In addressing the question of who invented the incandescent lamp, historians Robert Friedel and Paul Israel list 22 inventors of incandescent lamps prior to Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison.
Several inventors devised machines to record sound prior to Thomas Edison's phonograph, Edison being the first to produce a device that could both record and reproduce sound... [Charles] Cros's paleophone was intended to both record and reproduce sound but had not been developed beyond a basic concept at the time of Edison's successful demonstration of the Phonograph in 1877.
I won't bother to quote the enormous list of Henry Ford's predecessors that appears in e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile. I'd never do them justice.
On the way, [Bertha Benz] solved numerous problems. She had to find ligroin as a fuel, which was available only at apothecary shops so she stopped in Wiesloch at the city pharmacy to purchase the fuel. A blacksmith had to help mend a chain at one point. Brakes needed to be repaired; in doing so Bertha Benz invented brake lining. She also had to use a long, straight hairpin to clean a fuel pipe, which had become blocked, and to insulate a wire with a garter. She left Mannheim around dawn and reached Pforzheim somewhat after dusk, notifying her husband of her successful journey by telegram. She drove back to Mannheim the next day.
I can't believe that I haven't heard this story before. Note that at this point in 1888 Henry Ford is still servicing steam engines; he'll start his personal experiments in gasoline engines in earnest in 1893.
