On Aug. 12, 1877, Thomas Alva Edison is believed to have completed the model for the first phonograph, a device that recorded sound onto tinfoil cylinders. Twenty years later, on Aug. 31, the "Wizard of Menlo Park" received a patent for the kinetoscope, the forerunner of the motion picture film projector. A century earlier, also in the month of August, John Fitch not only demonstrated the first successful steamboat but was also granted a United States patent for his invention. With the month proving to be a notable one in our nation's invention history, it is quite appropriate that August is National Inventor's Month.