At the dawn of the 20th century, as Europe endured the 1st World War, a  young German quietly went about his business, leading a fitness program on the Isle of Man in the midst of the Irish Sea.
   
But the instructor and his students didn't have the luxury of conducting their classes in the environs of a fitness studio or spacious gymnasium. Instead, the program was carried out inside the cramped confines of a British internment camp.
   
The young German, along with a number of his fellow countrymen, was held captive under a cloud of suspicion; a common fate for expatriates from nations on the wrong side of the political divide.
   
Despite his incarceration, he revived the bodies and minds of many of his fellow internees using his unique exercise program. The regimen, which implemented self-defense techniques, restling and strength training, was the foundation of a fitness program that would one day cultivate a worldwide following and bear the namesake of its creator, Joseph Pilates.

On February 24, 2009, before a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama attempted  to buoy the spirit of a forlorn American citizenry and a beleaguered industry which was once the marrow of American manufacturing.

In his first State of The Union Address, the president focused his optimistic oratory on the ailing American automobile industry.

“We are committed to the goal of a re-tooled, re-imagined auto industry that can compete and win. Millions of jobs depend on it. Scores of communities depend on it. And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it,” Obama said.

It may have been music to the ears of American car makers, but the statement met mine with a tinge of discordance. It was news to me that the land of my birth also claimed the car as its native son. It was also news I didn't believe.

God bless those benevolent burrs

How an ordinary day hunting led one Swiss engineer to discover Velcro.

In the early 1940s, a Swiss engineer by the name of George de Mestral embarked on hunting trip with his dog in the Swiss Alps. It was an outing like any other, marked by natural beauty, quality time with his canine companion and the primal thrill of the hunt

But the trip was plagued by the presence of burdock burrs—affectionately known as “hitchhikers” in the Southern United States— that relentlessly cling to clothing, hair and animal fur.

From a horse-drawn monstrosity to a state of the art, autonomous household cleaning aid, the vacuum cleaner has indeed come a long way from its humble beginnings of one man, a handkerchief and a dream.

During a recent cleaning spree, I was sweeping up the dirt covered floor of my mountain cottage, when I began to long for a modern-day amenity afforded to most civilized Americans. With burning arms and my patience growing thin, I longed for the convenience of a device often taken for granted, the vacuum cleaner. Soon, my mind began to wonder about the circumstances surrounding the development of this staple of the industrialized world. Thankfully, our society has produced numerous minds of great capacity, which long ago sought to solve such quandaries. For some, the word inventor conjures up the image of a spectacled scientist mixing potent chemicals amidst a collection of smoking beakers. But upon further investigation, I found inventions like the vacuum cleaner are often birthed in far more pedestrian and often comical circumstances.

A charming story about Lois Réard, a French automobile engineer who decided to create the world's smallest bathing suit: the bikini. 

The seemingly endless list of 20th century technological achievements is littered with revolutionary inventions that have rewritten the book of civilization.

From the Internet and the cell phone, to the Atom Bomb and American Idol, these milestones have been beneficial and tragically detrimental to modern day man.

As the aforementioned inventions prove, ingenuity is both a blessing and curse.