In 1908 Melitta Bentz developed the ready-made disposable coffee filter. She used blotting paper from her son’s school exercise books. Until then, coffee was filtered through ordinary funnels with filters of cloth or blotting paper. On 20 June 1908 the Imperial Patent Office granted her a utility model. In 1958 Artur Fischer brought his plastic wall plug, made of polyamide, onto the market. German Wikipedia calls it the most successful wall plug in the world for decades. The first industrially made expansion plug had been invented in 1910 by John Joseph Rawlings. Before that, a piece of wood was set into the wall with plaster or mortar. Fischer filed more than a thousand patents and utility models. In 2014 he received the European Inventor Award for his life’s work.