How do inventions happen? NPR's Planet Money's team brings us the history of one underappreciated invention that has enabled countless other inventions, from the Phillips screwdriver to Bluetooth. You ...

Early efforts -- Elements of a successful machine -- The "Sewing-Machine Combination" -- Less expensive machines -- Appendixes: Notes on the development and commercial use of the sewing machine -- ...

A 1922 innovation, initially for malted drinks in drugstores, marked the birth of the modern electric blender. This seemingly ...

A number of countries have now issued decisions on whether a patent can be granted to Dr. Stephen Thaler for an invention made by a machine named DABUS. In response to a request by the United Kingdom ...

There have been days recently when I would have liked to have been taken out of the present. Anywhere would have done. Greece 2012. The moon 2034. The entrails of a whale, to chat with Jonah, the ...

Finding himself "bored" one day, Joan Manuel Hidalgo devised a hands-free, but margarinally complex machine that toasts and butters bread. Jam Press/@thehacklifeyt Finding himself “bored” one day, ...

IN Cornhill, Boston, thirty years ago, there was a shop for the manufacture and repair of nautical instruments and philosophical apparatus, kept by Ari Davis. Mr. Davis was a very ingenious mechanic, ...

The question of whether artificial intelligence (AI) can invent is nearly 200 years old, going back to the very beginning of computing. Victorian mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote what’s generally ...

In 1816, the “year without a summer,” ash from a distant volcanic explosion renders the sky dark and cold, “from Beijing to Brussels, Naples to New York.” Digitally finished multimedia spreads in ...