Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Weird Inventions Read online

  Mimikakis—reusable ear-cleaning devices—are popular in Japan, the land that gives us the King’s Idea, a super-futuristic mimikaki. In your hand you hold the main element, an L-shaped piece that looks like a periscope, and like a periscope has a small viewing screen in one end (but digital!). At the other end is a lighted camera/stick made out of a composite of glass, stainless steel, and “anti-bacterial” resin. Shove that end in your ear canal and clean away, all the while watching your progress on the screen.

  It’s significantly more costly than a Q-tip at $90, but it’s way cheaper than buying a surgical “snake”-style camera, taping it to a Q-tip, and jamming it in your ear.

  THE ELECTRIC DOORMAT

  When you think of exhausting physical tasks that clearly need some sort of mechanical assistance to make them more feasible for the average person, obviously the first thing on that list is going to be “casually wiping your feet before you go inside a building.” Well, it was for Henry J. Ostrow of Palatine, Illinois, who in 1957 applied for a patent for an electric door mat, thus electrifying something that never, ever needed to be electrified.

  Ostrow’s invention featured “a plurality of brushes which are automatically actuated when a person steps on the device to remove dirt and other foreign matter from the shoes,” and used pressurized air to dislodge any remaining undesirable material. The drawings that accompany the patent make the device look not unlike a conveyor belt, which stands to reason, given that the word “conveyed” is specifically used when describing the transportation of all the bottom-of-your-shoe nastiness into a nearby waste-storage system. Sadly, although it seemed as though it had the potential to literally sweep customers off their feet, the electric door mat never took off commercially.

  PERSONALIZED ACTION FIGURE MACHINE

  PARTY is a Japanese company that in 2012 unveiled a new twist on the photo booth: tiny action figures built to look exactly like you, from head to toe. Here’s how “Omote 3d Shashin Kan” works:

  The client sits or stands completely still for 15 minutes while multiple high-resolution cameras take pictures of every part of the body. (PARTY recommends wearing simply textured, solid-color clothing.) The images are then scanned into a computer. A month later, PARTY sends a figure to you, in your choice of 4, 7, or 8 inch height.

  The company set up a public, reservation-only exhibition to produce dolls in Tokyo in 2012, and despite a ticket price of around $500, all viewing slots were filled up within days.

  SOLAR-POWERED BIKINI

  You would think that by now beaches would offer phone-charging and power stations much like the ones typically found in airports. Until the National Park Service and/or David Hasselhoff rectify this terrible oversight, there’s always the solar-powered bikini.

  This high-tech swimwear was created by Brooklyn-based designer Andrew Schneider in 2011. Each hand-stitched bikini is made out of thin, flexible photovoltaic film strips woven together with conductive material. USB ports are attached to the top and bottom pieces of the suit and can charge everything from iPods to iPhones while the wearer soaks up some rays. So technically it’s not a solar-powered bikini, it’s a solar-powering bikini.

  The bikini is also safe to wear in the ocean (provided you remove any and all electronics connected to it before you take a dip). The suit’s solar panels are moderated by a five-volt regulator that prevents any unfortunate shocks.

  Schneider has also revealed plans for a pair of men’s swim trunks, called the iDrink, that can chill beer.

  THE DISAPPEARING DRESS

  It’s every teen boy’s dream and every father’s worst nightmare. If clothes are a way for a person to express themselves, then Studio Roosegaarde, a design agency in the Netherlands, has created the most expressive dress possible, as it relays information about the wearer’s immediate, most intimate feelings. Dubbed INTIMACY 2.0, the dress actually turns transparent when the wearer gets, well, “excited.”

  The black (or white), otherwise conservative-seeming dress is made out of leather, opaque “smart e-foils,” LED lights, and a few additional electronics. Those doodads can read the heartbeat of the person wearing it, and when it suddenly increases, the garment becomes “more or less transparent,” according to designer Daan Roosegaarde. The faster their heart races, the quicker it disappears, thus sending a clear message of interest to any nearby visual stimulus.

  The designer is also hard at work on what he’s calling INTIMACY 3.0, a line of clothing for both men and women. This one will include a suit that turns clear when a guy wearing it begins lying.

  HANDS-FREE SANDWICH HOLDER

  It’s probably an apocryphal story, but history says that the sandwich was invented when degenerate gambler the Earl of Sandwich, not wanting to leave the gaming tables to sit down for a proper meal and eat with a plate, a fork, and dignity, requested that a servant bring him a piece of meat between two slices of bread—thus the sandwich, named in his honor, was born.

  The sandwich began its existence as a slapdash convenience. But even its compactibility and portability still isn’t enough for some people—the people who would buy and use the Hands-Free Sandwich Holder. It resembles—and probably is just a slight reworking of—one of those hands-free harmonica holders that Neil Young wears so he can play harmonica while he plays guitar. You shove a sandwich into the designated sandwich-holding area (where the harmonica would go), then put the device around your neck, situating the sandwich in front of your gaping maw. (Note: All of these steps have to be done with your hands). This allows you to continue doing important things (video games, Twitter) without having to eat with your hands like an adult human with self-respect.

  EXTREMELY USEFUL KITCHEN GADGETS

  Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer246: It looks like a banana with vertical blinds running through it. That’s because this yellow, oblong (banana-shaped) gadget is made, specifically and only, for slicing bananas. Simply press it over a banana, and boom, banana slices. (You still have to peel the banana first.)

  Mr. Marinator: This countertop gadget borrows its formal “Mr.” address from the actually revolutionary Mr. Coffee. Instead of marinating meat in a bowl or on a plate, place a roast or large amount of meat in Mr. Marinator, along with your chosen sauce. Then Mr. Marinator shakes and agitates the meat with the sauce so it’s marinated and ready to cook in under an hour.

  Milk Carton Holder: Milk has come packaged in sturdy paper cartons for more than a century. It’s very easy to hold a milk carton. Still, many companies offer a small plastic or metal “carton holder,” basically a handle, for even easier pouring.

  The Egg Cuber: It’s a square-shaped cutter. You put it on a hard boiled egg. It cuts a square shape out of the egg. That’s all.

  DOG DNA TEST KIT

  Not all of us are keen on taking our dog onto The Maury Povich Show to find out if that firecracker of a Schnauzer down the street is its biological father. Nor is it easy to get a dog to sign up with Ancestry.com. But when your dog isn’t looking, you could swab the inside of its cheeks. Mars Veterinary sells Wisdom Panel dog-DNA test kits so owners can find out the make up of their canine’s breed, in case it isn’t abundantly clear.

  Why the need to know? So doting pet owners can tailor diet, environment, and fitness programs to the dog’s specific needs. (Coincidentally, Mars Veterinary also sells premium kibbles and pet-care products.) During development they analyzed more than 19 million genetic markers.

  Will canine units on police squads soon be using these kits as forensics on other dogs? Not quite, but dog owners can continue to build on the imagined history of their pet, and when they do voices for them, they’ll know which accents to employ.

  EARTHQUAKE HOUSE

  Anyone who has ever lived through an earthquake (or even seen footage of the aftermath) knows the destructive power that quakes unleash on buildings. But while geologists, engineers, architects, and other general egghead types try to build more quake-resistant houses, they seem to have missed out on one brilliant design
: the Earthquake House.

  Instead of the traditional four walls-and-foundation scheme, the Earthquake House is round and equipped with seismic sensors. When a large enough temblor hits, the house is automatically detached from its anchors, tethers, and utility lines, and is free to roll down the street or hillside with the tectonic punches.

  The patent for the Earthquake House describes it as “Mother Nature’s giant bowling ball,” which sounds fun except for the fact that no one wants to live inside a bowling ball, nor did Mother Nature create the Earthquake House. Perhaps a more appropriate description might be “Mother Nature’s giant hamster ball”?

  But how does someone actually live inside a house designed to roll on the ground? The Earthquake House is designed with a self-righting inner living structure, so you don’t have to worry about nailing your furniture to the floor. As for where to hang the Christmas lights, you’re on your own.

  CHEESE-FILTERED CIGARETTE

  Okay, smoking is dangerous business no matter how you look at it. So for decades, cigarette companies, sensitive as they are to public health concerns, have experimented with different filter materials to make the smoking experience “safer.” They tried charcoal, cork, and even asbestos (oops) before ultimately settling on cellulose acetate (a.k.a. plastic) around the mid-1950s.

  Feeling that traditional filters did an inadequate job of removing tar from cigarette smoke, however, one inventor patented a novel approach in 1966—the cheese-filtered cigarette. The filter (more of a recipe, really) is made simply by grating a hard cheese (such as Parmesan, Cheddar, or Swiss) into small pieces and mixing it 2:1 with charcoal. The idea behind the mixture is for the cheese to more effectively filter out the nasty stuff, and for the charcoal both to absorb the cheese oil and to keep the cheese smelling and tasting its freshest without passing on any unctuous cheesy taste to the smoker.

  Oddly, the inventor of the cheese-filtered cigarette was silent on what to do about the almost certain elevation in cholesterol smokers would face from using it. We recommend taking your anti-cholesterol medication with a creamy, ranch dressing-based dipping sauce.

  THE BABY MOP

  Babies drool, babies poop, babies scream bloody murder. Plus they’re lazy, just lying there doing nothing all day. Fortunately, there’s now a way to get your baby to help out around the house. In 2012 Better Than Pants, primarily a novelty T-shirt company, started selling the Baby Mop. It’s more or less a traditional baby bodysuit with mop heads attached to the arm and leg holes. Plop a little one into the Baby Mop and they’ll polish any floor as they crawl around. The item, which comes only in blue and has cartoon dinosaurs on the front, costs $40.

  The outfit supposedly teaches babies a strong work ethic while they get exercise and burn up excess energy. Better Than Pants’ inspiration for the product? A fake commercial for a Baby Mop from a Japanese sketch comedy show.

  HELMET BAR

  In the 1980s, a hat with cup holders and straws coming out of both sides was all the rage in stadiums. It gave sports fans a chance to applaud a good play without having to put down their watered-down, overpriced beer or, as the case was, two watered-down, overpriced beers.

  The “beer hat” was such a hit that somebody took the idea one step further and created the Helmet Bar, a device for rabid sports fans who can’t watch a game without consuming mass quantities of alcohol, but prefer classy mixed drinks to beer. The Helmet Bar, for which a patent was issued in 1987, held four bottles, which, when an assortment of valves across the front were properly opened, moved the liquid via tubes into a mixing chamber. The cocktail then flowed via another tube down to a mouthpiece, from which the world’s laziest bartender could sip the now-mixed drink.

  The contraption failed to make a dent in the public consciousness, presumably because either a) it looked ridiculous, b) it was too difficult to operate and fans decided to buy a Coke and sneak in airplane bottles of rum, c) the weight of four bottles on the head caused the neck to collapse, or d) the engineer who created it forgot to include a way to transfer mint leaves, maraschino cherries, and other crucial garnishes.

  THE LEVITATING TABLE

  Most dining tables just don’t have enough leg-room. Or, more precisely, they don’t have room for all the legs that end up underneath them: legs of diners, front legs of chairs, and of course the legs of the table itself. Remove those last four from the equation, though, and you’ve got more room to stretch out in comfort. Oh, yeah—and you’ve also got a freakin’ levitating table, a dining surface just floating in space, in the middle of the room, with no visible means of support, other than magic.

  It’s not magic, it’s magnets. This marvel, created by Belgian designer Yana Christiaens and inspired by European high-speed trains, uses principles of magnetic suspension. Powerful electromagnets mounted on the underside of the table keep it hovering over a steel plate below. Because the plate is set permanently into the floor, the table will be stationary, so pick your spot carefully.

  On the plus side, the height of the table is adjustable via a control panel (recessed into the tabletop) that varies the strength of the magnetic repulsion current. Also on the plus side, this is basically the coolest thing ever.

  THE PERIODIC TABLE TABLE

  If you’re like us (you’re like us), then you’re always rummaging around the house, looking for one of the 118 chemical substances on the periodic table of elements and wish that there were some easy to use system for keeping all of your elements, from hydrogen to lawrencium, safely stored in one place.

  In 2002 scientist Theodore Gray of Illinois came up with the solution we’ve all been clamoring for: the Periodic Table Table. He built a three-dimensional Periodic Table of Elements Table—it’s conference-table-sized—and included more than a hundred drawers. Each element group (alkali metals, noble gases, etc.) is represented by a different type of wood. He then filled the drawers with samples of as many real elements as he could get a hold of (sorry, no plutonium).

  “One evening while reading Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks, I became momentarily confused,” Gray explains. “He begins a chapter with a description of a periodic table display he loved to visit in a museum, and in misreading the paragraph, I thought it was a table, not the wall display it actually is.”

  WHERE’S MY HOVERBOARD?

  In a famous sequence in 1989’s Back to the Future Part II, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), trapped in the futuristic year of 2015, flees a gang of hooligans by flying around on a Mattel-made hoverboard—a flying skateboard.

  On an NBC special promoting the film, director Robert Zemeckis claimed that hoverboards are real. “They’ve been around for years,” he said. “It’s just that parent groups haven’t let toy manufacturers make them.” He was joking, but the switchboards at Mattel were reportedly overwhelmed by parents looking to have a hoverboard under the tree for Christmas 1989.

  While the boards used in the film look convincing, they were actually rudimentary props. To film the sequence, Fox’s sneakers were drilled into the hoverboard and he was suspended by cables to make it look like flight. Still, much like flying cars, the hoverboard become an iconic portent of the future, leading many to wonder “Where are the hoverboards?” Several attempts have actually been made to make them a reality.

  • On a 2004 segment of the Discovery Channel series MythBusters, the show’s crew built what they called the “Hyneman Hoverboard” (named for co-host Jamie Hyneman). It was constructed out of a surfboard and was propelled by a leaf blower’s motor. It didn’t work very well.

  • In 2007 the crew of the British series The Gadget Show created another leaf blower-powered hoverboard…that couldn’t be propelled or steered. Their second version added a small jet engine to the mix. It was more maneuverable but still barely functioned.

  • That same year, a company called Future Horizons released a series of do-it-yourself hoverboard kits. The boards were made out of fiberglass shells, basically worked like miniature hovercrafts, and weighed 80 pounds
. They were operable only on completely smooth surfaces and, in short, were a long way away from the movie version.

  • A company called Arbortech released an actual, working hoverboard in 2009. Pros: It could float over both land and water, and reach a top speed of 15 mph. Cons: It was over six feet long and weighed more than 200 pounds.

  • In 2008 French artist Nils Guadagnin began work on a more traditional hoverboard for an exhibition. His version was much more like the one in the movie, and it could float a few inches off the ground via electromagnets. A built-in laser system also helped keep it stabilized. But while this one looked cool, it couldn’t support any actual weight.

  • To date, the most successful prototype has been the one constructed by researchers at Paris Diderot, a French science and medical university. Unveiled in 2011 and called “The Mag Surf,” this hoverboard can carry up to 220 pounds…and levitate just 3 cm off the ground.

  DOG TRANSLATOR

  Researchers say that cats emit dozens of different sounds, and if you pay attention, you can ascribe clear meaning to each individual yowl, meow, and purr. A dog’s vocabulary, however, consists almost entirely of “growl” and “bark.” With the former you know he’s upset; the latter could mean anything.