In 1903, German apothecary Julius Neubronner combined his two hobbies, pigeon fancying and amateur photography, into an innovative new undertaking. He fit a 75-gram camera to a pigeon’s breast and released it 60 miles from its cote. The bird flew home along a predictable route, and a pneumatic mechanism snapped an aerial picture.

A stunned German patent office rejected Neubronner’s first application as impossible, but by 1909 his photos were adorning postcards and winning prizes at the Paris airshow. The image below, of the Schlosshotel Kronberg, made a sensation because the photographer’s wingtips are visible at its edges.

David Contorno of Lemont, Ill., has had the same mobile telephone number for 24 years.

He bought an Ameritech AC140 from Ameritech Mobile Communications on Aug. 2, 1985, and he’s kept the same mobile operator and telephone number ever since.

Well, maybe you’ll need one someday.

Seroun Kesh’s 1964 invention has a bonus application: You can attach a hair dryer to tube 21 “so that the same may be used to dry the dog after a bath.”

Sir George Sitwell (1860-1943) did not keep up with new technology — including the telephone.

When an acquaintance promised to “give him a ring on Thursday,” Sir George waited for hours, then complained to his son about the man’s lack of consideration: “Such a pity to promise people things and then forget about them.”

He had been expecting a piece of jewelry.

Okay, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that we’ve found a safe source of fresh air for people trapped in high-rise hotel fires. The bad news is that they have to feed a breathing tube into a vent pipe in the sewer line.

William Holmes’ 1981 brainstorm probably would have saved many lives, but even a guest surrounded by toxic smoke has some natural squeamishness.

Inventions submitted to the U.K. Patent Office by Arthur Paul Pedrick, 1962-1976:

• “Reducing the Tendency of a Golf Ball to Slice or Hook by Electrostatic Forces”
• “Speed-of-Light-Regulated Clock”
• “Internally Explosive Nail”
• “Automobiles Driven From the Back Seat”
• “Using Warning Lights to Prevent Motorists Bashing Into and Killing Each Other, Particularly on High-Speed Motorways in Fog”
• “Improvements in the Irrigation of ‘Deserts’ by Snow Piped From Polar Regions for the Purpose of Minimising the Impending World Famine”

In all, Pedrick filed 162 patents in that period. The man himself is a bit of a mystery, but it appears that his principal colleague at “One Man Think Tank Nuclear Fusion Research Laboratories” was a cat. We know this because “Ginger” is credited in Pedrick’s crowning achievement, “Photon Push-Pull Radiation Detector for Use in Chromatically Selective Cat Flap Control and 1000-Megaton Earth-Orbital Peace-Keeping Bomb” (above), submitted shortly before his death in 1976. The sensor would distinguish Ginger from the black cat next door — and also detect a nuclear attack and launch a reprisal from orbit.

It’s not clear whether Pedrick actually built one. Let’s hope not.