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Oct 24 2007 10:54AM EDT

Something You Never Knew Before: The Top 10 Inventors

In this month's Portfolio magazine and here on Portfolio.com, I have a big spread about the top 10 living U.S. patent holders.

This story has been something of a passion of mine since late 2005. That's when I first started asking the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office if it had a list of the 10 people who hold the most U.S. patents. Startlingly, it did not, and said it had no way of creating such a list. The USPTO still was telling people that Thomas Edison remained the all-time leader in patents -- which is not even close to true.

patent-silverbook-medium.jpg


So, while still at USA Today, I had two different patent search firms use their databases to generate a top 10 list. Both lists were identical, give or take a patent or two. I wrote about the list, but didn't have the time or resources to try to find and interview all of the top 10. None of the top inventors were people who talked to the media much, if at all. A few of them completely avoided publicity. One was in Japan, another in Australia.

When I joined Portfolio and told my editors about the list, we decided it was worth the effort to find, interview and photograph all 10, and show the public for the first time who these inventors are. We found all but one, George Spector, who seems to have retired and vanished.

I had a blast doing the story. Hope you like it.

(Photo: Australian inventor Kia Silverbrook, by Dan Winters)

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