Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Weird Inventions (8 page)
Read Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Weird Inventions Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Moreover, scientists at Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University discovered that titanium dioxide—the same stuff that’s used for self-cleaning windows—can be used for clothes, too. When applied to cotton (no other fabric will work) the titanium dioxide breaks down dirt and other pollutants into smaller and smaller particles, the same way it does on glass. Sunlight and movement, they hope, will eliminate the dirt.
O
ne of the pros of cleaning your ears, if there are any, is that you can’t see inside of your gross ears while you’re cleaning them. The con is that you can’t see inside of your gross ears while you’re cleaning them, so you don’t really know if you’re doing a good or a bad job, or missing any spots, etc.
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.
W
hen 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
P
ARTY 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.
Y
ou 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.
I
t’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.
I
t’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
H
utzler 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.
N
ot 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.
A
nyone 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”?
