7 The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time 7

Park, Calif.), which was followed the next year by one at
Cedar Point (Sandusky, Ohio). The Corkscrew brought
360-degree rolls to coaster design for the first time. Other
achievements by Toomer included Cedar Point’s beloved
Magnum XL-200 (1989), an out-and-back coaster that
was the first to top 200 feet (60 metres), and also the first
suspended coasters, Big Bad Wolf (1984) at Busch Gardens,
Williamsburg, Va., and Cedar Point’s Iron Dragon (1987).
All this time he gained fame for never riding his own
creations, declaring, “I’ve had a bad motion sickness
problem since I was a little kid. But I’ve ridden enough of
them to know what happens and how it feels.”
Toomer became president of Arrow Dynamics in 1986,
at about the time that the company was developing the
innovative Pipeline coaster, on which the cars execute a
snap roll of 182 degrees around their longitudinal axis.
Unfortunately, the highly complex project ran out of
funds before it could be realized as anything more than a
prototype. In the 1990s Toomer held posts as chairman
of the board and as director. In 2000 he was inducted into
the International Association of Amusement Parks and
Attractions Hall of Fame.

heInrICh rohrer and
gerd bInnIg
respectively, (b. June 6, 1933, Buchs, Sankt Gallen canton, Switz.); (b.
July 20, 1947, Frankfurt am Main, W.Ger.)

T

he scanning tunneling microscope (STM) appeared
in 1981 when Swiss physicists Gerd Binnig and
Heinrich Rohrer set out to build a tool for studying the
local conductivity of surfaces. Its principle of operation is
based on the quantum mechanical phenomenon known as
tunneling, in which the wavelike properties of electrons
permit them to “tunnel” beyond the surface of a solid into