The Vacuum Flask

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In December 1892 at the Royal Institution in London, Kincardine-born chemist Sir James Dewar (1842–1923) invented the vacuum flask — a double-walled, silvered, evacuated vessel that defeats all three mechanisms of heat transfer. Built to hold the liquefied gases he was pioneering (he became the first person to liquefy hydrogen in 1898), Dewar never patented his flask. When Reinhold Burger commercialised a domestic version as the Thermos in 1903 Dewar sued and lost. Scientists still call it a dewar; the world calls it a Thermos.