Famous Inventors Born in August

Hazel Gladys Bishop 

Date of Birth: August 17, 1906 

Profession: American chemist

Notable Works: The founder of the cosmetics company Hazel Bishop, Inc. She was the inventor of the first long-lasting lipstick.

Her dream of developing stay-on lipstick began during the war years, and while working a day job, she spent evenings, conducting hundreds of experiments, until she finally nailed it.

Quickly forming a company, using the business acumen she had learned from her parents, she launched her lipstick, with the help of Raymond Spector, an advertising executive she had brought in as a financing partner, Sales by Hazel Bishop Inc of the new stay-on, non-smear lipstick increased from $49,527 in 1950 to $10,100,682 in 1953 – an incredible achievement.

Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow

Date of Birth: 22 August 1860 

Profession: German technician and inventor. 

Notable Works: He invented the Nipkow disk, which laid the foundation of television since his disk was a fundamental component in the first televisions. Hundreds of stations experimented with television broadcasting using his disk in the 1920s and 1930s, until it was superseded by all-electronic systems in the 1940s.

Nipkow has been called the “father of television”, together with other early figures of television history like Karl Ferdinand Braun.

The first public television station in the world, Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow, was named in his honour.

Charles Stewart Rolls 

Date of Birth: 27 August 1877 

Profession: British motoring and aviation pioneer. 

Notable Works: With Henry Royce, he co-founded the Rolls-Royce car manufacturing firm. The first Rolls-Royce car, the Rolls-Royce 10 hp, was unveiled at the Paris Salon in December 1904, although in the early advertising, it was the name of Rolls that was emphasized over that of Royce. In 1906 Rolls and Royce formalized their partnership by creating Rolls-Royce Limited.

He was the first Briton to be killed in an aeronautical accident with a powered aircraft when the tail of his Wright Flyer broke off during a flying display in Bournemouth. He was aged 32.

Jack Kirby (Jacob Kurtzberg)

Date of Birth:

Profession: American comic book artist

Notable Works: writer and editor, widely regarded as one of the medium’s major innovators and one of its most prolific and influential creators. He grew up in New York City and learned to draw cartoon figures by tracing characters from comic strips and editorial cartoons. He entered the nascent comics industry in the 1930s, drawing various comics features under different pen names, including Jack Curtiss, before ultimately settling on Jack Kirby. In 1940, he and writer-editor Joe Simon created the highly successful superhero character Captain America for Timely Comics, the predecessor of Marvel Comics. During the 1940s, Kirby regularly teamed with Simon, creating numerous characters for that company and for National Comics Publications, later to become DC Comics.

Prestigious Honours and Awards: Alley Award; Shazam Award; Inkpot Award; Will Eisner; Hall of Fame; Bill Finger Award

Joshua Lionel Cowen 

Date of Birth: August 25, 1877

Profession: American inventor

Notable Works: He was the cofounder of Lionel Corporation, a manufacturer of model railroads and toy trains that gained prominence in the market before and after World War II.

Cohen received his first patent in 1899, for a device that ignited a photographer’s flash.