11 inventions you didn’t know were Finnish
You already know that the Sauna is Finnish, that Angry Birds are too and that the Linux operative system comes from Finland as well. Because of that, we will focus this blogpost on Finnish inventions and innovations that are not as widely known but are definitely interesting. Let’s go.
Table of Contents
1. The Molotov Cocktail
This one comes with a recipe. Should I include it in our section of Finnish recipes? Source (CC: by-sa)
Known in Finnish as Polttopullo or as Molotovin koktaili – and, in some circles, as “the poor man’s grenade” -, this bottle full of flammable liquid, hand crafted in the spur of the moment, has been one of the Finnish contributions to warfare.
It was developed during the Winter War against the Russians, one of the pre-WWII conflicts in Europe. The Finns resisted the agressions of a much greater force with Sisu and intelligence, such as developing weapons like the Molotov Cocktail.
2. The IRC Chat Protocol
A good conversation, 90s style. Source (CC: by).
Who said Finns aren’t talkative? Everyone, really. Finns included.
But even if that might be true, they still were the inventors of the first protocol for chatting on the internet: the IRC. When I was very very young, the IRC and the Messenger were everything. Meanwhile, times have changed and this protocol has lost popularity over the years. Nonetheless, the seed of the idea to communicate and chat on the Internet with short messages was Finnish. They even had a proto-Facebook called IRC Galleria (SPA).
3. The dish draining closet
Draining the dishes in a little closet. Practical. Award winning.
The “Finnish Invention Foundation” named this closet “one of the most important Finnish inventions of the millennium”. For real. A Finnish inventor called Maiju Gebhard invented this closet during the later years of the WWII to improve the drying process of dishes. It was developed within the “Finnish Association for Work Efficiency”. For real. I am not making this up.
Although we recognize here that it is very practical and – since it was an award-winning invention – important, we must admit that it hasn’t been adapted worldwide yet – unlike two Spanish inventions: the lolly pop and the mop.
4. The electric solar sail
Sail away. Source (CC: by)
This new kind of solar sail hasn’t been used in a real-world mission yet, but apparently it will allow artifacts to travel much faster than usual while cruising space. To put it in perspective, this new kind of solar sail will allow space probes to reach the end of the solar system in the same time that it took old ones to reach Saturn without using an extra power source. Will Finns be responsible to for a new era of space travel? Only time will tell.
5. The first Internet Browser with a user interface
All these browsers are illegitimate children of the Finnish browser. Source (CC: by)
The first Internet browser that had a user interface (UX) – in other words, that it wasn’t all lines of text – was Finnish and its name was Erwise.
It was the final project of three students from the University of Technology of Helsinki, and it was launched in 1994. They abandoned the project once they graduated and, even though the creator of the World Wide Web encouraged them to go on developing, they presumed that without funding they couldn’t keep doing that. Nobody could pick up the project either, since all the documentation was in Finnish. Nonetheless, it was the inspiration for everything that came after it.
6. The pulk or pulka
A couple of pulkas, taking a rest. Source (CC: by)
A sled that replaces a backpack when you travel through snow: that is the idea behind this Finnish invention. And believe me, that was a problem worth solving. People use the pulks (in Finnish: pulkka) to go hiking, when going for an excursion or for a polar expedition. It was invented to carry any kind of equipment during trips in winter easily, pulled by humans or animals.
It is also very popular with athletes in winter: you put something heavy in your pulk and do your regular training in the snow while pulling it.
7. The circular lock
What would a lock embedded in a brick wall open? I chose this picture to show the circular key-hole. Source (CC: by-sa)
One of the most difficult locks to pick is another Finnish invention. It was invented by Emil Henriksson a century ago and is commercialized by the Finnish company Abloy (that is why it is known in some places as the “Abloy lock”).
What makes these locks special is that they don’t have springs. Therefore they are good for any kind of athmospheric conditions (oh, Finnish inventors, always thinking of the harsh winters) and thus can be used outdoors and to protect places that are outdoors.
8.-The Bubble Chair
A couple of chairs of Finnish design. Source (CC: by)
You’ll probably remember the chairs on the Episode II of Star Wars. There were extraterrestrials – technically everyone it these movies is extraterrestrial, of course – with long necks. The chairs they were sitting in were not just science fiction, but the works of Finnish designer Eero Arnio in the 1960s. The name “bubble” comes from the feeling that one has while sitting on one: being suspended from the ceiling and seeing through a sphere. They are commercialized by the Adelta company, in case you want one.
9. The satchel charge
All these toys were used during Finland’s Winter War. The satchel charges are the first ones from the left.
Another type of explosive that the Finns invented throughout the Winter War, besides the previously mentioned Molotov cocktails, were the satchel charges. The root of this invention was the need to blow up heavy static targets, such as bunkers, bridges or trains.
10. The Savonius wind turbine
A wind turbine of Finnish design. Source (CC: by)
These wind turbines are used to convert the wind energy to electricity, and were invented by the Finnish engineer Sigurd Savonius (thus, its name) in 1922. They are the old version of the electric windmills of today.
What make these wind turbines interesting is that they are very simple and require almost no maintenance. They are used when efficiency isn’t important, but cost is. You’ll rarely see them producing electricity, but for sure you have seen them on top of vans, as a cooling device.
11. The heart rate monitor
Heart rate monitor and the strip to hold it to the chest. All ready to go out and do sports. Source (CC: by)
Athletes throughout the world that want to become really good – or that were already – monitor their heart rate during sports. That would be impossible without a Finnish person who invented the heart rate monitor. How many world records can be indirectly traced to the Finns who invented this device?
It is maybe the first piece of wearable tech – if we don’t count a normal watch as one. It is another of those primal ideas that have been improved over time, as we have devices today that are able to measure almost everything.
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This list comes out of the category on the Wikipedia that deals with Finnish inventions. You can follow that link to learn some more, but these 11 are the ones we liked the most (and that we didn’t talk about yet).
What’s your favorite Finnish invention from the list? What is the best invention from Finland in your opinion, and the one that you like the most and use often?
Topics: Curiosities, Made in Finland: Finnish products |
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Suomalaiset, tuo sinulle asioita et voi elää ilman.
The list is missing “walk-through metal detector” invented by Outokumpu.
The list isn’t “missing” anything. It has 11 items as promised in the title. Why can’t people understand that? It’s THEIR list, not yours.
My thoughts too 😉
outukumpu translates into weird hill XD
i actually live in tornio not too far from the main factory.
the place is huge x.x
The list is missing AIV grass (AIV rehu in Finnish) which first gave cattle fresh fodder during winter. My grandpa worked in mr A.I. Virtanen’s team. He got for it Nobel price for chemistry.
Mobile phone text messages are also a Finnish invention
That circular lock in the wall actually holds another key.
This way a security guard or utilies repairman doesn’t have to carry hundreds of keys but instead one key that opens all the little key-safes in every building of district or company. Thus the keys of every building can be replaced without having to deal with distributing them to different suppliers, security companies etc. An added benefit is that this system limits the total number of keys out in the open.
Some of those key-stashes are connected to an alarm system which records when the key was retrieved and returned, along with a video recording of who retrieved it. When you open and pull out the key, the whole heavy lock is chained to the hidden key, so you don’t forget to return it.
Or lock for water main supply line used by fire fighters to close it (mains shut off valve) in case of emegency. These are usually near ceiling height.
You sound like Arabs in this article!
Our grand fathers DID this and they MADE that…
We should talk about today, what have we preserved and what are we inventing!
P.S. The list is missing ”Finlandisation”.
To be fair people should always know where they come from.. It’s not bad to remember i recall it right by the state of world this day i would rather be remembering old days than thinking about the present.. And when we talk about inventions it’s actually pretty pointless to be yelling “Our grandfathers DID this and they MADE that..” because without inventions we would be where we are today so stop the hate and dude try to find something positive on your life.. And when you yell Arabs i presume you are blaming them for something and i can say even without knowing why you hate them that sir you are wrong i’m 100% they didn’t do it.. You are falling for the medias trap trying to mould your head… You sir are the problem and without people like you we would have much better situation all over the world right now
Well put. very well stated
Amen to that @Bitboxx. I’m not Finnish nor Arab. But it fascinates me to know where of all of these inventions originated from. Kudos to all geniuses in the world past and present. And I do agree, Hate just makes your life miserable. Try to smile, it’s contagious and makes you and everyone around you feel wonderful ♥️
shut the fokk up, sheepshagger, txt messages, solar sails and browsers are
pretty much today’s stuff.
*finlandization. And it wasn’t written by a Finn, it was written by a guy who understands how freakin’ awesome we are. What’s wrong with arabs? And you try living in a small, unallied country with ca. 1000 miles of border with Soviet Union for 80 years, you too would be finlandized as fuck.
“P.S. The list is missing ”Finlandisation”.”
Well, half of the Europe, esp. Germans, were quite pissed of that Finns had about 30% of their foreign trade with Soviet Union. In Cold War era that wasn’t acceptable so they invented something to whine on. No more, no less.
Highly profitable for Finns, in this case. More salt to German wounds.
When you have a big trade parther, you don’t say everything you are thinking. That’s trade politics and anything else is just losing money because of poor politics.
And if you want a modern equivalent, see USA and China: Same word applies to them too: USA officially isn’t saying anything, no matter what happens in China. And doesn’t cut the trade.
Only difference here is that Finns (as country, not just 1% on the top) got rich and in USA only the top 1% profit, the rest are paying it as unemployment and weak currency.
Chinese of course make profit, they have trade first and ideology next.
Which obviously is bad thing when someone else does it, like the commenter thinks.
Hey, you FAILED at winning in 2nd world war. That’s why things are now as shitty as they are! German men need o get a backbone and kick that Merkel out. Btw, Molotov coctail was acutally invented by germans in WW1 as anti-tank weapon. Finns merely invented the funny name.
Why should the Germans invent the molotow cocktail when they had Real anti panzer weapons, oh.. and the Pope are not Catholic . By the way the first I phone, read the article by the Finn whom first try to sell the idea (he had a working prototype) to Nokia, they refuse, then he went to apple, guess twice if they liked the idea.
“Our grand fathers DID this and they MADE that…”
Some old, some new.
“We should talk about today, what have we preserved and what are we inventing!”
You can’t invent anything if you first forget the past as practically every invention in based on earlier inventions.
Like Linux.
Also, Finland isn’t a big country, we can’t make internationally famous inventions every year.
Sauna.
The real meaning of the lock-in-the-brick-wall was already mentioned, althoug the it was in this page for its reference to the quality locksmithship behind it.
Another little correction:
That kind of pulkka as in number six is actually called “ahkio”. Where as pulkka is usually smaller, less durable, pulled by a string of rope and used for children in snow downhills, ahkio is a tool for outdoor work and more serious leisure.
Ahkio is more durable, longer and has an icluded rubberband-fixed fabrick cover for the gear in it (as in the photo). Ahkio is also pulled by a pair of fixed rigid beams (as in the photo) attached to a belt around the waist of the puller. This way it leaves hands free for example skiing, and prevents the ahkio from attacking your heels in downhills.
Either way “pulkka” or “ahkio” is not much of a Finnish invention. Ancient kind of “ahkio”‘s were used by the indigenous people long before the Finns “invented” them.
Finns are indigenous. It has been confirmed by DNA research.
For #5:
Lines of text on the monitor and a keyboard are also a user interface. They are not a *graphical* user interface. Also, UX = User Experience, UI = User Interface, GUI = Graphical User Interface. Sorry but I found this annoying 😛
What about MySQL and MariaDB? Without them and Linux the Internet couldn’t exist! 😉
Linux could, is and was as older software than MySQL.
Internet in current form could exist without, but the contribution to cheap web services is significant, known as LAMP -stack, which has everything for a web-site.
(Linux as an operating system, Apache as a web server, MySQL as a database and PHP as glue to put these together.)
Umm, you’re kidding, right? Linux is important, but we have a lot better open source database available. MySQL actually has caused a lot of the problems on the internet rather than solved them.
So, if MySQL with its problems and incompatibilities hadn’t been invented, we would be using PostgreSQL happily without any problems and the Internet would be a better place.
And Linux (by Linus Torvalds)
Molotov cocktail was first used in spanish civil war.
True. The weapon is not Finnish invention; the term “Molotov cocktail” is.
xylitol is from finland too!
Or, the dental significance.
Molotov’s cocktail is NOT an Finnish invention. Only the name is. It was first time invented and used before winterwar in Spain, during Spanish civil war July 1936—February 1939. Please correct the text in page.
Molotov’s cocktail is NOT an Finnish invention. Only the name is. It was first invented and used in Spanish Civil War (July 1936—February 1939). Please correct the text on this page.
Molotov’s cocktail was invented in Spanish Civil war but it was mastered and named after Molotov in Russo-Finnish war (Winter War) later by Finnish troops!
Stop bitching about Molotov coctail not being a Finnish invention – because it is. Of course the concept of fire bombing was around much earlier (even before the Spanish Civil war, mind you), but mixture-wise this cocktail was perfected by the Finns.
The goal was to create something cheap and simple enough for any inbred peasant of a soldier to use – and something that was jellified enough to minimize the risk of the same inbred peasants from torching themselves with leaking liquid while tossing the ammo – and to make it stick in and on the targer, instead of just sprinkling like any regular liquid does.
It’s not rocket science. It’s just development.
Perfecting an invention is good, but that’s not inventing the thing itself. PHP is therefore right, the Molotov cocktail is not a Finnish invention. The name is Finnish though, as mentioned. So yes, bitching about it is fine in this case.
Pussilakana – how ever that translates; a bedding sheet that forms a pouch in which you can insert a blanket. That’s a finnish invention too. Or so I have heard.
The first one is incorrect though. The Molotov cocktail was being used by Spanish Nationalist forces from 1936 onwards to repel Soviet supplied Republican tanks. Then the Japanese also used them against the Soviets during the battle of Khalkhin Gol in early to mid 1939. The Finns used and improved upon previous ideas and gave it its name based upon the Soviet ‘Cluster’ bombs being called Molotov Bread Baskets.
You neglected to mention the comprehensive Perl archive network (CPAN), a pioneering effort in code-sharing.
It’s kinda funny I didn’t even knew these are Finnish inventions though I’m from Finland.
Text message, Linux…
SIPOREX, FROM Finland too.
Hi,
just a small correction: in (9) only the large one is a satchel charge. The other green one is a type of handgrenade.
Kind regards,
Pekka
Actually.. Molotov wasn’t invented by the Finnish, or neither Russians.. It was invented by Spanish people, only invention made to it, was the NAME of it. That is all.
You are wrong. These bottles were used to burn things in Spain and elsewhere before finnish Winter war. The finnish Molotov cocktail is different, it was invented by a finnish nobelist and professor A.I. Virtanen and chemist A. Wilska. They invented an ignition mechanism which consisted of chlorate and a glass tube filled with sulphuric acid. When the bottle hit the target, glass tube broke and ignited the bottle. The weapon was originally named A-pullo (A-bottle), but soon renamed by soldiers who used it.
The Winter War was part of the WWII conflicts, not pre-WWII. WWII started on 1 September 1939 and the Winter War on 30 November 1939.
The first mobile telephone call in the world was done by Finnish Nokia
What about Angry Birds
Laminated bending glass was also invented in Finland by the engineer Arvi Artama (1911 – 1992). The technology is still used for manufacturing car windshields. The invention allowed for windshields that do not break into hundreds of small fragments obstructing visibility once hit by a stone.
http://www.google.com/patents/US3697243
SMS / GSM technologies anyone? And some commentator was correct, Molotov’s coctail was (maybe) invented in Spain, but came into wide use in Finland.
And sauna, even though a Finnish word, is not a Finnish invention. Its roots go so far back nobody knows the inventor.
rice snack 😀 riisipiirakka is finnish invention too …so fn heavy to digest tho !
Sauvakävely – Nordic walking ?!
Maybe the best finnish invention is “vetää turpaan ” its a more violent form of a punch aimed at someones face. People were fighting as bitches before this great invention came. Have been using it whole my life,works like a charm
I concur, and the literal translation of “vetää turpaan” says it all; “To draw in the jaw”, which gives you an almost slow-motion-like mental image of what happens in the instance that “vetää turpaan” comes into play. You can almost hear the opponent scream out in anger “nooooooooottt faaaaaaaiiiirrrrr”.
And what about Fiskars scissors, the orange handy designed (and widely pirate copied) that almost every family has one in the kitchen
Great post, but actually Molotov Cocktails were first used by the spaniards. Finland just gave it Its name.
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