November 08, 2007 05:05 pm
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By David Dary
For The Transcript
Next time you grab a shopping basket at the grocery store, or plunk a coin in a parking meter, or see a yield sign on a street or highway, remember all three are Oklahoma inventions.
During the state’s first century, innovative Oklahomans created numerous inventions that are today used around the world. Probably best known is the shopping cart invented in 1937 by Sylvan Goldman of Oklahoma City where they were first used in the Standard Food Markets and Humpty Dumpty Supermarkets.
Goldman created the first shopping cart by using a folding chair to which wheels were attached. Each cart had room for two shopping baskets. When not in use the carts could be folded and stacked against a wall and the baskets stacked on the floor. It was patented on March 15, 1938.
The Omniplex science museum in Oklahoma City displays a statue of Goldman pushing a shopping cart.
Another truly Oklahoma invention is the parking meter used to generate money from a parking spot. Once you put money in the device, you were allowed to park for a specific amount of time. If the meter ran out of time, you could receive a parking ticket. The parking meter was invented by Carl C.Magee of Oklahoma City and first installed in the city on July 16, 1935.
The yield sign has longer story. Clinton Riggs, an Oklahoma Highway Patrolman, got the idea for a yield sign while attending a traffic institute meeting in 1939 at Chicago. The war years slowed its development but in 1959 the first yield sign was used at a dangerous intersection in Tulsa. It lowered the number of
accidents.
Soon the Keystone-shaped yield sign became popular and was adopted by cities and states across the nation. Riggs, who also had a successful career with the Tulsa Police Department, is credited with designing the Tulsa police shoulder patch in the same shape as the yield sign.
Because of the many successful inventors in the state, Oklahoma Governor Henry Bellmon established by decree the Oklahoma Inventors Congress in 1966 during his first term in office. All succeeding administrations have supported the group, which is believed to be the oldest continuously functioning organization in the nation dedicated to inventors and the inventive process.
The list of inventions produced by Oklahomans and persons with ties to the state is long. One such story is that of Ed Roberts. While he was in the Air Force he finished his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at Oklahoma State University. A native of Miami, Florida, Roberts was later stationed in San Antonio, Texas. In time he and friends established electronics companies.
In 1975, Roberts wrote an article for Popular Electronics magazine on a calculator kit made by their company. Soon other companies made their calculating kits obsolete. It was then that Robert created the Altair 8800 computer and wrote about it in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics.
One undergraduate student at Harvard University got excited about the article. His name was Bill Gates. So was his friend Paul Allen. They contacted Roberts and went to work for him to write a BASIC interpreter for the machine. Gates dropped
out of Harvard. Later, Gates and Allen left Robert’s company to form their own, a company called Microsoft.
In 1977, Roberts sold his company for six million dollars. He changed careers and went off to medical school. Roberts became a country doctor in Cochran, Georgia. Roberts, however, is still remembered as the inventor of one of the very first hobbyist personal computers.
Most Oklahoma know of flyer Wiley Post who died in a plane crash in Alaska with Will Rogers. They do not know that Post had a hand inventing the modern day flight suit and the autopilot.
Most Oklahomans are unaware that another native son, Gordon Matthews, invented voice mail and got it patented on February 1, 1983. Born in Tulsa, Matthews later moved to Texas where he earned the title “The Father of Voice
Mail.”
Matthews has at least forty other patents including a device called “Automatic Marshal.” It tracks how long each player plays on the golf course and sets off an alarm when they dawdle.
The story of another Oklahoma invention began in 1902 when Carl Frederick Malzahn, a German immigrant, moved from Minnesota to Perry, Oklahoma Territory, and opened a blacksmith shop. His two sons, Charlie and Gus, soon joined their father in business. In time, Charlie was running the business.
When the oil boom occurred, the business became a machine shop to serve the oil industry. Following World War II, Charlie’s son, Ed Malzahn with a mechanical engineering degree, realized there was a need for a piece of equipment to dig ditches for gas, electric and plumbing lines. Until then picks and shovels had been used. He invented a compact trencher that today is known as the Ditch Witch.
Today the Perry company designs and manufacturers a wide range of high-quality underground construction equipment.
These and countless other inventions have strong ties to Oklahoma as do their inventors. They add much to the rich history of the state’s first 100 years.
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