Pounce of Prevention

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=fbNfAAAAEBAJ&dq=1,167,502

In 1916, inventor Hugh Huffman offered “a more efficient form of scarecrow,” a faux cat mounted on a wind vane and fitted with bells. “The action of the wind will give various motions to the figure which will simulate the lifelike movements of the animal.”

If it worked then, it ought to work now.

Blue Dreams

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=VkVEAAAAEBAJ

“What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly?” So wrote the English cleric William Law in 1728, and in the late 19th century inventors were still struggling to reach the heavens.

Watson Quinby’s 1872 “flying apparatus,” above, was designed to permit the user to grope through the air with actions “resembling those of swimming in water.”

In 1889, Jasper Spalding was emulating a bird rather than a bat with a feathered flying machine designed to be suspended from a balloon (below).

Neither got off the ground … but within one lifetime we had reached the moon.
http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=ng1LAAAAEBAJ

A Kinder Cut

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=9cxLAAAAEBAJ

In the 19th century manuals such as Gunn’s Domestic Medicine promised that “any man, unless he be an idiot or an absolute fool,” could perform an amputation. But Pennsylvania surgeon George Griswold had found that “persons unskilful in the use of the saw, and even the most experienced, will find it difficult to hold the bone firmly,” increasing both the patient’s pain and length of the operation. He invented this “amputator’s assistant” to hold a limb steady while a surgeon saws through it.

He patented it in 1854, only seven years before the Civil War. I haven’t been able to learn how widely it was used.

The Silver Swan

In The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain describes a remarkable automaton that he encountered at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867:

I watched a silver swan, which had a living grace about his movements, and a living intelligence in his eyes–watched him swimming about as comfortably and as unconcernedly as if he had been born in a morass instead of a jeweler’s shop–watched him seize a silver fish from under the water and hold up his head and go through all the customary and elaborate motions of swallowing it.

The swan still exists, now on display at England’s Barnard Castle. As a music box plays, the life-size creature preens, searches a flowing “stream” of rotating glass rods, spies a fish, and catches and swallows it. No one knows who designed it, but it’s certainly more than two centuries old — it’s described in a 1773 Act of Parliament.

See Watch Your Step and Daddy!

Next!

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=FfNTAAAAEBAJ

In 1900, evidently tired of initiating pledges by hand, Edmund and Ulysses de Moulin decided to automate the process.

With their “initiating device,” the applicant is blindfolded, placed in position, and told to pull the handles to test his strength. When he does so, the paddle spanks him and an electric shock passes through his arms, “making the sensation rather unique.”

You could turn this into a regular assembly line — or, using multiple machines, humiliate an entire freshman class at once.

“Lovers’ Signals”

At Southsea, Portsmouth, and other places off which our warships are accustomed to anchor, many of the better-educated servant-maids with sailor sweethearts have learnt to be such experts in the way of heliographing that, with ordinary small mirrors, they frequently flash messages to the men on the ships. A naval officer told the present writer that he had often, when on deck, been both amused and surprised at the accuracy with which some of these girls used this form of signalling out of pure fun.

Tit Bits, quoted in Strand, May 1907

Buzz Kill

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=hDkmAAAAEBAJ&dq=5,571,247

Well! It seems you have gotten so wrapped up in piano practice that you have forgotten about KILLER BEES!

Don’t look to me for help; I’m hiding in the cellar. Happily Virginia L. Butler has got you covered — in 1996 she invented a 6×3 bag of flexible, transparent, and sting-resistant plastic, complete with a mesh-covered aperture through which you can jeer at your frustrated attackers.

“In use, one can quickly unfold the present invention when the sound of a swarm is initially heard and enter the protective chamber before the bees actually approach. Even if one or two bees enter the enclosure during the process, the number of stings and proportionate danger will be greatly reduced.”

Conveniently, the bag can be folded and carried in a lightweight pouch that “fits easily into a backpack, purse, picnic basket, or pocket.” You can keep it near the piano.

Stealth Hoover

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=qCI1AAAAEBAJ

You want to vacuum your dog, but your dog is afraid of vacuums. What do you need? A dog-shaped vacuum!

Anne Margaret Zaleski’s 1973 invention permits dog owners to clean up clipped hair and the like without alarming their pets:

It will be readily obvious that other shapes of dogs, not shown, may be used instead, preferably one to correspond to the particular type dog to be groomed so that he will feel more friendly toward it.

He may get a bit nervous again when he sees that his new friend’s tail is a retractable suction nozzle.

Say When

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beker_der_rechtvaardigheid.JPG

Here’s an ingenious way to limit your drinking — this cup, credited to Pythagoras of Samos, works fine if you fill it no higher than the dotted line. If you add more, the liquid spills over the elbow joint and a siphon effect pours the cup’s entire contents onto your lap.

“It takes only one drink to get me drunk,” said George Burns. “The trouble is, I can’t remember if it’s the thirteenth or the fourteenth.”

Fruitful Dreams

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kekuleelek.jpg

In 1862, August Kekulé dreamed of a snake seizing its own tail; the vision inspired him to propose the structure of the benzene molecule.

Louis Agassiz had been struggling for two weeks to decipher the impression of a fossil fish in a stone slab when he dreamed on three successive nights of its proper character. When he chiseled away the stone he found that the hidden portions of the fish matched his nocturnal drawing.

William Watts had been forming lead shot mechanically when he dreamed he was caught in a cloudburst of molten metal. The image inspired him to develop the shot tower.

The best such story, alas, is false. It’s said that Elias Howe, frustrated in devising a sewing machine, dreamed he had been captured by an African tribe. He noticed that the menacing warriors’ spear-tips bore holes, and this inspired him to move the hole in his machine’s needle from the dull end (as in a hand needle) to the sharp one.

“This is not true,” writes Alonzo Bemis. “Mr. Howe was too much of a Yankee to place any dependence in dreams, and the needle idea was worked out by careful thought and countless experiments.”