In 1955, when a journalist asked Jonas Salk who owned the patent on his newly announced polio vaccine, he answered on live television that there was no patent — could you patent the sun? — a decision that cost him an estimated seven billion dollars and put the shot into the arms of hundreds of millions of children within a decade

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1. Sat, 8 August 2026

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     In 1955, when a journalist asked Jonas Salk who owned the patent on his newly announced polio vaccine, he answered on live television that there was no patent — could you patent the sun? — a decision that cost him an estimated seven billion dollars and put the shot into the arms of hundreds of millions of children within a decade

     On April 12, 1955, Jonas Salk told Edward R. Murrow on live television that no one owned the patent on his polio vaccine — a decision Forbes has estimated cost him around seven billion dollars and helped drive the shot into hundreds of millions of children within a decade.