such a great change from what they had always done. Until Mr. Goldman hired some actors to pretend to be shoppers, and they went up and down the aisles showing what a great idea this was.

The grocery cart has come a long way. There are now carts of different sizes and with different sized baskets. Some carts have a divider within the basket to keep items separate. Others have two tiers of wire shelves for the same purpose. And of course, there is usually a bottom rung to put your case of pop.

Most carts have a seat for a child near the handle bar. Some also include seat belts. Still others have a car seat attached to the cart for very small infants.

But they are still not perfect. What problems do grocery carts still have? Can you come up with a solution?

NAME THE BRAND

We are surrounded by trade marks, but what are they and what do they do?

Trade marks can be a word - like KODAK or POKEMON. Or a series of words - like "Bet you can't eat just one!", or "Just Do It!". Or a design - like the TOMMY HILFIGER flag or McDonald's famous golden arches. Or some combination thereof -like the words "Snap! Crackle! Pop!" with the drawing of the three associated characters and a bowl full of Rice Crispies cereal.

What they all have in common is that they are used by a person or a company to distinguish their products or services from those of others. This means that when you buy a pair of running shoes having a NIKE trade mark on them, you know that they are genuine shoes from Nike Inc., and not imitations.

When the new millennium began in 2000 it was BIG news. Many companies have attempted to tie their product to this event by registering the word 'millennium' for their products. For example, the Eveready Battery Company, Inc. has registered it for batteries while Rand McNally & Company has registered it for maps. Meanwhile General Mills uses the phrase "Cereal of the Millennium" on its boxes of "Cheerios". The trade marks "THE OFFICIAL CANDY OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM" and "THE OFFICIAL CHOCOLATE OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM" have both been registered. Applications were pending, and may now be registered for "THE OFFICIAL Airline, Beer, Burger, Coffee, drink, credit card, lottery, newspaper, pizza, song, and toy OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM".

You may remember all the uses of the words MILLENNIUM as part of a trade mark. Consider whether you were more likely to buy those products because they used the word «millennium ». By the way, I did not tell you which company registered both "THE OFFICIAL CANDY OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM" and "THE OFFICIAL CHOCOLATE OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM". Do you know which company it was?