Celebrity US Patents Trivia Quiz

Answer: Neil Young

Canadian singer/songwriter Neil Young sang with the group Crosby, Stills & Nash on "Déjà vu" (their second album) and is included in the photograph on the album cover. Songs from that album include "Woodstock" and "Teach Your Children". Young's outstanding solo song is the beautiful "Harvest Moon" (one of my favorites). He has been named as a co-inventor on seven US patents related to model trains. Many of Young's inventions are to help his son Ben deal with Cerebral Palsy, which prevents him from grasping objects such as transformer controls or flip switches. US patent 5,555,815 was issued 17 September 1996 to Neil P. Young and three co-inventors.

Historical note:
Neil is known as an O-gauge model train enthusiast and at one time he was a part owner of Lionel, LLC, the designer and importer of model trains and accessories (20 percent stake in 1995). After a reorganization plan in 2008 he was no longer a minority shareholder, but remains an active consultant in the company's high-end products. Before Crosby, Stills & Nash was formed, both Stephen Stills and Neil Young had been members of the band Buffalo Springfield.

Answer: Charlie Sheen

Charlie apparently was so annoyed at losing caps to Chapstick dispensers that he co-invented a dispenser that has no cap and instead has a snap-fit cover. In "Wall Street" he played Bud Fox, a young stockbroker who becomes involved with Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas).

In "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" he played a juvenile delinquent who Ferris' sister, Jeanie (Jennifer Grey), is smitten by (in the police station scene). He won a Golden Globe award for the US television series "Spin City" and was nominated for two Golden Globe awards for the US television series "Two and a Half Men". US patent 6,283,658 was issued 4 September 2001 to Carlos Irwin Estevez (Charlie Sheen's birth name) and Rodger D. Thomason.

Answer: Hedy Lamarr

Hedy at one time was called "the most beautiful woman in Hollywood". She appeared in numerous movies in the 1930s and 1940s with leading men such as Charles Boyer, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Robert Young and Victor Mature. In addition to her beauty, she was also quite intelligent. Her goal with the system described in her patent was to help the US war effort in WWII to prevent radio jamming of torpedoes (she was born Jewish and hated the Nazis). The character played by Harvey Korman in the Mel Brooks movie "Blazing Saddles" was a conniving State Attorney General named Hedley Lamarr (this spelling is correct).

Historical note:
Although Lamarr's system was not used during WWII, it is widely used today in Bluetooth and some cell phone technologies. US patent 2,292,387 was issued 11 August 1942 to Hedy Kiesler Markey (Lamarr's married name at the time) and music composer George Antheil. Their system used a piano roll-type technology to unpredictably change the signal frequency sent between a control center and the torpedo in short bursts. This approach has been described as a "frequency-hopping, spread-spectrum communication system."

Answer: Marlon Brando

In addition to his well-known movie acting, Marlon Brando was also an amateur drummer and had a passion for playing the conga drums. He actually had four patents on tuning various parts of his conga drum design. US patent 6,812,392 was issued 2 November 2004 to Marlon Brando. This issue date was approximately four months after the actor's death.

Historical note:
In the 1973 US Academy Awards presentation show, Marlon Brando did not attend. Instead, he sent female Native American civil rights activist Sacheen Littlefeather (wearing an Apache dress) to represent him. She said he declined the award he had won for Best Actor in protest of the treatment of Native Americans by the film industry.

Answer: Harry Houdini

Houdini claimed his improved diving suit would allow a diver to easily remove the suit underwater in case of danger. The suit was also the first one that enabled the wearer to put it on and take it off without assistance. The approach of his design was separating the upper and lower parts of the suit at the waist with a latch. Houdini was well known for escaping from water-related devices (like the Milk Can Escape and the Chinese Water Torture Cell) and a suit like this would have allowed him to expand his act (although he never used it in his act). US patent US 1,370,316 was issued 1 March 1921 to Harry Houdini (not his birth name of Erik Weisz, later Ehrich Weiss). Although all three wrong answers are magicians, only Houdini was active during the 1920s.

Historical note:
Houdini became interested in the claims of mediums who said they were able to contact the dead, after the death of his mother in 1913. But Houdini soon saw that all their so-called claims of "responses" of the dead could be explained as simple magic tricks. After World War I ended there was a big growth in the numbers of these mediums (perhaps because of loved ones trying to contact dead soldiers). Houdini began focusing his energy in the 1920s on exposing these psychics and mediums as fakes. His confrontation with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes) is perhaps the best known example of this (Doyle's second wife was a medium).

Answer: Michael Jackson

In the 1988 video for "Smooth Criminal" (from the 1987 "Bad" album) Michael Jackson leans forward at close to a 45-degree angle, creating the illusion that he is defying gravity. He was wearing a pair of specially-designed shoes that could hitch into a device hidden beneath the stage. US patent 5,255,452 for this idea was issued 26 October 1993 to Michael J. Jackson, Michael L. Bush and Dennis Tompkins. Although Jackson and the two co-inventors did patent this idea in 1993, he was not the first to use anti-gravity shoes. Fred Astaire and Betty Hutton used this idea in the 1950 movie "Let's Dance".

Historical note:
Jackson's nickname King of Pop was originated by his life-long friend Elizabeth Taylor when she called him "in my estimation the true king of pop, rock and soul" at the 1989 Soul Train Heritage Awards. The media then picked up this title and shortened it. Elvis Presley is often referred to as the King of Rock and Roll.

Answer: Francis Ford Coppola

This invention is supposed to be an aid in identifying, to another person, a hard-to-reach spot on the wearer's back that needs to be scratched. The T-shirt back shows the top view of a turtle, with the shell divided into a series of numbered rectangles. The normal request to scratch goes something like: "Please scratch lower-right. A little to the left. A little higher..." With this T-shirt, the wearer could simply say. "Please scratch box 27." I'm not sure I see the value in this, but I do enjoy his movies! Publication number 2006/0191053 A1 was issued 31 August 2006 to Francis Ford Coppola. Although all the possible answers are movie directors who have directed sequels, Francis Ford Coppola directed the first one that won "Best Picture" in the US Academy Awards ("The Godfather: Part II" in 1975).

Historical note:
My favorite Francis Ford Coppola story concerns the movie "American Graffiti". The finished movie was previewed in San Francisco and was enthusiastically approved by the audience. However, a representative from Universal Studios was also in attendance and, despite the favorable audience reaction, he called "American Graffiti" un-releasable. Francis Ford Coppola (a friend of "American Graffiti" director George Lucas), was so enraged at the comment that he offered to buy the film from Universal. The end result was a reluctant compromise that finally allowed the movie to be released under the Universal Studios name with Coppola named as co-producer (along with Gary Kurtz). In the 1974 Academy Awards, "American Graffiti" was nominated in five categories, including Best Picture (but lost to "The Sting"), George Lucas for Best Director (but he lost to George Roy Hill for directing "The Sting") and Candy Clark for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (she played Debbie). The stunning financial success of this movie then allowed Lucas to create the "Star Wars" movies. In 1975 he established the company Industrial Light & Magic to produce the visual effects that made possible his (and others') movies.

Answer: Mark Twain

In addition to being an author, Mark Twain was also an accomplished public speaker and lecturer. His speaking tours generated a substantial portion of his income. He actually had three patents, but the most successful was this one. He loved to scrapbook, which led to this invention. His invented, self-pasting scrapbook had pages entirely covered with dried adhesive, which would allow the user to moisten only the area where the picture, etc. was to be pasted. US patent 140,245 was issued 24 June 1873 to Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain's real name).

Historical note:
Mark Twain "came in with the comet" (he was born in 1835, the year Halley's Comet appeared) and, as he predicted, he "went out with the comet" (he died in 1910, the day after Halley's Comet returned). He took his pen name from his days as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River where the cry "mark twain" signaled the depth of water required for the safe passage of riverboats. He was fascinated by inventions, but his enthusiasm was to prove his financial downfall. In one notable example, he lost a small fortune investing in the Paige Typesetter, which was complicated (over 18,000 parts) and prone to frequent breakdowns. He eventually was forced to declare bankruptcy.

Answer: Christie Brinkley

Supermodel Christie Brinkley's invention was designed to aid very young children memorize the alphabet. Rather than confront them with 26 characters, Brinkley's invention involves only seven distinct parts (which could be assembled into letters), which she believed helped young children cope and learn better. US patent 4,998,883 was issued 12 March 1991 to Christie Brinkley. According to various interviews, Billy Joel had written his song when he was interacting with Christie Brinkley, Whitney Houston and his then-girlfriend Elle Macpherson (the original title was "Uptown Girls" i.e., plural).

However, the title character in the music video for the song was played by Christie Brinkley, and the song gradually evolved to be about her. Joel and Brinkley married in 1985 and divorced in 1994.

Answer: Yakov Smirnoff

Yakov Pokhis (Smirnoff came later) was born in the Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, and immigrated to the US at the age of 26. One of his early jobs was as a standup comic, which may have inspired this invention. Like many creative people, good new ideas often came to him while he was in the shower or soaking in the bathtub.

This invention was for a waterproof notepad, which would allow the user to jot down flashes of inspiration without danger the sheet might get wet and disintegrate. US patent 4,907,824 was issued 13 March 1990 to Yakov Smirnoff (his legal name by then). Among his many movie and TV credits was an American TV series called "What a Country!" (about teaching a group of foreigners who are trying to pass the citizenship test).

He played Nikolai, a Russian taxi driver. That series was inspired by the British sitcom "Mind Your Language".