“Good Lord, I bought one Avril Lavigne CD from the Sam Goody store inside the King of Prussia Mall, and they wouldn’t stop blowing up my phone.”
—Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, caller ID (1970s)
“I did it to pick up chicks.”
—John Bannister Goodenough, cobalt-oxide cathode, (1980)
“I heard a moose emit a sound like ‘vroom,’ and it was so pleasing that I absolutely had to make that noise available to the masses.”
—Henry Ford, commercial automobile (1896)
“I was tired of pissing my pants.”
—Gideon Sundback, zipper (1909)
“My holographic Pokémon cards were starting to melt.”
—Willis Carrier, electrical air conditioning unit (1902)
“I needed to write down my grandma’s recipe for her signature M&M cookies, but I didn’t have a sharpener.”
—Sampson Mordan, mechanical pencil (1822)
“I wanted to watch The Hobbit on television at the same time I read the book.”
—Benjamin Franklin, bifocals (1784)
“I made a shitload of strawberry jam, and it was way too much to eat on its own.”
—John Harvey Kellogg, peanut butter (1895)
“When I tried to sing ‘the blank on the bus goes round and round,’ the lyrics didn’t make any sense.”
—Unknown, wheel (Thousands of years ago)
“I enjoy watching people fall out of things.”
—Alcibiades, hammock (404 BC)
“I had never taken the stairs in my entire life. Frankly, I was too lazy.”
—Elisha Otis, elevator (1852)
“Have you ever tried to make a kiwi-mango smoothie with your bare hands? I lost count of the all the hangnails I have eaten.”
—Stephen Poplawski, blender (1922)
“No matter how hard I tried, I was never able to tie my shoes. I had to find a way to make it easier.”
—George de Mestral, Velcro (1941)
“We wanted to make a bunch of YouTube videos of us shooting each other without dying.”
—Stephanie Kwolek and Herbert Blades, Kevlar (1965)
“Chicken in a can was obviously disgusting, so we had to come up with something that was much more appetizing.”
—Jay Hormel, Spam (1937)