Patented in 1951, John J. Boax’s “hair singeing apparatus” would do away with conventional haircuts: Vacuums extend the user’s hair and the hood burns it to a chosen length.
Even the guy in the drawing seems uncertain about this, but all progress requires sacrifice.
He does look evil, doesn’t he?
Hawley Harvey Crippen had fled for America by the time Scotland Yard discovered his wife’s torso under the brick floor of his London house.
But they sent out a warning, and the captain of the SS Montrose thought he recognized the fugitive aboard his ship. He asked his wireless telegraphist to send a message to the British authorities: “Have strong suspicions that Crippen London cellar murderer and accomplice are among saloon passengers. Mustache taken off growing beard. Accomplice dressed as boy. Manner and build undoubtedly a girl.”
Chief Inspector Walter Dew overtook the Montrose in a faster liner and boarded her in the St. Lawrence River disguised as a pilot. When introduced to Crippen, he said (resoundingly, one hopes), “Good morning, Dr. Crippen. Do you know me? I’m Chief Inspector Dew from Scotland Yard.”
Crippen hesitated, then said, “Thank God it’s over. The suspense has been too great. I couldn’t stand it any longer.”
Crippen’s mistress was acquitted, but he was hanged in 1910, the first criminal in history captured by the aid of wireless.
See STOP.
This one leaves me speechless. Helene Adelaide Shelby was unhappy with the low rate of criminal confessions, so in 1927 she invented a solution. The police put their suspect into the darkened chamber on the left, and he finds himself facing a floodlit human skeleton with glowing red eyes. The skeleton asks questions (via a megaphone in the mouth), and the suspect’s reactions are recorded by a camera and a microphone in the skull.
The effect produces “a state of mind calculated to cause him, if guilty, to make confession.” I’ll bet. What if he’s innocent?
A breakable club for temperamental golfers, patented in 1963 by Ashley Pond III.
“[T]he shaft of the club is deliberately constructed to break when struck against the ground, a tree, or other inanimate elements when the anger of the golfer reaches a mercurial height.”
Here’s another solution.
Hunting blinds, 1897-1991. Are these the ingredients of the perfect crime? You could dress up as a cow and shoot your rich Uncle Oswald, then stand there and chew your cud as the police searched for clues.
Perhaps someone’s already done this.
The New York Times carried a surprising headline on March 15, 1918: BIG CONCRETE SHIP AFLOAT IN PACIFIC. Noting the lack of shipyards and steel plants on the West Coast, California businessman W. Leslie Comyn had built a 7,900-ton steamer out of ferrocement.
“The huge hull, careening sharply as it slid sidewise down a steeply pitched incline, threw up a big wave in the narrow estuary, but then righted sharply and rode like a buoy,” the Times reported. “She looks as if she might have been carved out of rock, so massive is her build.”
Experts announced a new era of rapid shipbuilding, and Comyn made plans to build 54 more concrete vessels. But steel ships, though more expensive, proved lighter and faster, and by 1921 Faith had been sold and scrapped as a breakwater in Cuba.
This is inspiring: In 2005 the National Toy Hall of Fame inducted the cardboard box.
“I think every adult has had that disillusioning experience of picking what they think is a wonderful toy for a child, and then finding the kid playing with the box,” said chief curator Christopher Bensch. “It’s that empty box full of possibilities that the kids can sense and the adults don’t always see.”
In the same spirit, the museum honors alphabet blocks, rocking horses, teddy bears, and jump rope alongside Monopoly, Etch A Sketch, and other registered trademarks.
Among the 44 toys in the hall of fame, the most sophisticated is the Nintendo Game Boy. The simplest, charmingly, is “the stick.”
Plain and slouchy? You need a pair of posture earrings, patented by Peter Badovinac in 1972.
Each earring contains a small ball in a horizontal chamber. If you’re sitting up straight, the ball rests at the rear end of the chamber. If your “posture becomes slumped,” the ball rolls to the front, “thus giving a sharp clicking sound so to warn the wearer to hold her head erect.”
“Much simpler and easier to use for maintaining and attaining good posture than the old bothersome method of carrying a heavy book upon the person’s head.”
Zadoc Dederick and Isaac Grass quietly patented this as an “improvement in steam-carriage” in 1868, but the details are pretty sensational: They’d invented a mechanical man with jointed legs who could pull a cart, lift its legs to clear obstacles, and even run backward.
The boiler is in the torso. “It is unnecessary to describe this part of the mechanism, as there is nothing peculiar in it.”
In 1959, John Dos Passos took a break from writing to invent a bubble gun, presumably for his 9-year-old daughter, Lucy:
The primary object of this invention is to provide a bubble toy in the nature of a pistol … upon squeezing the hand grip air is forced … toward the ring, causing bubbles to be formed from a film held by the ring, and the bubbles projected forwardly as bullets from a gun.
After this he went back to the typewriter — Prospects of a Golden Age was published in the same year.