Grumman was the chief contractor on the Apollo Lunar Module, the moon landing vehicle used during NASA’s historic Apollo Missions. Having received the contract in1962, they built 13 lunar modules. As the Apollo program drew to a close, Grumman was one of the main contenders for the contract to design and build the Space Shuttle, but lost out to Rockwell International.
A more common Grumman machine can be spotted in the suburbs of Long Island twice a day. In the 1980s, Grumman designed and constructed the Grumman Long Life Vehicle (LLV). The LLV became the official mail transport van for the United States Postal Service, and is still used today.
Mark Miller, of Brooklyn, like Kowalsky, also never set out to be an inventor. You might say inspiration simply bounced into his head one day. While playing around in his Bensonhurst recording studio in 1991, bouncing a ball off the corner of a wall, he thought up a game. Miller’s idea: Trangleball, in which players volley a small ball off the surface of a pyramid-esque structure at the center of a circular court. Sort of like a cross between handball, beach volleyball and tennis.
He filed for a patent that same year. It wasn’t granted till two years later. Miller set out to mass produce his invention, which to this day, is assembled here on Long Island.
“I put it together in a warehouse in Ronkonkoma,” says Miller. “Everything is pretty local.”
Miller took his invention to the shores of Ocean Beach on Fire Island, where his summers have been spent for the past 20 years. Its residents embraced the invention with open arms. These days, a visitor to the popular vacation spot would be hard-pressed to go for long in the summer without seeing a Trangleball game in progress along the sandy shores.
Miller credits the people of Fire Island with much of Trangleball’s success.
“We have tournaments every year and because of the people of Fire Island and the people of Ocean Beach and the support they gave me, I think that has really brought the game to the next level because it got bigger and bigger out there year after year,” he says.
Miller’s invention also became a favorite pastime of a young college student from the Czech Republic named Ketis, who spent a summer slinging pizza on Fire Island. Ketis, a recreation sciences major, was immediately hooked—so much so, that when he returned home, he wrote his doctoral thesis on the game.
In 2001, Miller was invited by Ketis and his professors to Palacky University in the Czech Republic for a Trangleball conference. The experience solidified the game as an international success. “I went there for 10 days and did the conference, and now it is an ongoing event every year, and Trangleball is still there,” he says.
“There’s about a thousand schools and camps [globally] with it now,” Miller says. “It’s on the road. I’m not stopping.”
One of the most popular Long Island inventions probably goes unnoticed by many, although it has most likely landed in your stomach at some point. Ellio’s Pizza got its start in Great Neck. The frozen pizza brand, which is now distributed by McCain Foods, was first tasted in 1963 in the kitchens of Long Island, securing itself as a staple in suburban homes for decades to come.
A group of athletes play Trangleball.
In 1989, Joy Mangano was a divorced mother of three, juggling odd jobs and facing the daily challenge of single-handedly running her Smithtown household. Frustrated, she felt compelled to create a product that would make her chores just a little bit easier. Mangano invented a self-wringing mop, which she dubbed the Miracle Mop.
In 1990, Mangano charged ahead with her Miracle Mop, which had gone from prototype to product. Working from a small office in her home, Mangano pushed her mop into every outlet she could imagine, advertising in local boating magazines and tirelessly campaigning in every supermarket and retail outlet she had access to. Encouraged by rising sales but still buckled under the debt she accrued while inventing the Miracle Mop, Mangano decided to take a leap of faith and hit the mass market in 1992. She swung for the fences. Her first stop: television retail giant QVC.
While the reluctant network required coaxing from Mangano, they decided to take a chance on her Miracle Mops. It paid off—she sold 18,000 in 20 minutes.
“Some people thought I was crazy to try and mass-market it,’’ Mangano told The New York Times in 2001. “They said, ‘A mop is a mop is a mop.’ But I knew that wasn’t the case. There was nothing like this out there. I thought the whole mop industry was being overlooked. The Miracle Mop created an entirely new category of stick goods—the twist mop. And when I demonstrated it for people, they’d invariably say, ‘I have to have that.’”
