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Everyone knows the Germans were responsible for the creation of the Mercedes and the Porsche. But there is a bigger list of common, everyday items that many don’t realize the Germans invented — and they are things many of us could not live without!
ADIDAS
In the early 1920s, two brothers, Rudolf and Adolf Dassler, from Nuremberg started producing the now legendary sportswear shoes with the famous white stripes — Adidas. These shoes became an immediate success, and athletes at the Olympic games in 1928 wore
them for the first time. Later, after the brothers had a falling out, Rudolf introduced the Puma shoes.
ASPIRIN
Headache, fever, inflammation? There’s a quick remedy most of us take every day. Aspirin, the medical remedy for many ailments, was developed in 1897 by the German company Bayer. The proper name is acetylsalicylic acid, which was
first synthesized by Felix Hofmann, who worked for Bayer. Fortunately, they came up with a shorter name, too!
CHIP CARDS
Do you know what chip cards are? We use them every day, even if we don’t realize it, and there’s hardly an area of our lives that doesn’t revolve around them. They are found in phone cards, ATM and credit cards, and ID and patient cards. The smart data carrier was developed by Jürgen Dethloff and Helmut Göttrup in 1969. In 1977, Dethloff applied for a patent for the microprocessor card, the so-called smart card, that can be freely programmed, thus providing high functionality.
COMPUTER
Though companies like Apple are now at the forefront of technology and the poster children for computers, it was actually a Berlin engineer, Konrad Zuse, who has often been regarded as the inventor of the modern computer. Zuse built an electro-mechanical binary calculator, which later became the world’s first programmable computer in 1941.
CONTACT LENSES
Contact lenses were invented in 1887 by a German doctor and eye specialist, Adolf Gaston Eugen Fick. Unlike the modern version, his lenses were made from heavy, brown glass and could only be worn a few hours a day. He first tested the lenses on rabbits, then on himself and finally, some volunteers participated in the experiment. There is no record about how much these lenses hurt, but his invention became a success.
HARIBO GUMMY BEARS
If not yours, at least the lives of your children would be different if Hans Riegel had not invented those sweet, colorful bears. Fortunately,
Hans Riegel of Bonn (HARIBO) enriched the world with gummy bears in 1922. Now, these sweet treats come in six colors and varying flavors. Every attempt to introduce a new version has so far failed.
MP3 FORMAT
And did you know Germans were responsible for inventing the MP3 format? In 1987 researchers at the German Fraunhofer Institute succeeded in
compressing audio files to this new format for the first time by eliminating all the frequencies inaudible to the human ear. Today, modern devices make it possible to have all of your music with you all the time!
THERMOS
When asked to develop an insulating container for liquid air, glass blower Reinhold Burger came up with a brilliant idea in 1903, and this idea can still be found in most households today — the thermos flask. His slogan was, “Keeps it cold, keeps it hot — without fire and without ice.” While the initial idea of insulation came from the German chemist Adolf Ferdinand Weinhold in 1881, Burger discovered the practical aspect by using glass.
TOOTHPASTE
The world would be full of people with bad breath and rotting teeth if it weren’t for two German scientists. After studying tooth hygiene, pharmacist Adolf Heinrich Bergmann invented a type of tooth soap in 1852, and Ottmar von Mayenburg developed the first toothpaste “Chlorodont” with peppermint flavor in 1907. The name comes from the Greek word “Chloros,” which means light green as well as fresh, and “Odon” for tooth.
COFFEE FILTER
And, finally, one we can all be thankful for! Housewife Melitta Bentz from Dresden loved coffee but was tired of over-brewed coffee and coffee grounds in the mug. So she came up with the idea of using blotting paper and a perforated brass pot, creating the first coffee filter. In 1908, she got the patent for her coffee filter, and a year later she had already sold more than 1,000 filters.
