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To make one phone, over 2kgs of raw materials are required, including petroleum-based plastics, liquid crystal display materials, brominated flame retardants (BFRs), and toxic heavy metals including cadmium, lead, nickel, mercury, manganese, lithium, zinc, arsenic, antimony, beryllium and copper.  If not properly recycled, toxins from these materials can seep from mobile devices into the environment when discarded in landfill, where they can accumulate in the food chain and cause damage to plants, animals and humans

Russell invented it Fred Moody: CD-ROM Inventor Strikes Again

Sony and Philips co-invented it

ment.

It is now 14 years since Sony and Philips launched the Compact Disc digital audio format and gave the world its first taste of digital entertain

In 1965, the Ohio-based Battelle Memorial Institute opened its Pacific Northwest Laboratory in Richland, to took over management of Hanford's lab, and James Russell joined the effort as Senior Scientist. Thus he gained an audience for his more far-fetched ideas and immediately began to pepper Battelle with proposals for new commercial concepts. The optical digital technology was initially met with skepticism, as it was not believed that one could digitize sound. "Here I was at Battelle, enmeshed in the scientific community, and one of the first things I had to demonstrate was that you could digitize music and reproduce it" he said. "Music into numbers? Come on now, Russell."

ple to convert into an audible or visible transmission.

Through the 1970s, Russell continued to refine the CD-ROM, adapting it to any form of data. However, like many ideas far ahead of their time, the CD-ROM found few interested investors at first. In 1971, Eli S. Jacobs, a New York venture capitalist, pioneered the commercialization by forming Digital Recording Corporation to further enhance the product for the consumer video market, and hired Russell and a team of technicians to come up with a video disk. Their efforts led to a 20-minute video disc in 1973.

"The vision I had in mind was of television programs on little plastic records. The networks, instead of putting programs on television, would print records. And if you wanted to watch your favorite programs you'd get them in the mail and put in the disk whenever you want," Russell said. "Jacobs thought, if we can do it, hey great, we've got the whole world by the tail. And if we can't, well at least you know where you are." In 1974 Digital Recording Corporation announced an optical digital television recording and playback machine, the first device to digitize a color image, at a Chicago trade show. The response from large potential investors was rather cool. Philips Electronics representatives visited Russell's Battelle lab in the summer of 1975, and they discounted the entire premise of his work. "They said: It's all very well for data storage, but you can't do that for video or audio." recalled Russell. Philips had just released its laser disc, an analog optical video player, and they were convinced that analog was the only way. "Philips put $60 million into development of the laser disc. We were advised that nobody would tell them they had made a mistake."

Sony launched its CDP-101—the first commercialized CD player in 1982. Sony and Philips paid royalties from CD player sales to Battelle and to Optical Recording Corporation. Time-Warner and other disc manufacturers settled with the Optical Recording Corporation in 1992, paying $30 million for patent infringement. The court determined that Optical Recording had the sole rights over the technology mentioned in the patents. But because the patents properly belonged to Russell's employer, he never got a cent out of either deal. By 1985, Russell had earned 26 patents for CD-ROM technology. He then founded his own consulting firm, where he has continued to create and patent improvements in optical storage systems, along with bar code scanners, liquid crystal shutters, and other industrial optical instruments. His most revolutionary recent invention is a high-speed optical data recorder and player that has no moving parts. Russell earned another 11 patents for this "Optical Random Access Memory" device.

James Russell has more good ideas before breakfast than most people do all their life

including a massive one in Times Square (the electricity bill of which was an annual $100,000).

  The billboards then evolved to a linked line of 117 signs along the railroad between Atlantic City and Trenton, New Jersey advertising Wrigley’s Spearmint.  Between 1915 and 1917, Wrigley sent free samples of gum to everyone with a telephone book, a total of more than 8.5 million, and in another campaign, every child received two sticks of gum when they turned two, reaching 750,000 children. 17.  A brand-recognition study in the 1920s found that 65% of people listed Wrigley as their “top-of-mind” choice for chewing gum, while the nearest competitor scored only 10%. 18.  Wrigley’s advertising campaigns were what truly made gum popular throughout the country and a billion dollar industry.

At Motorola, Cooper worked on many projects involving wireless communications, such as the first radio-controlled traffic-light system, which he patented in 1960, and the first handheld police radios, which were introduced in 1967. He later served as a vice president and director of research and development (1978–83) for the company.

In 1986 he and his partners sold CBSI to Cincinnati Bell for $23 million, and he and his wife, Arlene Harris, founded Dyna, LLC. Dyna served as a central organization from which they launched other companies, such as ArrayComm (1996), which developed software for wireless systems, and GreatCall (2006), which provided wireless service for the Jitterbug, a cell phone with simple features meant for the elderly.

Charmin

Children’s Pepto

Clearblue Easy

Dreft

Pampers

Pampers Kandoo

Max Factor

Puffs

Duracell

Camay

Ivory

Old Spice

Safeguard

CoverGirl

Pampers UnderJams

Braun

Gillette Complete Skincare

Cascade

Ivory

Always

Tampax

Aussie

Clairol

Head & Shoulders

Herbal Essences

Infusium 23

Pantene

Align

Pepto-Bismol

Prilosec OTC

Bounty

Mr. Clean

Swiffer

Crest

Crest Glide

Crest Whitestrips

Scope

Oral-B

Gillette Fusion

Gillette M3Power

Gillette SatinCare

Gillette Venus

Pringles

1907-1920 William Cooper Procter, son of William Alexander, takes over as Head of the company. Crisco is invented and introduced, and the company’s candles are discontinued with the development of the electric light bulb!Over the next three decades, Procter & Gamble develops many more products. Tide detergent, Drene shampoo, Duncan Hines Cake Mix, and Crest toothpaste are just a few of the products that brought the company much wealth, during that time.

1850 Procter & Gamble begin printing the “Moon and Stars” on their packaged products, as their unofficial trademark.

1859 Procter & Gamble reaches the one million-dollar mark!

1862 Numerous contracts were awarded to P&G, during the Civil War, to supply soap and candles to the Union armies.

1890 William Alexander Procter, younger son of Mr. Procter, becomes the first President of the company. That same year, he builds one of the American industry’s first research labs for products.

1837 William Procter (a candle maker from England) and James Gamble (a soap maker from Ireland) immigrate to Cincinnati, Ohio and begin selling their products. A formal partnership is signed on October 31, 1837.

1957-1961 P&G enters the paper product industry with the acquisition of Charmin Paper Mills, and Pampers are brought to the test market. The original Charmin “family” included paper towels, facial tissue and bath tissue, however; P&G discontinued all but bath tissue for their product market.

1973 Procter & Gamble patents a new manufacturing technique to produce softer Charmin tissue.

1978 Charmin becomes available in all 50 states, and the new 6-roll package is introduced.

1994-1997 Charmin’s products just keep coming! The Charmin Mega Roll, the double roll, the triple roll, and the “Big Squeeze” mega size roll are created.

1999 Procter & Gamble introduces its biggest upgrade in 10 years-the new, most absorbent Charmin toilet tissue with the same softness.

2002 P&G develops Naturella feminine pads specifically for needs of low-income women in Latin America.

2006 To aid the global crisis of unsafe drinking water in developing countries, P&G launches the Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program using their PUR water system.

Audio CDs and audio CD players have been commercially available since October 1982.            Mass adoption didn't happen immediately -- CDs wouldn't overtake cassette tapes until the late 1980s. The first album to sell 1 million copies in the CD format and outsell its vinyl version was Dire Straits' "Brothers in Arms," released in 1985.

mericans demanded it in their millions. What had originally been considered a luxury soon became one of the must-haves of modern life. “Weatherlessness” was perceived as a step towards a technology-driven vision of utopia.

Since the 1950s air-conditioning has been partly responsible for the economic development of America’s

and fans were used in China as early as 3,000 years ago,

In late 19th-century America, engineers had the money and the ambition to pick up where the Romans had left off. In 1881, a dying President James Garfield got a respite from Washington, D.C.'s oppressive summer swelter thanks to an awkward device involving air blown through cotton sheets doused in ice water. Like Elagabalus before him, Garfield's comfort required enormous energy consumption; his caretakers reportedly went through half a million pounds of ice in two months.

The third book, known as the "Green Book," covered CD-Interactive technology, is used to synchronize both audio and data tracks on a CD-ROM in order to provide things such as full motion video combined with interactivity. Published in 1986, Phillips Interactive primarily marketed this technology.

When a compact disc is written to, tiny rivets are made in the surface of the disc called stripes or pits. The areas between these pits are called lands, which together make up a pattern where data is written. From there, a CD-ROM drive uses a read head to interpret these patterns, which is done by focusing a laser beam on the surface of the disc. While the CD is spinning, this laser comes in contact with the lands and pits. If the laser comes in contact with a pit, the light is reflected off in all directions. However, if the light comes in contact with a land, it reflects back into the read head, triggering an electric impulse. Figure 3 illustrates the difference between a land and a pit, and how the light is reflected in each situation.