What would Coca-Cola be without its bottle ? The bottle was designed by Alexander Samuel in 1915 as the result of a competition to create“ a bottle so distinct that you would recognize it in the dark”. Its shape, called “contour” was inspired by the cocoa bean, but its celebrity stems from its likeness to a female silhouette. From that time the Coca-Cola bottle has represented an stylish woman wearing a sheath dress that enhances her curves. Now it can be found all over the world.

As a school-boy Guy Degrenne appeared more interested in drawing cutlery on his note book than in listening to his teachers. His headmaster said : “My poor Degrenne, that’s not the right way to be successful in life”. For decades, this has served him as an advertisement. Guy Degrenne took classic designs of the great Parisian silversmiths and manufactured them in solid stainless steel. He made elegant, reliable and modern cutlery for the middle class and so contributed to making high quality table cutlery widely available.

The working principle of the ballpoint pen was discovered by a Hungarian journalist named Joseph Ladislav Biro (1899-1985).  He devised the use of a fast-drying ink, similar to that used for printing newspapers.  After watching children playing marbles in a puddle, he had the idea of using a tiny ball to take up ink from a reservoir and deposit it on the paper. Biro sold his patent to Marcel Bich, a Frenchman.  In 1952, the latter started industrial production of pens with a transparent reservoir and a colourfed cap.   The Bic pen was born.