Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Weird Inventions (24 page)
Read Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Weird Inventions Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Made of lightweight glass-and-carbon-fiber laminate, the bike is a wheeled step-in frame. The rider’s upper body is leaned forward at all times, secured by a unique five-point harness system that is custom-crafted for each user. You don’t ride the Fliz—you wear it.
Riders accelerate the Fliz by running, and when they reach a good coasting speed, lift their feet from the ground and into the footrests on the rear frame. The suspended harness and prone posture let users “fly” above the pavement, Superman-style. A Fliz may never win the Tour de France, but for whizzing around town, it’s a dashing blast.
F
rom security blankets to virtual pets, there’s no limit to our penchant for developing attachments to lifeless things we secretly kind of imagine are really alive. And because scientists love nothing more than pinpointing our darkest foibles and exploiting the dickens out of them, we now have Cuddlebots.
“What are Cuddlebots?” you ask, because you are human, and you would very much like to own something that sounds like it will give you affection without needing you to feed it or invest in its eventual half-hearted attempt at earning a liberal arts degree. And although at the moment, in its prototype stage, it kind of looks like a furry loaf of bread, that’s basically what Cuddlebots are designed to do. The creator says that “the ultimate goal of this work is the design of more emotional, potentially therapeutic machines that can help people feel better.” In layman’s terms, the Cuddlebot is capable of understanding different types of touch—as well as learning who’s doing the touching—thus achieving “social human-robot interaction through affective touch,” nerdspeak for “you will grow to love your cuddly gadgets more than your family.”
I
n the 1970s, the super-secretive MI5 wing of British National Security (that nation’s equivalent of the CIA) came up with what they thought was a secretive, barely noticeable system to detect suspected spies and terrorists as they tried to pass through the country’s airports: trained gerbils.
It’s not
that
crazy of an idea. Gerbils are able to detect increased adrenaline levels in human sweat when people are nervous. The MI5 wanted to set up security queues near a row of fans that would blow air into a hidden gerbil cage. The gerbils were trained so that if they smelled that extra bit of adrenaline wafting in, they would press a lever that would alert security. What’s in it for them? The lever also gave the gerbil a treat for a job well done.
So how many terrorists did the gerbils catch? Not even one: The program was abandoned after the researchers discovered that the gerbils failed to notice any difference between people who were nervous because they were spies, or merely passengers who were afraid of flying.
U
nlike most everything else in this book, the interrobang isn’t a physical object—but it is weird, it is an invention, and it attempted to solve a problem nobody really knew they had until an invention came along to solve it.
Punctuation has been pretty much fixed in our life-times—we all know (or attempt to use correctly) all the various commas, semicolons, apostrophes, and whatnot. All have specific purposes. But what about when you’re writing a story or a letter and you need to angrily ask a question? You do something like this: “What is the meaning of this?!” It works—yes, it uses two different punctuation marks, but the meaning is conveyed.
American Type Founders thought that using two different marks looked clunky. So, in 1967, they attempted to introduce the interrobang into common English usage. It’s a question mark with an exclamation mark laid over it.
Considering that millions would have had to replace their typewriters to incorporate this new element in our old language, it didn’t catch on. The next major development in punctuation wouldn’t come until 1993, when Prince decided to change his name to that weird symbol.
T
here are all kinds of ways to get vital nutrients into your body: a feeding tube, injecting them into your veins, or if you’re old-fashioned, eating food. In a probably misguided attempt to improve on these methods, researchers for the U.S. Army are developing a quick and easy nutrition patch, referred to as the Transdermal Nutrient Delivery System. The idea is that the patch would stick to the skin like a bandage and provide a steady dose of vitamins throughout the day, so the wearer could remain biologically alive and nutritionally fortified (but probably extraordinarily grumpy and hungry) without eating.
Though the nutrition patch is intended for military use, army researchers suggest it could also be used by miners, astronauts, and other workers whose jobs require too much extended effort and concentration to allow a proper lunch break. (Others whose jobs meet this description: brain surgeons, stay-at-home moms, and strippers).
You can already buy a low-rent version of the patch on the type of discount health product websites where you can also get off-brand colon cleanses, pills that claim to regrow hair, and other products you’ve read about in this book. Or, you could join the army and wait until 2025, when the real Transdermal Nutrient Delivery System is expected to become available. Or you could just, like, eat a sandwich.
T
here are so many variations on this design, from so many different entrepreneurs, that it’s probably unfair to count the speaker vest as just one invention. But all these wearable personal audio systems aim to solve the same social problem—namely, how best to annoy every living soul within 50 yards, now that those comically oversize boomboxes are out of fashion.
The speaker vest was conceived to serve the practical purpose of allowing motorcyclists to enjoy music while they ride, without using headphones (which dampen ambient noise, making wearers less aware of possible danger around them; for this reason, it’s illegal in most places to operate a vehicle while using them). But what began in the 1980s as a low-power, two-speaker rig tethered to the bike’s dashboard has become something else entirely.
Stereo enthusiasts are prone to a more-is-more mentality, adding more speakers, more watts, and more output until they’re left with something that could actually do them harm. One iteration of the speaker vest, custom-built and sold online, has a half-dozen cone speakers built into the torso and an eight-inch subwoofer—powerful enough to shake the user’s spine loose from his brainpan—mounted on the back. Forget traffic hazards; this thing is dangerous in itself.
I
n the 3rd century A.D., the Roman Empire had become too big to manage, and so it split into a western half ruled from Rome and an eastern half ruled from the Greek-speaking city of Constantinople. While the western empire fell in the 5th century, the eastern part soldiered on as the Byzantine Empire and lasted another 1,000 years. Over time, the Byzantines lost ground to the Arabs, whose territory expanded in the 7th century until much of the eastern Mediterranean fell under their sway. Constantinople itself came under siege from the Arabs between the years 674 and 678, and might have fallen had it not been for the Byzantines’ secret weapon: “Greek fire.”
Greek fire was most likely invented by a Syrian engineer named Kallinikos, although it was probably also the result of generations of experimentation. What is definitively known is that it gave the Byzantines a huge advantage in naval battles. Unfortunately, the process by which it was made was kept a strict secret, and the recipe has been lost to history. (We have only written accounts from witnesses.) It was a sort of burning oil that was ejected by siphons onto enemy ships, accompanied by smoke and a sound like thunder. The devastating thing about Greek fire was that it couldn’t be extinguished with water, and any ship doused with it would continue burning until it was a floating pile of cinders.
We do know it was a liquid, that it burned in water, and, by some accounts, it was ignited by water. It could be put out only with sand, strong vinegar, or old urine.
One theory is that Greek fire contained calcium phosphide, which ignites in contact with water. However, experiments have shown that it doesn’t burn long enough, or with enough intensity to do the damage described. Another idea: Greek fire could have contained saltpeter, an ingredient in gunpowder. But saltpeter was unknown in Europe before the 13th century. Historians now more or less agree that Greek fire was probably some kind of petroleum made from crude oil, possibly thickened with resin to increase its intensity. If so, it was similar to the napalm used to devastating effect in the Vietnam War.
CHARLIE SHEEN’S CHAPSTICK DISPENSER
C
elebrities have always been America’s most precious resource, and our chiefest source of good ideas. One of Hollywood’s greatest innovators is award-winning actor and notable newsmaker Charlie Sheen, who was awarded a U.S. patent in 2001 for a new way of dispensing lip balm.
The main problem with the tube form known to all who have suffered from chapped lips, Sheen believed, is that the pesky little cap would keep falling out of the user’s hands. He and partner Rodger D. Thomason devised a new tube with a slidable lid that would remain on the dispenser. The lid served a dual purpose. When opened, it turned into a finger cradle, so the balm could be applied more easily while wearing gloves, perfect for use in winter by skiers and professional snowball fighters.
But that’s not the full extent of the invention’s improvements. The dispenser did away with the rotating wheel at the bottom, replacing it with a slider on the side. The new tube also had indicators on the side, so users could see how much lip balm was left without having to open the (frequently lost) cap and peek inside.
As if they were all producers on a comedy show Sheen left in a grand and destructive fashion, no major lip-balm makers have yet adopted the new technology.
M
ichael Jackson may have been the greatest entertainer of his generation, but for many, his adult life seemed like one big invention, from his cosmetic transformations to home amusement park to…
Still, his artistry was sacrosanct, with many dazzling moments both musical and visual, particularly the Moonwalk and that thing in his 1988 music video for “Smooth Criminal,” when he and his dancers repeatedly leaned forward, far beyond the human body’s normal center of gravity. How did they do that? The choreography was assisted by an elaborate “hitch” mechanism that enabled the dancers to attach the soles of their shoes to a section of the stage. When they moved their feet forward in the shoes, inserts in their heels—as well as the floor beneath them—tilted forward at an angle up to 45 degrees, allowing the dancers to achieve that seemingly gravity-defying lean.
Jackson and some of his associates actually patented the process, necessary for when he took his “Smooth Criminal” moves on tour, so as to build the mechanisms into his traveling stage.
T
he grand triumvirate of futuristic stuff of Tomorrowland is the video phone, food in pill form, and flying cars. Well, we’ve got Skype and nutrition patches (
see here
) to account for the first two, so why don’t we have flying cars yet? Because we already did…in 1946.
In the 1930s and ’40s, carmakers Daimler, Benz, and Ford each spent millions of dollars and countless man-hours researching the concept of a flying car, but ultimately all came to the same conclusion: A vehicle that could both drive on the ground and fly would do each so poorly that no one would buy one, nor believe they were safe. Then, in 1945, an aircraft engineer named Theodore Hall designed a regular car so small and light that you could attach an airplane engine, wing, and tail unit to the roof…and he made it fly.
