10 Texas Inventions We Couldn’t Live Without

From technology that has
revolutionized everyday life to food we couldn’t live without, Texas has given
the world so much. Where would we be without the ability to cover up words we
wrote in pen? Or computers?

Which are the most important? We’ll
let you decide which was the most important of all Texas inventions. For now,
here are our top 10.

Liquid Paper

Like most of the world’s best inventions, the idea for liquid paper was born out of simple necessity. In the mid-1950s, Bette Nesmith Graham (who also happened to be the mother of The Monkees’ Michael Nesmith) was working as a secretary at Texas Bank and Trust in Dallas. The company had just installed new electric typewriters with super-responsive keys. For Graham, that technological advance only meant more mistakes in her typing. Graham was in a fix — she needed a quick way to fix her errors. Her solution? She placed a small amount of white tempera paint in a bottle and brought it to work with her. With some further refining of the solution, she began marketing her “Mistake Out” after it proved so popular with her colleagues around the office. And liquid paper was born.

Chili

Although recipes for the iconic stew date to before the founding of Texas, it was in the Lone Star State where the classic bowl of chili really came together when San Antonio chili queens whipped up batches of “Texas Red” to feed hungry workers.

Chili’s

Chili had become so synonymous with feel-good Texas food that when restaurateur Larry Lavine opened up a new spot on Greenville Avenue in Dallas in 1975, he used the popular dish’s name for his restaurant: Chili’s. That one Greenville Avenue restaurant grew into a chain with more than 15,000 locations in more than 40 countries.

The Microchip

Jack Kilby, a young engineer at
Texas Instruments, didn’t earn enough vacation to take the summer off. How else
could a young engineer get through a long, hot Dallas summer than bury himself
in the lab? Kilby spent that summer of 1958 developing an integrated circuit — the
first microchip — which became the foundation stone of the computer revolution.
Kilby didn’t stop there. Throughout his career, he also helped invent the
handheld calculator and the thermal printer.

Fritos

Fried corn chips are a staple of Mexican and Tex-Mex cuisine. But what turned the popular San Antonio street food known as fritas into a school-lunchbox staple was a little Henry Ford-inspired ingenuity. In 1932, C.E. Doolin purchased a recipe and equipment from Gustavo Olguin, who had been making the fried snacks by hand. Doolin created an assembly-line facility to ramp up production. In 1961, Doolin joined forces with potato chip pioneer Lay’s, and the two companies helped the chips craze spread far and wide.

The Super Bowl

Sure, the NFL had been staging a
championship game for years before any Texans got involved. But leave it to a
Texan to take the idea of a championship and, well, supersize it. That’s what
happened when American Football League founder Lamar Hunt came up with the name
“Super Bowl” at a pro football owners’ meeting in the 1960s. The rest is sports
history.

Pacemaker

Otis Frank Boykin was valedictorian
at the competitive Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and
Visual Arts in Dallas, only to drop out when he went off to college. The genius
was later “discovered” by scientist Dr. Hal F. Fruth. Working with Fruth,
Boykin developed more than 25 inventions. Perhaps his most famous — and
impactful — creation was a control unit for the artificial cardiac pacemaker, which
helped the pacemaker achieve its goal of maintaining a regular heartbeat in
patients.

Corn Dog

Like with most iconic American food
items, opinions are divided over who exactly invented the corn dog. Proprietors
from Portland, Oregon, to Buffalo, New York, lay claim to originating the inventive
idea of dipping a hot dog on a stick into cornbread batter and frying it. But
the earliest recipe in our eyes is the one pioneered by Neil and Carl Fletcher
at the State Fair of Texas in 1942. The vaudeville performers tested their
recipe for months before unveiling the creation at the fair. The food redefined
the State Fair of Texas, not to mention carnivals and fairs throughout the
nation.

The Hughes Drill Bit

As it turned out, finding the oil
was the easier part. But in the early 20th century, after the Spindletop
discovery kickstarted the Texas oil boom, wildcatters needed a way to tap the
vast reserves of black, liquid gold that lay beneath the Texas landscape. The
solution came from Howard Hughes Jr., whose Hughes Tool Company in Houston improved
upon a drill bit invented by his father. The tricone bit drilled straighter and
faster. This Texas invention became known as the “invention that found most of
the oil in Texas.”

Dr Pepper

There are few things so beloved by Texans as a cold bottle of Dr Pepper on a hot summer day. The recipe was created in the 1880s by a Waco pharmacist named Charles Alderton. When Alderton introduced the curiously named soft drink at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904, the unique recipe (which is still closely guarded) took the country by storm.

To enjoy more original Texas inventions, try these retro, 7-Eleven-inspired slushie recipes.