Les Paul Inducted into National Inventors Hall of Fame

As if being an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame wasn’t enough, Les Paul can now also claim to be an inductee to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Paul, along with five other living inductees, was inducted in a ceremony Saturday; eight posthumous inductees were inducted on Friday.

Paul was inducted for his creation of the solid-body electric guitar, which he first built in 1941 and continued to refine throughout the decade. Paul eventually worked with the Gibson guitar company when the company decided it wanted to release a stylish solid-body electric. In 1952, Gibson released its first Les Paul model, which has changed little since its debut.

The other living inductees into the National Inventors Hall of Fame are C. Donald Bateman for the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS); Robert Gundlach for the modern photocopier; Alec Jeffreys for genetic fingerprinting; Dean Kamen for the AutoSyringe; and Leo Sternbach for Valium.

The deceased inductees are Matthias Baldwin for the steam locomotive; Clarence Birdseye for frozen foods; Leopold Godowsky and Leopold Mannes for Kodachrome color film; Garrett Morgan for the gas mask and traffic signal; Glenn Seaborg for plutonium isolation; Jacob Rabinow for optical character recognition; and Selman Waksman for streptomycin.

Inventors may be nominated by anyone for induction into the Hall of Fame, but they must hold a U.S. patent to be considered. The nominee’s invention must have contributed to the welfare of society and have promoted the progress of science and the useful arts.

The National Inventors Hall of Fame was founded in 1973 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Association and is located in Akron, Ohio.

Originally Published May 17, 2005