In the early 1950s polio terrified American parents. In the last years before a vaccine, it paralyzed somewhere between 13,000 and 20,000 children every year. Jonas Salk developed a vaccine, and on April 12, 1955, the news came out that it was safe and effective. That same day, television newsman Edward R. Murrow asked Salk who owned the patent. “Well, the people, I would say,” Salk answered. “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” Historians point out that a patent may not have been possible anyway, but Salk’s answer captured a spirit that people still quote. He seemed far more interested in kids walking than in getting rich.
