Steve Divnick | |
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Nationality | American |
Occupation(s) | Inventor, Businessperson |
Steve Divnick is an inventor and businessman. His patented inventions include the "Spiral Wishing Well" (1985) seen at various museums across the United States, [1] and a smaller version for individuals. He has developed a boat lift, the DivnickLift, for docking small vessels onto larger boats. [2] His company Divnick International Group also invented, patented and manufactures an adjustable-loft telescopic golf club and a range of other golf clubs. His most recent invention is "Golf Ebikes" that allow golfers to ride an ebike directly to their own shot rather than sitting and waiting half the time watching a cart-mate play. They include a quick-attach side-mount bag carrier that tilts out and becomes the solid kick stand.
This is a waterless product which allows people launch coins on a spiral path onto the smooth fiberglass surface of the vortex funnel. The coins spin faster and faster as they cling to the nearly vertical throat of the funnel in a blur of speed before they drop into the locked base. The coin revenue is kept as a donation by the organisation who owns the well. It therefore has similar functionality to a traditional wishing well without the size and water. In 1987, Popular Science reported the typical take was $5–$25 per day, with one Salvation Army branch reporting a peak of $532 in one day. [3]
According to documentation on the Spiral Wishing Well website, the first Well they sold was in 1985 to the United States Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio where it has had over $2 million tossed into it. Many locations passed the $100,000 amount. The first one-day record was $532 at a Kmart store, another at a small school that raised $7,352, and a church that raised $40,979. [4]
The first Well that Divnick made was as an offering device for the children in his church. He began to see the potential as a non-profit fund raising device in public locations, and the company has shipped thousands of Wells all over the world where they have raised in excess of $200 million for charity. 100% of the revenue stays with the charity. Divnick and his company never receives any portion of the coins tossed into the Wells.
Many of the waterless wishing wells are sponsored by individuals or companies. Since they are placed in retail and other foot-traffic locations, they provide significant positive community relations for the sponsors.
The Wells are also popular with science teachers who use the company's Student Guide to teach topics such as tornadoes, whirlpools, planetary orbits, and the physics of a vortex. [5]
A propeller is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon a working fluid such as water or air. Propellers are used to pump fluid through a pipe or duct, or to create thrust to propel a boat through water or an aircraft through air. The blades are shaped so that their rotational motion through the fluid causes a pressure difference between the two surfaces of the blade by Bernoulli's principle which exerts force on the fluid. Most marine propellers are screw propellers with helical blades rotating on a propeller shaft with an approximately horizontal axis.
A Segway is a two-wheeled, self-balancing personal transporter device invented by Dean Kamen. The name is a registered trademark of Segway Inc. It was brought to market in 2001 as the Segway HT, and then subsequently as the Segway PT.HT is an initialism for "human transporter" and PT for "personal transporter."
A turbine is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work. The work produced can be used for generating electrical power when combined with a generator. A turbine is a turbomachine with at least one moving part called a rotor assembly, which is a shaft or drum with blades attached. Moving fluid acts on the blades so that they move and impart rotational energy to the rotor.
The Archimedes' screw, also known as the Archimedean screw, hydrodynamic screw, water screw or Egyptian screw, is one of the earliest hydraulic machines named after Greek mathematician Archimedes who first described it around 234 BC, although the device had been used in Ancient Egypt. It is a reversible hydraulic machine, and there are several examples of Archimedes screw installations where the screw can operate at different times as either pump or generator, depending on needs for power and watercourse flow.
A shopping cart, trolley, or buggy, also known by a variety of other names, is a wheeled cart supplied by a shop or store, especially supermarkets, for use by customers inside the premises for transport of merchandise as they move around the premises, while shopping, prior to heading to the checkout counter, cashiers or tills. Increasing the amount of goods a shopper can collect increases the quantities they are likely to purchase in a single trip, boosting store profitability.
The telautograph is an ancestor of the modern fax machine. It transmits electrical signals representing the position of a pen or tracer at the sending station to repeating mechanisms attached to a pen at the receiving station, thus reproducing at the receiving station a drawing, writing, or signature made by the sender. It was the first such device to transmit drawings to a stationary sheet of paper; previous inventions in Europe had used a constantly moving strip of paper to make such transmissions and the pen could not be lifted between words. Surprisingly, at least from a modern perspective, some early telautographs used digital/pulse-based transmission while later more successful devices reverted to analog signaling.
A urinal is a sanitary plumbing fixture similar to a toilet, but for urination only. Urinals are often provided in men's public restrooms in Western countries. They are usually used in a standing position. Urinals can be equipped with manual flushing, automatic flushing, or without flushing, as is the case for waterless urinals. They can be arranged as single sanitary fixtures, or in a trough design without privacy walls.
A corkscrew is a tool for drawing corks from wine bottles and other household bottles that may be sealed with corks. In its traditional form, a corkscrew simply consists of a pointed metallic helix attached to a handle, which the user screws into the cork and pulls to extract it. Corkscrews are necessary because corks themselves, being small and smooth, are difficult to grip and remove, particularly when inserted fully into an inflexible glass bottle. More recent styles of corkscrew incorporate various systems of levers that further increase the amount of force that can be applied outwards upon the cork, making the extraction of difficult corks easier.
A gas holder or gasholder, also known as a gasometer, is a large container in which natural gas or town gas is stored near atmospheric pressure at ambient temperatures. The volume of the container follows the quantity of stored gas, with pressure coming from the weight of a movable cap. Typical volumes for large gas holders are about 50,000 cubic metres (1,800,000 cu ft), with 60-metre-diameter (200 ft) structures.
Intellectual Ventures is an American private equity company that centers on the development and licensing of intellectual property. Intellectual Ventures is one of the top-five owners of U.S. patents, as of 2011. Its business model focuses on buying patents and aggregating those patents into a large patent portfolio and licensing these patents to third parties. The company has been described as the country's largest and most notorious patent trolling company, the ultimate patent troll, and the most hated company in tech.
Luther George Simjian was an Armenian-American inventor and entrepreneur. A prolific and professional inventor, he held over 200 patents, mostly related to optics and electronics. His most significant inventions were a pioneering flight simulator, arguably the first ATM and improvement to the teleprompter.
A water power engine includes prime movers driven by water and which may be classified under three categories:
Charles Grafton Page was an American electrical experimenter and inventor, physician, patent examiner, patent advocate, and professor of chemistry.
An escalator is a moving staircase which carries people between floors of a building or structure. It consists of a motor-driven chain of individually linked steps on a track which cycle on a pair of tracks which keep the step tread horizontal.
John Robert Vernon Dolphin was a British engineer and inventor, who joined the Secret Intelligence Service and then became the Commanding Officer of the top-secret Second World War Special Operations Executive (SOE) "Station IX", where specialist military equipment was developed. During his time there his inventions included the Welman submarine and the Welbike.
The United States provided many inventions in the time from the Colonial Period to the Gilded Age, which were achieved by inventors who were either native-born or naturalized citizens of the United States. Copyright protection secures a person's right to his or her first-to-invent claim of the original invention in question, highlighted in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, which gives the following enumerated power to the United States Congress:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
A timeline of United States inventions (1890–1945) encompasses the innovative advancements of the United States within a historical context, dating from the Progressive Era to the end of World War II, which have been achieved by inventors who are either native-born or naturalized citizens of the United States. Copyright protection secures a person's right to the first-to-invent claim of the original invention in question, highlighted in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution which gives the following enumerated power to the United States Congress:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
Abraham Lincoln's patent relates to an invention to buoy and lift boats over shoals and obstructions in a river. Abraham Lincoln conceived the invention when on two occasions the boat on which he traveled got hung up on obstructions. Lincoln's device was composed of large bellows attached to the sides of a boat that were expandable due to air chambers. Filed on March 10, 1849, Lincoln's patent was issued as Patent No. 6,469 later that year, on May 22. His successful patent application led to his drafting and delivering two lectures on the subject of patents while he was president.
Shankar Abaji Bhisey, Sunker Abaji Bhisey, Shanker Abaji Bhise or Sunker Bisey Abaji was a self-taught Indian inventor who was once called by the New York American as the "Edison of India". Sponsored by Indian nationalists, he moved to England where his inventions included a type-setting machine for the printing industry, an advertising innovation and so on. He then moved to the US where he designed a modification of the then popular ouija board where the supposed message of the spirit was printed onto a strip of paper. This spirit typewriter was patented in the US on 27 June 1922. He made no money from it but shortly after that he promoted a form of iodine termed as "atomidine" as a patent medicine, promoted by the American psychic Edgar Cayce, which earned him royalty and fame. He had nearly 200 inventions to his credit with 40 of them patented.
William Gray was an American inventor and entrepreneur. He is best known for inventing the coin-operated payphone and an improved chest protector for baseball catchers. He founded the highly successful Gray Telephone Pay Station Company, which became one of the largest employers in the Hartford, Connecticut, area.