Inventors

This is a gambling tale about a casino boss who took a seat at history's card table and bet the house on a royal flush of an invention. He watched it change the course of California gaming and sweep the world -- then he walked away in anonymity as the revolution he created left him behind. Pai gow poker is the game. It is steeped in Asian superstitions, and even Hong Kong high rollers think it originated in China.

Charles E. Burford, a prolific inventor whose patents included the equipment that puts twist ties on bread bags, has died. He was 81. Burford died May 16 at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas of what his family said were natural causes. Charles Elmore Burford was born April 28, 1932, in Lindsay, Okla., where he graduated from high school and became a farmer. In 1945, his father, Earl Burford, invented an automatic hay baler, a wire-tying device. PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2013 In 1961, Charles Burford founded Burford Co. in Maysville, Okla., and put a new twist on the farm wire-tying technology to package bread in polypropylene bags.

Days after an aerial embolism from a high-altitude glider flight ruined his boyhood dream of becoming a fighter pilot, Lance Cpl. Howard A. Foote Jr. of Los Alamitos flew into Marine Corps history and the end of his military career. Under cover of darkness five years ago, the 20-year-old aviation mechanic stole an A-4M Skyhawk from El Toro Marine Corps Air Station and put the aging fighter-bomber through a series of high-speed maneuvers over the black waters of the Pacific.

If you've listened to any music in the last 48 years, chances are you're familiar with the Moog Ladder Filter, whether you know it or not. Idiot savants might know the invention by its government identifier: Patent No. 3475623. But to the majority of Americans, the Moog Ladder Filter is known for the electronic tones it generates -- warm, humming, quivering sounds that have been ubiquitous in rock, pop, disco, hip-hop, electronic dance music and more since the invention was introduced to the public in 1965.

Calling all inventors: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. wants you to parade your stuff. The nation's largest retailer is holding a contest, called Get on the Shelf, for a chance to snag a spot on its stores and website for your product. Think of it as American Idol: Retail Edition “That's uncovering the next great singer, this is uncovering the next product,” said Chris Bolte, vice president of @WalmartLabs, the retailer's social media and e-commerce arm. “This is a way for us to really provide our consumers with a voice on the kind of products that Wal-Mart carries.” That's because the contest will be determined by the public, who will vote on videos created by contestants and posted onto http://GetOnTheShelf.com . Aspiring businesses and individuals have until Feb. 22 to upload a clip about their product onto the site.

One thousand saxophonists from throughout Europe will gather here Sunday to pay tribute to the instrument's neglected inventor. The golden horn that Adolphe Sax created 150 years ago revolutionized 20th-Century music, but he never heard the long, lonely flights of Lester Young, Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. His life, however, played like a melancholy jazz solo. It was marred by nearly fatal accidents, the first at age 3 when he fell three floors.

Inventors of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your naivete. Such could be the motto of Joseph Gray, a youthful consultant here who has launched a new computer service for independent inventors. His hope is that by communicating and sharing experiences electronically, the lone wolves tinkering away in their garages can help each other avoid being victims of rip-offs. "We need to make people aware that they can be taken advantage of," Gray said.

Orange County industrialist Arnold O. Beckman was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame on Sunday during a ceremony in Arlington, Va., for his invention two generations ago of a meter to measure acidity and alkalinity. The 86-year-old founder of Fullerton-based Beckman Instruments Inc. attended the invitation-only induction and accepted a plaque and medallion from John R. Kirk Jr., president of the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Virginia Click was breathing heavily as she carted two white plastic bins the size of milk crates from her car into the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office here Wednesday afternoon. "It's normally nothing like this," said Click, who works for an Alexandria, Va., law firm that prepares applications for clients ranging from small inventors to big businesses. But as was apparent from the hundreds of patent applications in her two bins, this is not a normal week at the patent office.

Eighteen inventors were picked this week for induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio, including Paul C. Lauterbur, for the MRI; Robert M. Metcalfe, for high-speed networking known as Ethernet; and the late Peter C. Goldmark, for the long-playing record. The 2007 class of inductees includes seven living and 11 deceased inventors, bringing the number of inventors honored to 331. The hall of fame was founded in 1973 by the U.S.

Harvard chemist Daniel Nocera recently developed the world's first practical artificial leaf - a silicon-based device that could use sunlight to split water and create clean fuel. Now, the scientist says he's improved the leaf - making it able to self-heal and to work even in dirty water. Nocera discussed the advances this week at the American Chemical Society meeting in New Orleans. The artificial leaf has been called a holy grail for decades, and scientists had been working on designing an efficient device that, like plants, can use sunlight to create energy.

Taking a cue from TOMS Shoes - in which the company donates a pair of shoes to needy children for every pair bought - the social entrepreneurship class at Environmental Charter School in Lawndale recently came up with ways to do something similar with such everyday items as T-shirts and socks. "What if we make the hoodie reversible to reduce the need to buy more than one," asked Mohamad El Hajj Younes, 17. "And for every one sold, another would be donated to a shelter in the county where they purchased it. " His classmates huddled in groups to develop "for-purpose" business plans, instead of the traditional for-profit and nonprofit models.

Most likely you've never heard of Walter L. Shaw. But it's just as likely that his inventions have been a regular part of your life.  Here are a few things Shaw invented: Call forwarding. Conference calling. Touch-tone dialing. The answering machine. A burglar alarm that calls the police. The White House "red phone" that provided an emergency link between Washington and Moscow.  OK, so you haven't used the last one. But still, it's an impressive list of stuff conceived by a man awarded 39 patents who eventually died penniless and relatively unknown.  Opening Friday is "Genius on Hold," a documentary that tells the story of Shaw that might be remarkable even if you didn't know it was made by his son, Walter Shaw Jr., one of the world's most notorious jewel thieves.  PHOTOS: Tech we want to see in 2013 Hyberbole?

Los Angeles Times Invented in Paris in the late 1950s, the mechanical drawing toy that would eventually be marketed as "the world's first laptop" became wildly popular soon after an Ohio company introduced it under a new name: Etch A Sketch. French electrician Andre Cassagnes stumbled upon the concept for what he called the "Telecran" - or telescreen - while peeling a decal from a switch plate and noticing how his pencil marks had transferred from one surface to another. After an Ohio Art Co. executive discovered it at the 1959 Nuremberg Toy Fair, he bought the rights for $25,000 and launched it in time to become the best-selling toy of the 1960 holiday season.

SACRAMENTO - The smell of the blossoms had drawn Mike Williams to the rose garden sometime after midnight. Capitol Park security guards were scarce at that hour, and he hoped to get a little sleep. At 60, the medical technology inventor and entrepreneur was homeless, his money gone, his 28-year marriage over. But on that August night, things got worse: Williams was awakened by brutal kicks to his midsection. The thieves grabbed his backpack and laptop - which he'd been using to chronicle his unexpected journey.

N. Joseph Woodland, a co-inventor of the system of thick and thin lines that became the ubiquitous bar code labeling nearly every product regulated by commerce, has died. He was 91. Woodland died Sunday at his home in Edgewater, N.J., from the effects of Alzheimer's disease and complications of his advanced age, said his daughter Susan Woodland. Woodland and fellow graduate student Bernard Silver developed the bar code at Drexel University in Philadelphia - then called the Drexel Institute of Technology - in the late 1940s.

Royce B. Everett, co-inventor of certain laser devices with Trimedyne Inc., has filed suit seeking a share of $6.5 million that the Irvine company received in settling a 3-year-old lawsuit against distributor C.R. Bard Inc. The suit, which names Trimedyne and Bard as defendants, alleges breach of an exclusive, global distribution agreement among other claims, Trimedyne said Wednesday.

Despite what science textbooks include or omit, there are inventors other than Albert Einstein and innovative cultures beyond America and Europe--as Van Nuys Middle School students can well attest. On Thursday, about 70 seventh-graders at the school will display their knowledge of diverse cultures and inventors to parents, peers and elementary students during the school's second Multicultural Invention and Discovery Fair.

Frances Hashimoto, one of Little Tokyo's most influential business leaders who fought to preserve the neighborhood's Japanese cultural traditions and who invented the popular fusion dessert known as mochi ice cream, died of lung cancer Sunday at her Pasadena home. She was 69. Hashimoto was the feisty, visionary president of Mikawaya, the 102-year-old, three-generation family business selling traditional Japanese sweet pastries and snacks. At the urging of her widowed mother, she left teaching and took over the family business at age 27, vastly expanding its reach from a single shop in Little Tokyo to four retail stores in Southern California.

Stanford Ovshinsky was not a household name like Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein, but he was often compared to them, for good reason. He invented the nickel-metal hydride battery, which has powered high-tech items such as cellphones, laptop computers and hybrid cars. He created paper-thin solar panels potent enough to work on a cloudy day and cheap enough to be produced in sheets a mile long. PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2012 He founded a whole field of electronics that earned him a mention in dictionaries (see "ovonics")