Did You Know...
...that several people are credited with the invention of the flush toilet? Most people have heard of Thomas Crapper (1837-1910), the sanitary engineer who invented the valve-and-siphon arrangement that made the modern toilet possible. Another claimant to "the throne" was British inventor Alexander Cumming who patented a toilet in 1775. Then there's a nameless Minoan (a native of ancient Crete) who lived 4,000 years ago who supposedly was ahead of his time and created the first flush toilet!
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 7210116 | Method and apparatus for synthesizing a hardware system from a software description A method and an apparatus take software source code to synthesize a hardware platform for running the software. The method determines which processor is suitable for running the code and meeting the performance parameters determined by the user. The method also dete... | 04/24/2007 |
| 7349547 | Noise masking communications apparatus A communications headset with a movable microphone boom that extends to different distances from the mouth, where the movement of the boom operates electrical, mechanical or acoustic means to adjust the transmit and/or receive sensitivity of the headset. ... | 03/25/2008 |
| 7198677 | Low temperature wafer backside cleaning A ring is provided that, together with a wafer, separates a processing chamber into an upper portion and a lower portion so that one side of the wafer, such as the backside, can be cleaned or otherwise processed with little or no interaction to the frontside of the ... | 04/03/2007 |
| 7181485 | Variably delayable transmission of packets between independently clocked source, intermediate, and destination circuits while maintaining orderly and timely processing in one or both of the intermediate and destination circuits In a system having independently-clocked job-performing circuits (e.g., payload processors) and independently-clocked job-ordering circuits (e.g., request and payload suppliers), coordinating mechanisms are provided for coordinating exchanges between the independent... | 02/20/2007 |
| 7173381 | Backlight unit for liquid crystal display The invention provide a cost effective way of determining the status of a light emitting device, such as a light emitting device in a non-emitting display device. The apparatus includes a plurality of light emitting devices arranged in a predefined configuration, a ... | 02/06/2007 |
| 7145615 | Reflective LCD having first pattern and second pattern different from each other Disclosed are LCD devices with improved display quality and front luminance and a method of manufacturing these LCD devices. Signal lines for transmitting the driving signals and TFTs are formed on the transparent substrate, and a dielectric layer is deposited on th... | 12/05/2006 |
| 7119495 | Controlling a light assembly A method and apparatus for operating a light assembly with fewer peripheral devices than is currently required is presented. The apparatus of the invention includes a lamp unit, a current restricting unit coupled to the lamp unit, and a current sensing unit that is ... | 10/10/2006 |
| 6962668 | Double-sided digital optical disk and method and apparatus for making A digital optical information disk contains content and/or non-content information on both sides of a single substrate produced by a process that embosses the surfaces of both sides substantially simultaneously. Simultaneous molding substantially eliminates the need... | 11/08/2005 |
| 6652936 | Method of labeling articles having convex surfaces Method or applying heat shrinkable segments of material (16) (e.g., labels or ornamental bands) to articles (25) (e.g., containers or ornaments) which have convex surfaces. The segment (16) is attached at both ends by adhesive to the convex surface (46) (... | 11/25/2003 |
| 6615113 | Articles holders with sensors detecting a type of article held by the holder An article holder has sensors that detect whether an article held in the holder is a workpiece or a piece of packaging material. Examples are end effectors suitable for picking up semiconductor wafers and packaging material from a pod or some other carrie... | 09/02/2003 |
