When you think of Denmark, you probably just think of Danish bacon! However, this nation has done a great deal to improve lives and make the world a better place. Here are some surprising things that Denmark has given to the world:
Google Maps
Eilstrup Jens Lars Rasmussen and his brother are the two co-founders of the digital mapping startup based in Sydney. In 2003, the company designed Expedition, mapping applications that could be downloaded and installed. After a year of hard work and discussion with Larry Page and Google, this Danish duo got to make their plans work on the web and at this point Google bought the company and started working together with software developers at what would become Google Maps in 2005.
Loudspeakers
Edward W. Kellogg and Chester W. Rice have gone down in the history books as the inventors of speakers that are widely used today, but there were many engineers who made significant pre-1925 contributions. Peter L. Jensen is one of them, and he was the first to produce a moving-coil loudspeaker, along with Edwin Pridham in 1915. In 1919, the speakers amplified a speech by US President Woodrow Wilson in San Diego. Jensen’s loudspeakers were known as the Magnavox speaker after the company name.
Panton Chair
This 20th century chair was the world’s first chair moulded from one piece of plastic. During the 1960s, it was the brainchild of the Danish designer Verner Panton. It is considered to be an iconic masterpiece of Danish design. The chair was included in the 2006 Danish Culture Canon. Popular still, this unique and colourful chair is a great addition to any modern home. For your own Panton Chair, visit a site like https://www.pash-classics.com/dining/chairs/panton-chair
Carlsberg yeast
Who hasn’t heard of Carlsberg? Thanks to Emil Christian Hansen, the Danish mycologist, pure yeast cells were able to be isolated and it was proven that beer could be made of any brew while working at the Carlsberg Laboratory. This was an essential discovery for beer because prior to 1883, a common problem was ‘beer sickness’, a phenomenon that made beer undrinkable.
Insulin
A doctor named August Krogh, his wife and another doctor, Hans Christian Hagedorn, achieved fame for setting up the Insulinlaboratorium Nordisk. These doctors made a great contribution to medicine by inventing insulin production through ethanol extraction of the hormone in a pig’s pancreas. Krogh was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1920 after discovering the mechanism of regulation of capillaries in skeletal muscle.
LEGO bricks
Another world-famous invention to hail from Denmark is LEGO. LEGO’s colourful bricks have brought joy to children across the world and are now sold in 140 countries and used by millions of children. The bricks were launched for the first time in 1958 by the LEGO Group, a Danish company originally founded in 1932 by a carpenter called Ole Kirk Kristiansen. Over the years, it passed from father to son. When Kristiansen opened a toy company in 1930, he could not imagine that in 2015, 600 billion LEGO bricks will have been produced and sold worldwide.
