Innovation Europe > News > Innovation EU Vol1-1 > Great european innovators IV

Jozef Murgaš
Wireless transmission

Born in 1864, Murgaš was a Slovak inventor, architect, botanist, painter, patriot, as well as a Roman Catholic priest. Nicknamed the Radio Priest, he contributed to wireless telegraphy and help develop mobile communications and wireless transmission of information and human voice.

Murgaš emigrated to the US in 1896, where he was assigned a Slovak parish in the city of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He established a laboratory there, in which he primarily investigated radiotelegraphy. His article in the Tovaryšstvo magazine of 1900 shows that his radiotelegraphy studies had achieved a high level. In 1904, he received his first two US patents: “The apparatus for wireless telegraphy” and “The way of transmitted messages by wireless telegraphy”. A further 11 patents followed between 1907 and 1911. Based on the first two patents, he created the Universal Ether Telegraph Co., which organised a public test of Murgaš’s transmitting and receiving facilities in September 1905. The test was successful and he achieved radio transmission between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, Pennsylvania, or a distance of 20 miles (30 km) However, a storm destroyed the antenna masts three months later, which led to a dissolution of the company.

Thomas Edison paid remarkable attention to Murgaš’s experiments and he is said to have informed Marconi of Murgaš’s success. Murgaš’s lab in Wilkes-Barre was visited by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905.

Anastase Dragomir
The ejection seat

As a distinguished Romanian inventor, Anastase Dragomir was most famous for his patent, registered together with Tănase Dobrescu, of the parachuted cell, a dischargeable chair from an aircraft or other vehicle that was designed for emergency escapes – an early version of the modern ejection seat.

Dragomir’s design was successfully tested on 25 August 1929 at the Paris-Orly Airport near Paris and in October 1929 at Băneasa, near Bucharest.

Nils Ivar Bohlin
The three point safety belt

This Swedish inventor invented the three-point safety belt while working at Volvo. Born in Härnösand, Sweden, in 1920, Bohlin received a diploma in mechanical engineering from Härnösand Läroverk in 1939. In 1942, he started working for the aircraft maker Saab as an aircraft designer and helped develop ejection seats. In 1958, he joined Volvo as a safety engineer. He is credited with the invention of the modern three-point safety belt, which is now a standard safety feature in all cars.

In 1999, he was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame and in 2002, he was inducted in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.