Flashlight
The idea of a hand-held flashlight came from one of those playful useless experimentations, for which the creative people are well-known. It was developed, however, by a person who had more practical aspirations - to earn money.
The beginning of the invention was made when Joshua Lionel Cowen, an electricity freak, made a frivolous invention, the "lighted flower pot". What Joshua did was to simply fit a battery and a bulb in a flower pot, so that when the button was switched on the flowers would be lighted up. While this "invention" was pleasing to the eyes, Joshua soon got tired of it, and passed it on (or probably sold it) to a friend of his, Conrad Hubert (Joshua had become interested in another idea, the electric train, which he invented in 1910).
Conrad Hubert was a Russian Immigrant, who when he landed in America in 1890, was 35 years old, and was totally broke. He had tried many jobs, but always found it difficult to make the two ends meet. When his friend, Joshua, passed on the lighted flower pot idea to him, Conrad reasoned that the same principle can also be used for lighting up other things. He used the battery, the bulb and a paper tube to remake what he called "an electric hand torch". The usefulness of the innovation made it popular and by the time Hubert died in 1928, he was a millionaire.
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