The name of the game

10 things that were named after their creators

It is common for discoveries and inventions to be named after their developers or discoverers, but some products are so common that we fail to recognize them as related to a person’s name. From hot tubs to writing systems, inventors and scientists have left their personal mark everywhere. Here are ten common things that are named after the mastermind behind them.

Did you know that "Jacuzzi" is a brand and not the name of this type of hot tub? Founded in the early 20th century by the Jacuzzi brothers, the manufacturing company was initially focused on aviation and agricultural pumps. In the 1950s, Candido, one of the brothers, designed a portable hydrotherapy pump to help with the treatment of his son, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis.

After witnessing the child’s positive response to the treatment, Candido patented the invention, which became popular as a therapeutic aid first, and later as a spa device. In the late 1960s, Jacuzzi developed the first whirlpool bath, which used jets to mix air and water.

Though similar wooden wheels already existed (but were not common), this quintessential fair attraction as we know it was designed by engineer George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, as organizers wanted a feature that rivaled the 1889 Paris Expo’s Eiffel Tower.

Ferris designed a 264-foot-tall steel wheel (equivalent to a 25-story building), weighing over 2,000 tons, with 36 passenger cars. Each car could fit up to 60 people, meaning the ride could carry about 2,000 passengers at once.

The development of the telegraph in the 19th century revolutionized the speed and reach of communications, but what the best-suited code for it was was still an ongoing discussion. In the 1830s, Samuel Morse, Alfred Vail, and Joseph Henry developed their own electrical telegraph system and looked into developing a code based on "on and off" electrical pulses.

Morse developed a system around short and long pulses (dots and dashes) that his machine would transform into indentations onto a moving paper tape. In 1844, he sent the first Morse code message from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, which read "What hath God wrought?"

Tactile writing systems already existed before Louis Braille, a blind 15-year-old French student, developed his now-famous writing system in 1824, but they were not practical. Braille had learned to use the "night writing" code, based on 12 raised dots representing letters, but he realized that each cell or group of dots was too big to be felt at once with the fingertips.

Braille spent nine years developing a new system, based on the "night writing" code, with 6 dots per cell, which allowed for each "letter" to be encompassed at once. Today, the Braille system, virtually unchanged from its development, is one of the most widely used writing systems for the visually impaired.

Before "sandwich" was the name of a beloved snack or an easy lunch choice, it was a town in Kent, England, which gave its name to the Earldom of Sandwich. Eating food encompassed in bread is as old as humanity, but sandwiches didn’t receive their name, nor were they considered a category of their own, until the 18th century.

John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, was known for his love of cards and gaming. To avoid leaving the card table when feeling hungry, he had his servants bring him roast beef between two pieces of toasted bread, which eliminated the need for a fork and prevented the cards from getting greasy. The snack became popular in London attached to his name, and the rest is history.

As many women know, Pap smears are routinely used to detect precancerous or cancerous cells that could lead to cervical cancer, but what many might not know is that the test was originally called the "Papanicolaou test," and that is named after the couple who developed it.

George Papanicolaou was a Greek physician who, while studying the reproductive cycles of guinea pigs, came up with a way of identifying malignant cells with a microscope. His wife and assistant, Mary Papanicolaou, volunteered as a test subject, and after two decades of studies and investigation, the Papanicolaou test gained wide acceptance, becoming one of the main screening tests for cervical cancer.

If you ever saw a lab, you might have noticed an abundance of small, shallow circular containers, filled with samples. These are called "Petri dishes" and are used by scientists to grow microorganisms, such as bacteria and fungi. The dishes and their lids are transparent, so scientists can easily observe the samples or examine them under the microscope without disturbing them.

Why are they called "Petri" dishes? They were developed by a German physician named Julius Richard Petri, an assistant to the famous microbiologist Robert Koch. Petri observed that the glass plates covered by bell jars used in the lab allowed air and germs to contaminate the samples and made observation difficult. He designed a shallow, circular, two-part glass dish with a slightly larger lid that let oxygen in while keeping other bacteria out, and allowed for easy and close examination.

Unless you speak Spanish or are familiar with common Spanish nicknames, it might come as a surprise to know that one of America’s favourite snacks and a staple in Tex-Mex cuisine bears the name of a person. In this case, "Nacho," a common nickname for someone named "Ignacio."

These fried corn tortilla chips were invented by Ignacio "Nacho" Anaya, who worked at a restaurant in Coahuila, Mexico, near the U.S. border. A group of American tourists arrived after the kitchen had closed, but Anaya decided to improvise. He cut and fried corn tortillas, and topped them with melted cheese and jalapeños, a combination that surprised and delighted the guests. When asked about the name of the dish, he called it the "Nacho special."

Are you a boysenberry enthusiast? Did you know that boysenberries are not only a hybrid of 4 different berries (raspberries, blackberries, dewberries, and loganberries) but that they owe their name to their creator, Rudolph Boysen? However, the one to name them was Walter Knott, the farmer behind the famous "Knott’s Berry Farm."

Boysen had enlisted Knott’s help to cultivate this hybrid plant, but had ultimately abandoned the vines and sold his farm. Knott transplanted some plants to his own farm and started selling the large berries in his produce stand. The fruit quickly became popular, and when Knott was asked the name of the variety, he named them "boysenberries" as an homage to their developer.

What came first, the diesel fuel or the diesel engine? The answer is neither, as Rudolf Diesel, a German engineer and inventor, came first of all. As an engineering student in Munich, Diesel attended a lecture about the issues of steam engines, which motivated him to start developing a more efficient engine.

He developed an internal combustion engine, which used the heat of compressed air instead of a spark plug to ignite fuel. The engine was patented in 1892, and Diesel named it after himself. This engine used different types of fuel but, over time, it became obvious that a specific type of oil worked best. With time, this petroleum-based fuel also became known as "diesel".

UPDATE YOUR READING LIST

Parseltongue, Nadsat, and More: 10 Books That Have A Unique Language

Image: freestocks

Literature is powerful enough to create and immerse readers in new worlds, fantastic adventures, and magical experiences. Some worlds are more complex than others, and some authors go as far as inventing a new language specifically for the novel. Take A Clockwork Orange, for example.

Whether it is because they couldn’t hold their creativity in or because the language is not enough to express what the author intended, these novels were innovative and successful, and we’ve gathered ten examples of books with their own language.

Image: Thomas Kinto

Anthony Burgess wrote a masterpiece of linguistic innovation. Through the use of Nadsat, a functional slang that blends Russian, English, and Cockney rhyming, it created a fully immersive world.

The novel portrays a dystopian society. The innovative lexicon serves the purpose of entering the reader into that world at the same time it alienates them. As the reader decodes the slang, it enters Alex’s violent escapades in complicity. In the case of this novel, the choice was not just stylistic; it was a device to explore the topics in depth.

Image: Henrique Craveiro

This novel, written by the Irish author James Joyce, is, like most of his works, a bit challenging. Considering it is from 1939, it is full of neologisms, lexical blends, and Irish mannerisms, which ultimately create a hybrid language that is border nonsense. It has an experimental style, and it is considered one of the most difficult pieces of literature.

If you are up for a reading challenge, you might find that this novel -which follows the lives of the Earwicker family in a cyclical and nonlinear way- is a good fit.

Image: Michelle Rumney

This novel by Paul Kingsnorth has an interesting detail behind the reasons for creating a "new" language. Written in 2015 but set in the year 1066, the author states that his intention in creating a new language is to fully represent the time.

In this case, the innovation comes through an invented version of Old English, which combines archaic vocabulary and syntax to create more vivid images and a more historical atmosphere for post-Conquest England. This is no light reading, as the language forces the reader to slow down and engage. Would you be interested in that?

Image: Quinn Korsune

Post-apocalyptic novels are a common thing today, but in 1980, when Russel Hoban published Riddley Walker, this was quite a surprise.

The novel is set two thousand years after a nuclear explosion that destroyed the world, and the life described is similar to what we can imagine it was hundreds of years ago.

The creation of a language was necessary to fully understand how shattered this new world is, and the means to do so is through a more phonetically spelled and fragmented English: "Nothing like it never happent befor but it wer like it all ways ben there happening." Isn’t literature marvelous?

Image: Rae Tian

J.K. Rowling is responsible for creating one of the most popular book series in the world. The details in the creation of the magical world are astonishing and the reason why the Harry Potter world became so immensely famous, even decades after the first book was released.

If a whole new world is created, she couldn’t miss the opportunity to create a new language: Parseltongue. In this series, the language belongs to the snakes and only a few can speak it.

In this case, the language is spelled like hissing sounds, and there seems to be no logic behind it.

Image: Liam Andrew

Following Hoban’s steps, Sandra Newman published a post-apocalyptic novel with its own language in 2014.

What is curious about it is the world it presents: It is inhabited only by children and teenagers because a plague killed all the adults. And this is enough to understand why an invented way of communication was necessary. Haven’t we all got lost in the words of a teenager? They speak their own language in real life, too!

Image: Christian Lue

Published in 1993 by the Scottish author Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting was a successful book later adapted into an equally successful movie.

In any case, this book combines the Scots dialect of his childhood with the darkest English vocabulary to imbue the plot and the characters with a humanity that makes them both sad, likable, and relatable at the same time.

With a tough plot with challenging language but an oh-so-ever engaging topic, this novel is a must-read!

Image: sue hughes

On a more cheerful note, this novel by Harry Mathews, published in 1972, compiles a series of letters between a husband and a wife who are after a treasure which has lost off the coast of Florida five centuries ago.

The wife, coming from the fictional country of Pan-Nam, speaks the language called Pan: "Pan persns knwo base bal. The giappan-like trade-for mishn play with it in our capatal any times."

Critics consider this comedy brilliant, witty, and engaging as it deals with the universally classic topic of marriage and its intricate corners.

Image: Possessed Photography

If you think Artificial intelligence is something of today, you’ll have to think again. Back in 1984, William Chamberlain and Thomas Etter instructed a computer program, Racter, to create some texts. These became a book, a collection of poetry and prose, and it is considered the first book written by AI.

The uniqueness of the language comes from that aspect; it is an artificially constructed conversation that follows its own semantic principles but which, in turn, can be read as any other book. Isn’t that interesting?

Image: Gabriella Clare Marino

Let’s finish this article with what is probably one of the weirdest books in the world. The title already is quite empty of meaning if you don’t know about the book, isn’t it?

Codex is a book by the Italian artist Luigi Serafini in 1981. More than a book, it is a creative masterpiece. It is an encyclopedia with illustrations of fictional fauna, flora, and a whole world described in an imaginary language.

The language created by the artist is so innovative (and imaginative) that it doesn’t really make any sense. The book is not for readers to make sense of it but to enjoy the visuals and the creativity behind it.