Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Weird Inventions Read online

  Inventor Martin Goetze thought so. In 1896 he patented the Dimple Drill. This contraption looked like a refugee from a woodworker’s bench, sort of a gimlet mechanism crossed with a draftsman’s compass. The dull tip, made of ivory or hard rubber, was applied to the cheek, and the handle cranked. The combination of gentle pressure and rotation would carve those darling divots into your mug in no time. The patent application claimed that the drill could be used to maintain and even deepen existing dimples, too.

  And if boring craters into your face with a glorified auger seems a little extreme to you, well, nobody said that being adorable was easy.

  BRAINPUT

  As modern drivers, we all know the feeling of wanting to pay attention to the road but getting distracted by equally important activities like watching cat videos on our cell phones or eating a cheeseburger. The solution? Brain probes and robots, of course. Scientists at MIT are working on something called “Brainput” to help us multi-task more safely and effectively, because let’s face it: We’re never going to learn to actually pay attention to what we’re doing.

  The system works like this: You attach two probes to your forehead, and, using what is purportedly science but sounds an awful lot like diabolical voodoo, the probes sense when your attention is drifting and notify a robot to pitch in and help you out (e.g., your car drives itself for a minute so you can focus on licking a dollop of errant mustard off of the steering wheel). If the concept of robots reading your mind causes you to repeatedly scream and then run way, don’t worry just yet: The technology has only been tested in a very basic form, in which the robot helps the user navigate a maze. Brainput’s application in real-life situations, like the driving-whilst-texting-and-noshing mentioned above is still but a distant dream/nightmare.

  AUTOMOBILE URINAL

  Sometimes you gotta go when you’re on the go, but you don’t want to stop in order to go. Is there any way you can go while you go?

  Yes, because Aston Waugh of East Orange, New Jersey, invented the Automobile Urinal. Anybody can pee into an old Snapple bottle; Waugh’s device is fully functional, more than merely a pee holder you throw out later. It consists of three parts: a hanging water tank, a miniature padded toilet bowl that the driver sits on while driving, and a waste-storage tank that stows neatly beneath the driver’s seat. After use, the driver flushes the device by opening a valve; water from the hanging tank flows through a tube into the toilet bowl, and from there into the storage tank underneath the seat. “For privacy,” the inventor advises, “the user may wrap a large towel around him or herself from the waist to the knees before undoing the clothing to facilitate urination.”

  So you’re free to go, so long as you planned beforehand, and you’re not on a date or something. And you probably shouldn’t use your cell phone while you’re both driving and going to the bathroom.

  A BETTER SKIPPING STONE

  Despite the number of previously popular outdoor pastimes that’ve been deemed environmentally unfriendly in recent years, fishing and hunting among them, it still seems hard to believe that someone would have zeroed in on skipping stones as a seemingly fun thing that needed to be tweaked for political-correctness purposes.

  But here’s the deal: Technically, most rocks are inorganic. You throw them in a river or lake, and they just sit there forever, where they grow smooth over time via natural erosion. Inventor Glen Davis simply didn’t think any of this would do, so he created the perfect stone for skipping, giving it “a smooth and continuous exterior surface with a substantially circular and smooth-edged outer perimeter” and “a hollowed, substantially elliptical and interior cavity,” thereby resulting in a greater likelihood of some serious skipping action.

  Presumably as a result of the sort of legality that causes wing-shaped pieces of chicken containing no actual wing meat to be called “wyngs,” however, it must be noted that this handy-dandy item is technically not a biodegradable skipping stone but, rather, a “Water Skipping Article Incorporating Elliptical Outline and Hollowed Interior Core.” Make it out of something biodegradable, and you’re saving the Earth, one half-hearted stone’s throw at a time.

  4 WAYS TO STOP OVEREATING

  Padlocking the fridge has been a favorite technique of the struggling dieter for decades, but you know what’s even easier than looping a chain around the refrigerator door? Locking a cage over your face. That’s the thinking behind the Anti-Eating Mouth Cage, anyway—a device that looks and operates pretty much exactly the way you might think. Looking like a cross between a catcher’s mask and something Hannibal Lecter might wear to the beach, the Cage will prevent you from stuffing your face for exactly the amount of time you need to bust the teeny-tiny lock the designers were able to fit on its slender side strut…or however long it takes to drive to McDonald’s, order a milkshake, and wedge the straw between the bars.

  Don’t feel like strapping on headgear but still interested in physically preventing your mouth from swallowing gross quantities of food? The Dieter’s Dam may be just the gadget you’re looking for. Unfortunately, it hasn’t yet made the leap to mass production, but don’t worry—to duplicate the experience, just take a few strips of semi-rigid plastic and tape them across your mouth, from cheek to cheek. The visual effect is kind of like a football helmet’s facemask, only without the helmet or the pride in completing any sort of athletic activity. The emotional effect of having stretchy plastic taped to the face seems liable to leave the wearer too embarrassed to eat. Well played, Dieter’s Dam!

  If you’re trying hard to lose weight but physically barricading your face isn’t quite your style, don’t fret: The Alarm Fork is here to help by inserting a nagging, motion-based sensor into your cutlery that goes off if you eat too quickly. It might sound kind of silly, but the idea is based on solid data; slowing your pace while eating gives your stomach a chance to tell your brain that it’s full. And while the Alarm Fork’s original 1995 patent didn’t find any backers, the idea has resurfaced as the HAPIfork, a new $99 gadget that collects an assortment of information about your eating habits and sends it wirelessly to your computer, which then tells you that you eat too fast and need to lose weight.

  Finally, for the smartfork owner seeking that last little bit of accessory oomph, we have the rather inelegantly named Hand Near Mouth Alarm, which combines all the rugged aesthetic appeal of Dick Tracy’s watch with cutting-edge (for 1990) gyroscopic technology that senses when the wrist it’s attached to is making mouthward motions too quickly. Of course, fooling the Alarm is as simple as not using that hand to eat every few bites. But on the other hand (get it?), constantly switching grips probably counts as some sort of exercise, so you’re halfway there, diligent dieter!

  SILENT-MOVIE SPEECH BALLOONS

  Modern-day motion pictures are all about realism—actors speak words, and you hear those words at the same time they come out of the actors’ mouths. The advent of this convention, which we take for granted today, was a big, reality-matching step-up from silent films, in which largely pantomimed, highly theatrical motions were interrupted by short frames of written dialogue, and only when absolutely necessary.

  In 1917 inventor and frustrated silent-movie fan Charles Pidgin came up with a way to integrate dialogue into the moving image without “the use of a separate screen or picture or marginal sign.” No, he didn’t invent synchronized sound. He wanted silent films to employ the use of inflatable rubber tubes that had dialogue written on them. Pidgin literally invented the speech balloon.

  Hollywood failed to use Pidgin’s design; sound came along a decade later.

  THOUGHT SCREEN HELMET

  In 1998 former NASA technical writer Michael Menkin invented the Thought Screen Helmet, an aviator hat lined with Velostat, a kind of metallized plastic, and outfitted with secure straps. What does the Helmet do? It prevents aliens from reading your thoughts, and thus brainwashing you into allowing them to kidnap you.

  Menkin doesn’t actually sell the Helmets (you can make your own li
ke he did; Velostat costs about $30 per yard). He just uses his website to tout the invention and explain why it’s necessary. For example:

  • “Aliens cannot immobilize people wearing thought screens, nor can they control their minds or communicate with them using their telepathy. When aliens can’t communicate or control humans, they do not take them.”

  • “Adults and children all over America, all over Australia, in Canada, the United Kingdom, and in the Republic of South Africa are wearing Thought Screen Helmets to stop alien abductions.”

  • “Other shielding material was tried in previous models with less success. Only Thought Screen Helmets using Velostat are effective.”

  ELECTRONIC CIGARETTES

  These ain’t your grandparents’ cancer-causing tobacco smoking sticks; these are “electronic cigarettes.” Though a combustion-less non-tobacco cigarette was patented in the 1960s, it wasn’t until 2003 that Hon Lok, a Chinese pharmacist mourning the loss of his father to lung cancer, came up with the idea for a safer alternative to smoking.

  It’s not really a cigarette; it’s more akin, ironically, to the inhalers people with asthma use to breathe easier. The battery-powered device atomizes a liquid nicotine solution into an odorless aerosol mist that the user sucks out of the e-cigarette system. Resembling a traditional cigarette, its plastic body is complete with an LED light at the tip, that illuminates and dims with each puff, so as to look like a burning butt. Initially marketed as a smoking-cessation aid, e-cigarettes are merely a surrogate for nicotine inhalation and smoking simulation. Many question their safety. While they lack tar and other harmful chemicals found in traditional cigarettes, the FDA says they contain carcinogens and chemicals like diethylene glycol, which can be found in antifreeze. What a drag.

  HYPER-REALISTIC FACE MASKS

  From the country that brought us underpants in vending machines and Salty Watermelon Pepsi comes the perfect intersection of expensive narcissism and sphincter-puckering horror: three-dimensional, perfectly lifelike masks that look exactly like your face. Created by Japanese company REAL-f, the technology (dubbed 3DPF, for “three-dimensional photo forms”) works by photographing a person’s head from different angles, then printing the composite image over a resin that’s been stretched over a mold. The finished product comes in two varieties: a face mask ($3,920) and a complete, mannequin-style replica of your head ($5,875).

  Fake face masks are nothing new, but REAL-f justifies its extreme price point by taking things to a whole new level of detail—down to the irises and blood vessels—and the results are undeniably impressive (by which we mean “supremely creepy”). No one has ever created face replicas this close to the real thing.

  Of course, that might have something to do with the fact that, as a consumer product, the 3DPF doesn’t really have any practical applications beyond using it to terrify unsuspecting friends and family. That means it probably won’t find much of an audience outside of people who have a dark sense of humor and too much money.

  CASKET-VISION

  When you think about caskets, what’s your #1 concern, apart from the crippling, claustrophobia-inducing panic that comes from knowing you’ll one day be placed into one forever? The fact that they’re closed up forever and you don’t get to see inside of it, or see your departed loved one, as they slowly decompose into a creepy skeleton, of course. Who wouldn’t want to watch that?

  With that ghoulish idea mind, in 1922 Jacob Fishman invented the Attachment for Caskets. It was, more or less, a reverse periscope, designed for looking inside of a buried casket and checking in on the decaying remains of a family member or friend.

  At least the scope didn’t stick out of the ground; it was telescoping, so it could be pulled out when necessary and put away when not. It was even outfitted with a light, because it’s dark underground.

  Fishman’s design also included a lock for the eyepiece, so as to prevent rain, snow, and dirt from falling into the tube, or even onto the corpse inside. It also would prevent unauthorized looky-loos, because anybody who isn’t a family member or a friend looking at your departed loved one is weird.

  BUTTER STICK TYPE

  Spreading butter on a piece of toast can be such a pain. You’ve gotta take the butter out of the fridge, get a knife, and struggle to get the butter on the toast even though it’s cold and won’t spread very well. But someone came up with a brilliant solution for this common frustration: the Butter Stick Type. The BST looks like a large glue stick but dispenses delicious, soft, easy-to-spread butter pats.

  You would think that since this butter applicator actually debuted in the ’90s, surely you’d be able to find one in the dairy aisle of every supermarket in America. There’s no way that something so useful wouldn’t instantly become popular, right? But the BST never caught on. In fact, it may have never been a real product at all. A photo of a BST, dating back to 1995, has been floating around the Internet for the past several years. It’s popped up on countless blogs and Tumblr accounts, but no one seems to know where to buy one or if the sticks ever went on sale.

  The most likely explanation is that the image was created for a Chindogu contest. Chindogu is the Japanese art of creating ingenious products that seem like an ideal solution to a common problem but are actually completely absurd. An editor named Kenji Kawakami came up with the word and later popularized it as part of a regular feature devoted to goofy inventions in his magazine, Tokyo Journal.

  FART-ABSORBING UNDERWEAR

  Australian company 4Skins is in the business of air purification, or maybe even environmental protection. It makes a product also called 4Skins, which utilize specially engineered space-age textiles to absorb, and thus prevent the public release and notice of, your stinky farts. The company motto, and product slogan: “Keep It in Your Pants.”

  4Skins’ Contrast and Modern Classic lines of underwear are made using a technologically advanced fabric that incorporates something called “odor-eliminating nanotechnology” into every fiber. This futuristic fabric “attracts, isolates, and neutralizes” your bean-stinks immediately.

  One question you’re probably asking: Where do all those absorbed fumes go? Well, they go into the fabric, where they stay until you wash your 4Skins. The odor is then released into your washing machine.

  Be forewarned that 4Skins absorb fart smells only, and not fart sounds.

  BANANA SUITCASE

  Your mother was right: Bruised bananas are perfectly fine to eat. But who would want to? The beautiful yellow skin of a banana marred by a big, ugly brown spot is quite unappetizing, even if it has absolutely no effect on the edible fruit inside the inedible peel. Except for, maybe, an extra-squishy spot. But it’s a banana, so who cares, right?

  We all care. Bruised bananas are gross. End of story. That’s the thinking behind the Banana Suitcase. Bananas will inevitably take a beating in transit in a lunch box, briefcase, or purse, but this gadget keeps them pristine. It’s a tiny, curved, banana-shaped yellow plastic box that’s hinged in the middle.

  Indeed, it does work to protect a banana…so long as the banana you’ve got is the exact size and shape as the Banana Suitcase. Otherwise, if it’s too big, it’s going to get bruised when you try to fit it in there. And if it’s too small, it’s going to bang around inside the case and get bruised. And if it’s not the right shape, well, you’re out of luck.

  BEER CAN ROBOT

  A can of beer rests on a table. A would-be drinker reaches out, anticipating frosty refreshment. But the top of the can extends upward, like a prairie dog peering out from its hole, then retracts, while three scuttling legs unfold from its base. Then the can shuffles away, leaving its victim frustrated and baffled, with his or her whistle tragically unwetted. It’s like a Transformers cartoon gone horribly awry.

  A booze-induced hallucination? Nope. This is CanBot, the creation of amateur roboticist Ron Tajima and revealed to an unsuspecting world in 2011. CanBot, controlled with a modified Nintendo Wii remote, moves independently, either
by walking upright or by rolling. The body of the can is filled with batteries, control circuits, and the servo motors that give it motion. Meaning that even if you can catch it, there’s no beer reward inside.

  So why would anybody create such a thing? Tajima makes no claims to expanding the frontiers of robotics; CanBot is little more than an elaborate practical joke, perfect for scaring the bejeebers out of friends who’ve had a few beers already. In other words, it’s a high-tech variation on the old “spring-snakes in the can of mixed nuts” gag.

  BIONIC EXERSUIT

  We can exhaust him…we have the technology…

  In 1998, perhaps while buried under a pile of Thighmasters and Ab Belts and Bun Lifters purchased by phone during late-night infomercials, a young inventor decided the time was right for a single training outfit that would offer resistance everywhere, from head to toe. The idea was to turn every human movement into exercise, and every room into a gym, because the wearer would bring his workout with him, wherever he went.

  Soon the inventor emerged from his sewing room with the Bionic Exersuit, a one-piece experiment in not-so-haute couture that wove taut rubber tubing from the neck down the arms and torso, and all the way to its attached footies. The Exersuit was blue and green and yellow, and ugly all over. Perhaps it was the outfit’s less-than-glamorous looks that kept more workout mavens from experiencing the joy (and, no doubt, increased fitness) that could only come from that little extra tug of resistance in the fingers every time the user grabbed a pen…or in the knees when he sat…or in the chest when he breathed in and out…