Posts Tagged: "LASIK"

IBM: A commitment to innovation for the sake of inventing

IBM (NYSE: IBM) recently announced that it received a record number of patents during 2014, obtaining a staggering 7,534 U.S. patents in 2014. IBM is thoroughly committed to innovation. They do it because IBM has a culture of inventing, a culture of patenting, and over the years the company has invented and re-invented itself over and over. As you might expect, IBM is heavily involved in computers, particularly cloud computing and security. In fact, the company’s record-setting 2014 patent output was led by more than 3,000 patents – 40% of its overall annual total – covering a range of cloud computing, analytics, mobile, social and security inventions.

Gene Quinn

January 15, 2015

How Thanksgiving Leftovers Lead to the Invention of LASIK

Sitting at the dinner table with his family on Thanksgiving in 1981, Srinivasan looked at his turkey dinner and a brilliant thought occurred to him: a leftover bone with cartilage would provide the perfect test subject. The cartilage and other tissues attached to the turkey bone could approximate the physical structure of human tissue, and the smoothness and rigidity of the cartilage would make it easier to read the results of the experiment. On November 27, 1981, the team operated an argon fluoride (ArF) excimer laser to create a clean etching on the turkey’s cartilage that could be viewed when placed under an optical microscope. Further tests on the cartilage helped the team understand how many laser pulses were required to make a cut, the amount of energy delivered via the laser beam and the impacts of the laser on adjacent tissues.

Gene Quinn & Steve Brachmann

November 26, 2014