The Portager’s call for more local inventors hit paydirt. Thanks to our readers, here are a few more names and inventions rooted in Portage County:
In 1976, Joseph W. Shannon, along with co-inventors Clarence A. Ripley, Jr., and John Henry Dailey, was awarded a patent for an automatic drink dispenser. Instead of having to memorize mixed drink recipes, bartenders punched the correct buttons on a keyboard console and the drink would mix itself.
Shannon came by his focus on precise drink recipes and measurements honestly. In his book “Bars, Bands, and Rock ‘n Roll: The Golden Era in Kent, Ohio,” local author Chas Madonio anointed Shannon “the godfather of rock ‘n roll in Kent.”
Rightly so. Shannon owned The Deck, the Fifth Quarter and the Towne House, all former Kent watering holes. Of Shannon, Madonio wrote, “He did more than anyone else to make Kent the rock ‘n roll capital of Northeast Ohio.”
In 1981, Shannon patented a device that let multiple dispensing terminals communicate with a central source of beverage ingredients for dispensing. He followed that up with an automatic wine dispenser, which was patented in 1983.
Like it or not, bartenders could no longer over-pour drinks for their friends or serve under-the-radar freebies.
From 1989-2002, Shannon was awarded almost two dozen patents, most related to producing a perfect glass of soda pop. One senses when a beverage is sold out, one detects when soft drink dispensers are out of syrup, one prevents ice dispensing systems from over or underfilling cups, and one monitors the amount of soda in cups.
Shannon now lives in Twin Lakes and owns six of the popular northeast Ohio restaurant chain Rockne’s. Yes, there is one in Kent. Another two Rockne’s, one on Steels Corners and one on Merriman Road, are franchises owned by others.
Kent can also lay claim to James Fergason, the inventor of liquid crystal technology.
Fergason holds more than 150 patents in liquid crystal technology, including the first practical use of liquid crystals: the lights we see in digital alarm clocks, medical imaging devices, computer displays and many other devices.
Fergason grew up in Missouri, where he was born in 1934. He perfected his understanding of liquid crystals while working at Westinghouse Research Laboratories in Pennsylvania, then moved to Kent and became associate director of Kent State University’s Liquid Crystal Institute.
Liquid crystals were first discovered in Germany in the 1880s, but Fergason’s 1967 discovery of the twisted nematic field effect changed the way technology could be viewed.
Prior to his discovery, handheld devices that used LCDs had a short life span and were hard to see: think looking at soap on a mirror. Fergason’s liquid crystal display technology meant devices could be easily read and would last a long time on minimal power.
Suddenly, people could afford, keep and easily read their watch and clock, calculator, computer and video game screens, as well as their other consumer electronics. His invention also revolutionized industrial, scientific and medical apparatus.
Fergason became an entrepreneur, heading multiple companies. One of his many patents is for eyewear featuring liquid crystal material that instantly becomes opaque when hit by any intense radiation. This eyewear protects the user’s eyes even from laser light.
Fergason was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1998.
In 1970, the Continental Oil Co. of Ponca City, Oklahoma, was awarded a patent for a segmented mold core assembly adapted for plastic injection molding of bent plastic articles. The inventor, Kenneth A. Shale of Garrettsville, stated in his patent application that the contraption is used to create hollow curved pieces. His design reduced the number of segments existing core mold assemblies required and improved the usual methods of keeping the segments aligned.
Confused? Shale’s son, Kenneth C. Shale, also of Garrettsville, said the devices were for plastic injection molding of plumbing fittings. (Right. That clears it up.)
Locks have a long history in Kent, and involved more than one family business.
Kent resident James B. Miller, once superintendent of Kent’s Atlantic and Great Western railroad yards, made train travel safer than it ever had been before.
In 1876, he was awarded a patent for perfecting the railway speed recorder, a device which recorded every movement of a train, the duration of each stop and its speed at any point along the rail line. The idea was safety: fewer train wrecks and damaged roadbeds.
According to a Feb. 5, 1983 Record-Courier article republished in the 1988 book Portage Pathways, the late Record-Courier editor and local historian Loris Troyer wrote that the company’s advertisements claimed that trains equipped with speed recorders would no longer be able to stay a bit too long at stations and then make up for the lost time by fast runs between stations.
Miller built his Railway Speed Recorder Co. on North Water Street in Kent, producing recorders that were used across the globe. The company closed in 1904, when railway block systems rendered speed recorders obsolete. Quite simply, block systems, still in use today, stop trains from bumping into each other.
Apparently Miller wasn’t satisfied with sitting behind a boss’s desk. He kept on tinkering, and found success in a completely different field.
In 1888, he was awarded a patent for improving a combination lock that fellow Kent resident Byron J. Douds had been working on.
Douds was awarded his own patent for a “permutation lock” in 1890. What became of him is unclear, but Miller founded the Miller Keyless Lock Co. and built his factory on North Water Street, across the street from where he ran Railway Speed Recorder.
In 1890, he built a new lock factory on what would become Lock Street, producing locks there for 57 years.
In 1902, Miller was awarded a patent for improved escutcheon plates for door and drawer locks, adding to the lock’s security. FYI: escutcheon plates are the flat pieces of metal around a keyhole, door handle or light switch.
In 1907, he was awarded a patent for improving combination padlocks, making them easy to construct, reliable and unable to be opened except by people familiar with the combination.
Going beyond padlocks, Miller also produced combination locks for doors. Residents of Portage County’s older homes, especially in Kent, still secure them with the historic devices.
When Miller died in 1927, his sons Jamie and Ned Miller, along with Edward M. Miller (likely a relative, but we don’t know for sure), carried on with the family business.
In 1931, Edward Miller was awarded a patent for a keyless lock. The patent is assigned to the J.B. Miller Keyless Lock Co.
Users of Edward Miller’s locks would open the device with a combination sequence; his invention set the device to automatically lock when the shackle was closed. Good thinking: it seems many people were forgetting to turn the knob after they closed the shackle, leaving the way clear for unauthorized people to simply open it and potentially abscond with valuable belongings.
In 1933, Edward Miller and the family business gained a patent for improving that lock’s mechanics even further.
In 1945, the Millers sold out to C.L. Gougler Industries, another Kent mainstay. Gougler produced the locks in its Lake Street plant until the 1970s, and kept the innovations coming.
In 1945, Edward F. Bouhall, who worked for C.L. Gougler Keyless Lock Co., was awarded a patent for, as his patent application claims, a “new, original, and ornamental design” for a keyless lock. He followed that up in 1946 with a patent for a combination keyless and key lock.
A side note: The Columbus firm that Gougler sold its lock division to in the 1970s went bankrupt several years later, and all the lock tooling devices and parts were sold for scrap. “Today, Miller or Gougler locks are unobtainable, as are new parts to replace them,” Troyer wrote.
Security seems to be a hot topic for inventors. Unfortunately, when big money is involved, lawsuits can follow.
The anti-theft device known as The Club is credited to James Earl Winner, Jr., of Florida and John Rutkowski of Cuyahoga Falls, who were awarded a patent for their invention. However, Aurora inventor Charles Johnson sued Winner, claiming he was the actual inventor of The Club.
Winner agreed the two had collaborated on the device, and when the dust from the lawsuit settled in 1993, Johnson was awarded some $10.5 million. Winner’s name, not Johnson’s, still appears on the U.S. patent, awarded in 2002. Rutkowski’s name does not appear to be connected with the lawsuit at all.
Kent used to be the home of the Twin Coach Co. owned by California transplants Frank R. and William B. Fageol. Arriving in Kent in the early 1920s, they set up the Fageol Motors Co. and, by the mid-1920s, were producing 40 to 50 vehicles a month. They designed and built the Fageol Safety Coach in 1922, a development that heralded the passenger-carrying industry.
The Fageols sold their company to the American Car and Foundry Co., which transferred operations to Detroit. Not content to sit on their profits, in 1927, the brothers formed the Twin Coach Co., which produced a new Twin Coach bus. The first one rolled off the Kent assembly line the same year they formed the company, and soon the brothers were producing buses by the thousands.
“It was a revolutionary bus,” Troyer wrote in Portage Pathways. “Its front and rear lines were the same; one could not tell (until the bus moved) which were the rear and front ends.”
The Fageols were awarded more than two dozen patents, including one for a cooling system for self-propelled vehicles, a passenger vehicle and a transportation vehicle that modern eyes would easily see as buses, a fare collection apparatus, and a wheel mounting assembly adapted to heavy vehicles.
The brothers also gained patents for improving automobiles and dump trucks and rail cars. One, awarded in 1932, was for a rail car that could be converted to a road vehicle, and vice versa. William’s vehicle suspension design for trucks and buses was patented in 1946.
The iconic glass Coca-Cola bottle didn’t come from Ravenna, but it has its roots there. From the 1860s through the 1890s, Ravenna had many glass factories, and a man named Chapman Root worked at one of them.
When the plant closed, likely around 1900, Chapman moved to Terre Haute, Indiana, and opened his own glass factory the following year. His business there flourished even before he designed and patented the unique bottle in 1915. Chapman eventually sold the bottle to the Coca-Cola Co. and became even more fabulously wealthy.
In the first installment of this now four-part series, I wrote about how Ravenna industrialist John F. Byers designed steam engines, one for an oatmeal machine that he sold to Ravenna’s Quaker Mill Co.
But wait, there’s more:
In the 1850s, a young German immigrant named Ferdinand Schumacher founded the German Mills American Cereal Co. in Akron, grinding oats into meal to be sold as a breakfast food. William Heston, who had learned milling from Schumacher, decided to try his luck in Ravenna.
Heston and four other men formed the Quaker Mill Co. in Ravenna on May 3, 1877. There are varying stories as to how they arrived at the name “Quaker,” but one thing is beyond debate. The familiar Quaker trademark, a man in Quaker garb, was officially recorded by the U.S. Patent Office on Sept. 4, 1877.
Heston’s Ravenna operation was, according to Portage Pathways, “not a rousing success.” The American Cereal Co., which included Schumacher’s company, bought the Quaker Mill Co. in 1891. The American Cereal Co. registered the Quaker trademark in its own name in 1895, and six years later became the nucleus of the undeniably successful Quaker Oats Co.
Would it all have happened if Heston hadn’t drawn on his Quaker roots (one story) or if his partner Henry D. Seymour hadn’t happened to read an interesting article about Quakers (another story) or if Heston, while walking the streets of Cincinnati, hadn’t seen a picture of a William Penn and decided the image would fit his as-yet-unnamed business well (another story)?
Whatever the truth is, Ravenna played its part.
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.