Oh, patents! People’s choice - 2016 INPI Innovation awards !

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Below is your chance to vote for your favorite five inventions, among a selection of 40 historical French inventions!  Just click, and validate your 5 selections…

Actually, this is not as easy as it sounds… considering the significance of the nominated inventions! You will be choosing among such transformative, and enduring, innovations as:  

•  pressure cookers (la cocotte minute, invented in 1952)
•  seamless hosiery (les collants DIM sans coutures, invented in1956)
• "Rosi” skis (invented in 1942 by Abel Rossignol)
•  Pleyel pianos (invented in 1844 by Ignace Pleyel)
•  Michelin radial tires (invented in 1946)
•  food mills (le moulin à légumes, invented in 1932 by the star inventor Jean Mantelet)
• non-stick cooking pans (invented in 1955, and marketed under the brand name Tefal)
•  the Eiffel Tower (invented by Gustave Eiffel, in 1884)
•  parachutes (co-invented by a woman called Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse in 1802!)
•  autonomous underwater diving suits (le scaphandre autonome invented in 1864)
•  the “godillot” (shoes) (invented in 1862 by Alexis Godillot)
•  tracing paper (invented in 1802 by Canson)
•  shopping carts (le caddie, invented in 1957 by Raymond Joseph)
•  airplanes (invented in 1890 by Clément Ader)
•  high speed trains (le TGV, invented in 1981 by engineers at the SNCF)

... plus many more that you will surely recognize.

Do go ahead though, and try to choose, even if you might find it a bit difficult … Just perusing the list of historical nominees is immensely illuminating! It will also familiarize you with some of France’s greatest contributions to better, easier, more enjoyable and safer  lives.

The results of the People’s choice of five, all-time, favorite inventions will be posted along with the six INPI Innovation awards, conferred on December 14, 2016, on the occasion of the 25th Annual INPI Innovation awards ceremony.

Click here to vote, and to wander through France’s history of great inventions! 👠   

*INPI - Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle (France's national patent office)  
INPI People's Choice Awards - INPI Innovation
http://innovation.inpi.fr/