Some people credit a German sixteen year old named with this invention. One of his names for it was the appropriately awesome "Aura." But three years after his creation, a Viennese inventor named Georg Anton Reinlein was granted a patent for the fabrication of a similar device to be constructed "in the Chinese manner." Meanwhile, around the same time, the Englishman Charles Wheatstone patented yet another version -- although its differences meant that it evolved into a whole different sub-group of devices.

It's not clear when a mysterious Bohemian named Richter made his crucial innovation to the basic idea -- it may have been anywhere from a year or so to several decades after the inventions cited above -- which is at the heart of modern versions of the device. But his contribution coincided with the invention's growing popularity. The oldest manufacturers of the items still in business opened their factory in Klingenthal, but it was a rival firm from modern-day Baden-Württemberg that dominated the business, and whose name is still most strongly associated with the device. Somewhere around 100 years follow following the device's invention, this firm was making twenty million of them annually.

By what name do we know this device?

First correct answer posted to comments wins a screener edition of the DVD-only version of Project Management for Dummies, including the hilarious blooper reel featuring author Stanley Portny trying desperately to get his laptop to hook up to a digital projector. No Googling or coming over here and pinching me repeatedly really hard on the back of the arm until finally I'm so helpless with pinch-pain that I reveal the answer to you so you'll just stop already and promise never to pinch me again, you jerk. One guess per comment, please, but comment as often as you like.