One of the inventors of the Taser, John H. Jack Cover, named it after his literary hero, Tom Swift. The word is actually an acronym for Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle. Cover just added the “A” to Tom Swift’s name.

He came up with the idea sometime in the late 1960’s, when he read an article about a man who accidentally walked into an electric fence, and the shock made him unable to move for a few minutes. He created the Taser to help law enforcement officers stop the rampant cases of airplane hijackings.