I looked for SO LONG for evidence of this Rudabaker person existing. I am fairly sure he does not. The edit history shows a history of other fictional traffic cone inventors: Adian Wolf, Adian Googleberry. Anyway, Charles D Scanlon has the U.S. patent for the invention of the traffic cone so he is, by U.S. standards, the inventor. Though apparently this patent was a bit contentious at the time...The Patent Act of 1952 made "nonobviousness" a new qualification for something being patentable, and Scanlon's patent for the traffic cone was almost taken away. Luckily, though, this ruling was appealed and traffic cones were deemed "nonobvious."