Bronwen Jones scours the Patent Journal for the latest weird and wonderful inventions
THINK of inventions and up flash images of the first steam train, the first telephone, the hovercraft, Post-it pads, Sony’s Walkman — items little or large which have changed our lives.
South Africans can take pride because there are great inventors and inventions here too. There was the meetings-cost-monitor which logged the salaries of executives as they sat and chattered, and the infra-red telephone set to beat all those cable thieves and, of course, there’s the half umbrella.
The Patent Office decribes it as: ”An umbrella which is half an umbrella … for use by people sheltering from rain and wind by standing close to a building wall or the like.”
It seems so obvious. They should have been made long ago. One can see the scene. A rainbow of half-umbrella users clustering along walls and then walking off like mating beatles in colour-co-ordinated
One often wonders if inventors are quite sane, or if they design devices for people with disabilities we don’t even know about.
For the child who can’t tell a sock by its shape, Patricia Stinton has patented a method of marking clothing at the time of manufacture with a stitched-in coloured or patterned swatch of cloth. Meanwhile, Noleen Zasman irons paint strips on to socks and then rubber stamps the owner’s name on to the paint. Somehow name tags seem a much easier option.
One can sympathise though with Trevor Paget. He must have spent many an evening staring with irritation at his sittingroom wall, the pictures all askew, until Eureka! he was inspired to make something to keep all his pictures perpendicular.
Considering the high rate of theft of manhole covers in Gauteng, Chris Kleynhans’ lockable version should prove a winner, while Marie Beagle’s ”vehicle for hawkers” is the ugliest shopping trolley in town, but nonetheless seems suited to the task. In fact the ugliness may be a built-in security feature to stop anyone stealing it.
Foreigners are also registering their patents here. What they think will be useful in the new South Africa may be a good guide to how we are seen by the world.
Italian Giuseppe Benedetti has the greatest gadget for sucking juice straight from an orange; a stick-in straw.
American John McCook reckons a slap-on concoction of green tea and sunscreen blocks the southern hemisphere’s dangerous ultra-violet radiation, while his compatriot Scott Demarest thinks South Africa the ideal market for his patented flea trap. The bug-killer looks like a cardboard briefcase, with a light at the hinge and sticky paper upon which fleas are, apparently, just dying to land.