Inventions from Ohio that changed everyday life

• February's America 250-Ohio celebration theme, "Innovation and Industry," recognizes such achievements — and those still being discovered.

Zoom in: A new Ohio Innovation Trail showcases over 70 museums and historic sites where you can learn more.

Other noteworthy Ohio innovations:

🚦 Clevelander Garrett Morgan invented the traffic signal and the gas mask.

📄 Battelle, in Columbus, helped create Xerox machines, the first photocopiers.

🍻 The beer can pull-tab came from Ermal Fraze, of Dayton.

👧 Toledo 12-year-old Becky Schroeder is reportedly the youngest U.S. female to receive a patent, for glow-in-the-dark paper.

🛢️ The first oil well in the nation was discovered by Silas Thorla and Robert McKee in Caldwell, a Southeast Ohio village.

🚰 Columbus is home to the first U.S. water treatment plant to combine filtration and softening.

🚒 Cincinnati's fire department was the world's first to use steam fire engines — and the country's first to be fully paid professionals.

🎨 Sherwin-Williams, in Cleveland, patented the first resealable paint can and popularized "ready-mixed" paint, invented by Ohioan D.R. Averill.

🚚 Frederick McKinley Jones, of Cincinnati, invented mobile refrigeration.