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Inventors and Inventions: Q

Inventors and InventionsScience
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Q-Tips

The Q-tip was invented in the 1920’s Leo Gerstenzang (a Polish-born American). His wife had used a toothpick with cotton stuck on the end to clean their baby’s ears, and Leo invented Q-tips to replace her jury-rigged invention. Gerstenzang’s original Q-tips consisted of a wooden stick swathed in cotton at both ends; much later, the wood was replaced by white cardboard. Gerstenzang started the Infant Novelty Company to sell Q-tips (which he then called Baby Gays); in 1926, he changed the name of his product to Q-Tips® Baby Gays. The Q stood for “quality”. Eventually, the name changed to Q-tips. Doctors today advise that you should not use Q-tips to clean inside your ears. Q-tips, however, have many other uses, including cleaning small areas (like jewelry or the space between computer keys), applying glue, spreading paint, etc.

Quoits

Quoits is an outdoor game that is played by throwing an iron or steel quoit onto a peg-like metal pin sticking up out of soft clay. Quoits may have originally been a game in which a disc was thrown at a target, emphasizing accuracy (not distance), or it may have evolved from the game of horseshoes - its origin is unsure, but it certainly is an old game.

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