ALABAMA: Hearing aids
Miller Reese Hutchinson from Montrose, Alabama, invented electric hearing aids in 1895. Back then they were so large they had to sit on a table.
ALASKA: Hidden Valley ranch dressing
Buttermilk dressing dates back to Texas in 1937, but Steve Henson perfected the recipe for Hidden Valley ranch dressing in Alaska in 1949.
ARKANSAS: Movies with sound
Freeman Owens put sound to film in 1923 and held 200 patents during his lifetime.
ARIZONA: Tasers
Tasers were invented by NASA scientists in Tuscon in 1974.
CALIFORNIA: iPhones
Steve Jobs and the engineers at Apple invented the first iPhone in 2007, which TIME Magazine named its "Invention of the Year."
COLORADO: Tampons
Although there were previous iterations of tampons, the modern tampon as we know it today was invented by Dr. Earle Haas, a Denver-based general practitioner, who invented tampons and applicators from telescoping paper tubes in 1929. He obtained a patent in 1933.
CONNECTICUT: Can openers
People used to open canned food with hammers and chisels when it hit grocery store shelves in 1810. Ezra Warner invented a better way with his can opener in 1858. However, it wasn't the familiar handheld device we use today — the saw-like blade left jagged edges on the can and was widely used in grocery stores, where clerks would opens cans for shoppers to take home.
DELAWARE: Kevlar
Kevlar, a bulletproof material often used for body armor and bulletproof vehicles, was invented by Stephanie Kwolek in 1965.
FLORIDA: Gatorade
According to Gatorade, the assistant coach of the University of Florida's football team asked university scientists why so many of his players were affected by heat related illnesses.
These researchers discovered the use of electrolytes (among other things), and invented Gatorade (named after the team, the Florida Gators) to replenish them.
GEORGIA: Cotton gin
Eli Whitney famously invented the cotton gin, a machine used to separate cotton fibers from seeds, in 1794.
HAWAII: Surfboards
English aristocrat Joseph Banks chronicled Hawaiian natives "surf-riding" in 1769.
IOWA: Tractors
Tractors were invented by John Froelich in 1892.
IDAHO: Television
Philo Taylor Farnsworth is known as the "Father of Electronic Television" for his 1927 invention, which he patented in 1930. He transmitted an image of his wife, making her the first woman on TV.
Others had come up with mechanical televisions known as "televisors," but Farnsworth was the first to create an electronic television without any mechanical aspect transmitting images.
ILLINOIS: Zippers
Whitcomb L. Judson invented what he called a "clasp locker" in 1893.
INDIANA: Gas pump
The first gasoline pump was invented in 1885 by Sylvanus Bowser.
KANSAS: ICEEs
Omar Knedlik of Coffeyville, Kansas, didn't have a soda fountain in the Dairy Queen he owned (according to some accounts his was broken), so he put bottles of soda in the freezer to keep them cold. When he served customers half-frozen sodas, they couldn't get enough.
In 1958, he invented a new kind of soda machine, a cross between an automobile air conditioning unit and an ice cream machine, and called the slushy sodas "ICEEs." 7-Eleven began installing the machines in their stores in 1965.
KENTUCKY: The "Happy Birthday" song
Sisters Mildred Jane Hill and Patty Smith Hill composed the "Happy Birthday" song and published it in a book of songs for kindergarteners in 1893.
LOUISIANA: Binocular microscopes
The binocular microscope was invented by John Leonard Riddell in 1852.
MAINE: Diving suits
While metal diving suit concepts date back to the 17th century, Leonard Norcross patented the first rubber diving suit in 1834.
MARYLAND: Bottle caps
William Painter invented bottle caps in 1891.
MASSACHUSETTS: The World Wide Web
London-born MIT Professor Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1990. While he started outlining the idea as a software engineer in Switzerland, he moved to Massachusetts in 1994 to found the World Wide Web Consortium.
MICHIGAN: Road lines
Edward N. Hines came up with the idea for road lines in 1911 after seeing a leaky milk wagon leave a trail down the street.
MINNESOTA: Rollerblades
Brothers Scott and Brennan Olsen invented Rollerblades in 1980.
MISSOURI: Vacuum cleaners
John S. Thurman invented a gasoline-powered "pneumatic carpet renovator" in 1898 and patented it a year later. Today, Missouri is home to a Vacuum Cleaner Museum.
A Chicago inventor named Ives McGaffey had patented a "sweeping machine" in 1869, but it wasn't motorized. A British engineer named Hubert Cecil Booth also patented a motorized vacuum in 1901.
MISSISSIPPI: Pine-Sol
While living in a forest of pine trees near Jackson, Mississippi, chemist Harry A. Cole used pine oil's natural disinfecting and deodorizing qualities to create Pine-Sol cleaning solution in 1929. Clorox acquired the company in 1990.
MONTANA: Holter heart monitors
The Holter heart monitor, a portable device that continuously monitors heart activity, was invented by Norman Jeff Holter and Bruce Del Mar in 1962.
NEBRASKA: Ski lifts
James Michael Curran invented ski lifts in 1936. A self-taught engineer, he used the same wire-based system he'd designed to hoist bales of bananas from loading docks onto boats and replaced the fruit hooks with chairs.
NEVADA: Blue jeans
Jacob Davis began making riveted overalls for miners in Reno, Nevada, in 1871 — the predecessor to what became blue jeans as we know it today. He then teamed up with Levi Strauss of San Francisco to patent blue jeans in 1873.
NEW HAMPSHIRE: Alarm clocks
Levi Hutchins invented the first alarm clock in 1787, though French inventor Antoine Redier patented it 60 years later.
NEW JERSEY: Air conditioning
A 1902 discovery by Willis Carrier led to the invention of air conditioning in 1921.
NEW MEXICO: The atomic bomb
Scientists for the Manhattan Project detonated the first atomic bomb in 1945 at Trinity Site.
NEW YORK: Toilet paper
Joseph Gayetty is credited with developing commercial toilet paper in Albany in 1857, though Seth Wheeler patented "improvement wrapping paper" wrapped around a tube and perforated for easy use in 1871.
NORTH CAROLINA: Airplanes
The Wright Brothers achieved the first successful airplane flight in 1903.
NORTH DAKOTA: Rolls of film
Peter Houston of Wisconsin invented the first roll film camera. His brother David Houston, who was living in North Dakota, invented flexible film rolls and patented both of their designs in 1881.
OHIO: Superman
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman in Glenville, a neighborhood in Cleveland, in 1933. They sold the rights to DC Comics in 1938 for $130.
OKLAHOMA: Shopping carts
Sylvan Goldman invented shopping carts in 1937.
OREGON: Maraschino cherries
Maraschino cherries originated in Europe in the 19th century in Dalmatia (now part of Croatia), but Oregon State University professor Ernest H. Wiegand perfected a brine that would preserve cherries without turning them to mush.
PENNSYLVANIA: Ferris wheels
Though "Pleasure wheels" date back as far as 17th-century Bulgaria, George Ferris from Pittsburgh invented what we have come to know as the Ferris wheel in 1892. It debuted at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
William Somers, who had patented a similar ride called a "roundabout," sued Ferris for copyright infringement, but the case was dismissed.
RHODE ISLAND: Diners
The first diner, founded by Walter Scott in 1872, sold food out of a horse-drawn carriage.
SOUTH CAROLINA: Submarines
According to the New York Times, reports of submersible crafts date back to the 17th century and earlier, but Horace Hunley invented military submarines in 1864, which were used during the Civil War.
SOUTH DAKOTA: Cyclotron
Ernest Lawrence invented the Cyclotron particle accelerator in 1932 that was used to discover elements and cancer treatments.
TENNESSEE: Cotton candy
Cotton candy was invented in Nashville in 1897 — ironically, by a dentist named William Morrison and candy maker John C. Wharton.
TEXAS: Electric typewriters
Typewriters date back to a 1714 "writing machine," but James Field Smathers invented the first electric typewriter in 1912.
UTAH: Electric traffic lights
Lester Farnsworth Wire, a policeman concerned with increasing amount of traffic, invented the first electric traffic light with red and green lights in 1912. The first one was installed in Cleveland, Ohio, two years later.
VIRGINIA: Lip balm
Dr. Charles Browne Fleet created lip balm in the early 1880s and sold the rights in 1912 to John Morton, who pioneered tubes and sticks of balm.
VERMONT: Pennies
Vermont became the first American local government to establish a mint and produce copper coins in 1785.
WASHINGTON: Hiking backpacks
Lloyd Nelson invented the hiking backpack in 1922 and sold the idea to Trager Manufacturing.
WASHINGTON, DC: Morse code
Samuel Morse named Morse code after himself when he invented it in 1844.
WISCONSIN: Blenders
Stephen Poplawski, owner of the Stevens Electric Company, invented the blender in 1922.
WEST VIRGINIA: Steamboats
Steamboats were invented by James Rumsey in 1787.
WYOMING: Christmas stockings
Christmas stockings have been around since 1823, but Joan Sheridan patented ornamental Christmas stockings in 1995.
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