The grass at Wimbledon is mowed with millimeter precision. It is the summer of 1928, and the crowd, dressed in hats and light-colored dresses, watches in silence. On Centre Court are two Frenchmen. One is Henri Cochet; the other, René Lacoste. The latter wears an immaculate white shirt and keeps his gaze fixed on his opponent. When the ball comes to him, he strikes it with almost mechanical precision. He is not a player of instinct, but of method. He analyzes, waits, and wears down his opponent until the exact moment to attack arrives.

It's Tuesday, February 16, 1932. With a bundle of papers under his arm, Jean Mantelet has been waiting his turn for some time at the offices of the National Institute of Industrial Property in Paris. Every now and then, he picks up the documents and gives the sketches they contain a final look: he checks the drawing of the rotating disc, the sieve, and the metal bowl, which has a slightly convex bottom. This is precisely one of the features of the food mill he wants to patent. Locked away in his workshop, Mantelet has worked hard to develop a system for making purees without any lumps. At ten minutes to three in the afternoon, an official has already checked everything and stamps the paperwork: with the number 732,100, the Moulin-Légumes has just been patented. This is the invention that launched Jean Mantelet's entrepreneurial career and planted the seed of one of the most renowned French brands in the world. Today, Moulinex is one of the flagship brands of the SEB Group, a European appliance giant whose portfolio also includes Krups, Rowenta, and Tefal, among others. With 32,000 employees worldwide and a presence in 150 countries, it generated €8.26 billion in revenue in 2024. But how did Mantelet manage to make Moulinex one of the most ubiquitous brands in the kitchen?

In 1955, in the heart of the new Disneyland in Anaheim, California, Frito Kid greeted visitors. He was made of wood and sported a large cowboy hat on his head. His eyes were always wide as saucers. A giant smile played in his mouth. When someone inserted a coin, the figure would activate, lick his lips, and release a bag of Fritos that slid down a ramp.Deeeeelicious "Fried foods," he spat out in a childish voice through a crackling loudspeaker. "Fresh out of the mine!" he added in English.

On Thursday, April 27, 1961, The Vanguard The newspaper published an advertisement that would catch the eye of most readers today. It was on page 22. In the center was a drawing of a container of almond milk. "The powerful, easily digestible food!" exclaimed a striking text. "Delicious, refreshing, pure, and full of vitamins," added a more understated paragraph. On the label of the container, prominently displayed at the bottom of the ad, was the element that would have thrown the modern reader off: the almond milk was sold by Solís. Today, the brand is known for its sauces, and especially for its fried tomato sauce, which floods the shelves of this product in Catalan supermarkets. Although Solís hasn't sold almond milk for many years, the brand's origins are linked to this product and the ingenuity of a pharmacist.

Laura hasn't eaten TostaRica cookies for ten years because she has celiac disease, but she still dreams of them. In fact, they're still her favorite cookies. They're also her husband, Joan's, favorite cookies. On the day of the wedding, when the guests sat down at the table, they found a little box with lots of little gifts. Among the surprises inside was a package of TostaRica cookies personalized with the silhouette of the photo from the day he proposed to her. "They're cookies that bring back very good memories," they confess to the couple.CompaniesLike them, the buttery flavor and crunchy texture of TostaRica cookies evokes nostalgia in many children born after 1975, the year they arrived in Catalan supermarkets. The brand is aware of this, and that's why it has long offered a service to personalize cookies for special occasions like Joan and Laura's.

In the Seijo district of Setagaya, Tokyo, stands the house where Toshio Kashio conceived many of the inventions that brought Casio worldwide fame. Today, the former home of the second of the four founding brothers of this electronics empire houses the Kashio Toshio Inventions Memorial Museum. The display cases feature the brand's first calculators, its famous digital watches, and the legendary Casiotone keyboards. You can also visit Kashio's original studio, with hand-drawn diagrams and personal objects that explain his way of working. In the garden, known as the Forest of Inventions, you can breathe the premise that guided his entire life: inventions can arise from necessity, but they can also be used to create new ones.

In a dark, cramped apartment on Rue d'Argel, in the heart of Paris, Eugène Schueller sits at the stove. He lights one and, concentrating hard, heats a saucepan. It contains a thick paste that he stirs carefully while adding the final touches of a thousand ingredients. His intuition tells him that this time, yes, he's going to get it right. It's 1907, and after weeks of puzzlement, he feels he's about to stumble upon the ideal formula: a product capable of dyeing hair a uniform, shiny shade without causing irritation or unpleasant odors. He takes a spatula and, using surgical powder, deposits a small amount of the mixture onto a strand of hair that has been waiting on his desk for days. It only takes a few seconds to confirm: he's just created a dye with enormous potential.

It's 1901, and on one of the metal staircases leading to the brand-new Bosch factory, eight workers are grooming themselves to look good in their portraits. They are some of the technicians and engineers who developed the ignition magneto: the invention that has made this mechanical workshop in Stuttgart, Germany, a success. It's a small device, but in just a few years' life, it has revolutionized the automotive industry. When activated, it generates an electric spark capable of starting a vehicle's engine. One of the employees holds it in his hand and proudly shows it to the portraitist, who is also taking photographs of the newly inaugurated facilities that day.

A white armored van with the Loomis logo on the sides is parked next to the Poble Sec metro station in Barcelona. Its four flashing lights are on. No one is inside. A few minutes later, a pair of officers in black uniforms emerge from the metro entrance and head toward the vehicle, holding a bundle of cash collected by the metro ticket machine. Loomis is the company responsible for collecting and counting the cash generated daily by part of the Barcelona Metropolitan Transport (TMB) ATM network. It's also common to see its vans waiting in front of banks or large shopping centers.

Long rows of townhouses, surrounded by mowed lawns, wooden gazebos, and the shade of several maples, pines, and magnolias. Just like in the movies, the residents of Plainfield Road in Cincinnati, Ohio, go out to retrieve letters from the tin mailbox at street level and sunbathe on their porches. It's a very quiet neighborhood. However, every now and then a compact concourse of cars breaks the silence. These vehicles are headed to the Milhovk-Rosenacker Funeral Home, located at the end of the street. It's an ostentatious building, presided over by an American flag, and has several viewing rooms. It's adjacent to Rest Haven Memorial Park, a lush green 26-hectare park that has served as a cemetery since 1929. It is in this place where, since March 10, 2012, the remains of John J. Parran Junior, the inventor of the formula for the legendary Head & Shoulders anti-dandruff shampoo, better known by its initials: H&S, rest.

One day in 1975, after driving around a bit, Eric and Anna Maria found thePiazza di Sant'Eustachio.In the distance, they immediately saw the café they were looking for. Outside the door, a crowd of people were waiting in line to enjoy one of the espressos Mr. Eugenio was preparing. The couple joined in. "It was one of the best coffees we tasted during the trip," Eric recalled 35 years later, at a conference organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization. Taking a sip from that cup changed his life. "The master coffee maker taught me that to make a good espresso, you need to introduce a specific amount of air into the water before it comes into contact with the coffee," he explained to the audience. When he returned to Switzerland, he worked hard to find a convenient and simple system so everyone could make an espresso. quality at home. Today, he's considered one of the fathers of coffee capsules. How did he do it?

If you travel around the Barcelona metropolitan area often, you've probably ridden on one of its buses. Monbus is the company that operates services such as Aerobús, which connects Barcelona with El Prat airport; lines that connect the Catalan capital with Vilafranca, Manresa, Igualada, Valls or Reus; and urban buses in smaller municipalities, such as Esparreguera and Abrera, in Baix Llobregat Nord.

In the north of France, on the Belgian border, lies Roubaix. It is a town of about 100,000 inhabitants that in the 19th century was popularly known by the nickname of the city of a thousand chimneys, because it was an imported centre of the textile industry. Today, the sector is already derisory and the city's fame has vanished. However, they still have a stripe: among their favourite sons is Michael Leclercq, the founder of Decathlon. The history of the empire of clothing and accessories for all kinds of sports that has spread across 78 countries, has nearly 1,750 establishments and is capable of turning over 15.6 billion euros in one year, begins there, in 1961.