cultural
A Canadian Invented the Foghorn. He Got Almost Nothing.
Robert Foulis, Saint John, 1854.
Robert Foulis lived in Saint John, New Brunswick. He noticed that fog made it impossible for ships to find the harbor. In 1854, he designed an automatic steam-driven foghorn.
He submitted the design to the New Brunswick government. The government built it, used it, and never paid him. Foulis died in 1866 without ever profiting from his invention.
The foghorn at Partridge Island is still there. Foulis is buried nearby. The Canadian record on inventor compensation, broadly speaking, has not improved much.