Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Weird Inventions (16 page)
Read Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Weird Inventions Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Clothing designer Wendy Feller came up with a whimsical idea to allow lovers to hold hands in the cold: Smittens (smitten + mittens = smittens). It’s basically a pair of mittens sewn to each other to make one large mitten with two wrist cuffs and one large pocket. Each lover puts their hand in their side of the Smitten, and they can hold hands inside, protected from the cold. Smittens are made of warm polar fleece, and they have been a huge hit in novelty catalogs.
They come in black, blue, or red, and it’s no accident that a Smitten looks just like a Valentine heart.
S
noring and sleep apnea cost thousands of Americans millions of precious zzz’s every single night. A multitude of devices are available to aid the sleepless, but none of them is as innovative, or as strange, as the Jukusui-kun pillow.
This bizarre robotic pillow, which debuted at the 2011 International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, could save your marriage. Users tuck themselves under a sheet lined with sensors that are attached to a large pillow shaped like a polar bear. When they start snoring or experience difficulty breathing, microphones in the bear trigger a robotic paw that tickles their forehead. This will, supposedly, encourage users to roll over and start breathing more normally without waking up.
As if all of this weren’t cute (and weird) enough, the Jukusui-kun comes with a wireless monitor embedded in the tummy of an adorable teddy bear that attaches to the user’s hand. It tracks blood-oxygen levels and can also activate the paw. While it sounds completely ridiculous, one of these things could help untold numbers of people get a good night’s rest.
T
he Old West was a dangerous place where everyday situations could suddenly take a turn for the worse. A game of cards may turn sour, a bank’s customer might stick up the place, or someone might make an unneighborly visit to your land claim. No surprise, then, that it was the heyday of the Colt Single Action Army Revolver, the Frontier Six-Shooter, and other revolvers known by such specific nicknames as “the Civilian,” “the Sheriff’s Model,” and “the Store-keeper.” Less known: “the Rodent Controller.”
In 1882, the same year that Robert Ford shot Jesse James, a wily gunsmith patented the Wild West Mouse Trap. Imagine a standard, spring-loaded mousetrap, only with a gun attached. It consisted of a wooden stand that held a trusty six-shooter at a downward angle, locked and loaded, pointed at a metal plate where bait would be placed. A metal arm ran from the front of the contraption to the trigger of the gun so that any varmints that tried to make off with the vittles would trip the switch. Rodents that weren’t quick enough on the draw would be sent on to meet their maker. Like most mousetraps, this trap could only fire once before needing to be re-cocked and re-loaded.
There is no telling why this invention didn’t catch on, although maybe it was because the idea of leaving cocked and loaded gun around might have been a bit too wild, even for 1882.
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here’s a good chance that you’re reading this book while sitting on a toilet. A boring, uninspired, regular ol’ toilet that, at best, is one of the newer “low-flow” models. But if you were reading this book in Japan, there’s a good chance that you’d be doing your business on a more cutting-edge commode. Why Japan? It’s a culture that loves both creative sanitation (sophisticated drainage systems were in place in the 8th century) and advanced technology.
While perfunctory squat toilets can still be found in public parks, much more sophisticated ones are commonplace in homes and offices across Japan. Typically referred to as washlets, these toilets offer a variety of nifty bells and whistles that are downright futuristic by American standards. The first high-tech toilets debuted in Japan in the early ’80s and, after initial public skepticism, they soared in popularity.
Washlets often include features that are operated by video-game style controllers mounted on side panels. Most common among them is a bidet function that offers a wipe-free experience. Users can set the water temperature and control the pressure and direction of the stream. Other features include: heated seats, retractable cleaning wands, water massagers, air dryers, and, our favorite, automatic deodorizers. The seats on many washlets are automated and can be opened or closed with the push of a button or via an electronic motion detector.
Toto is Japan’s best-known toilet manufacturer, and the company’s “Washlet Zoe” earned the title “World’s Most Sophisticated Toilet” in the 1997 edition of
Guinness World Records
. The Toto Neorest snagged another Guinness title in 2011 for “Most Functions in a Toilet.” How many functions? Ten: automatic lift of seat and lid, auto rinse, energy saving, deodorant, a seat sensor, a heated seat, auto cleaning, washer for the user, air dryer for the user, and remote control.
In 2002 Matsushita created a toilet seat that can take a digital measurement of a user’s buttocks and determine their body-fat percentage. Inax, another competitor, released a toilet around the same time that glows in the dark and helps people relax by playing one of six recordings of chirping birds, bubbling brooks, wind chimes, or Japanese harps. And many women’s restrooms and private potties now feature a device called “The Sound Princess” that masks the noise of urination (a lot of Japanese gals find the sounds of nature completely mortifying).
Newer washlets offer air-conditioning for the summer and heaters for the winter months. Another one can measure blood-sugar levels via a device attached to a retractable arm. Future models may be controllable via voice commands and could even transmit health data to doctors over the Internet.
W
hile fleeing a building during a fire, the difference between life and death could be seconds—you’ve got to get out of there, and get out of there fast.
Benjamin Oppenheimer’s 1879 invention did not get a person out of a building quickly, easily, or possibly even safely. His fire escape consisted of a pair of giant, shock-absorbent overshoes with thick elastic soles, plus an awning or parachute that attached to the head with a thick wire helmet.
In case of fire, you’d have to strap on the shoes and carefully place the helmet on your head, tighten the screws, and secure the chinstrap. Then, you could safely jump out the window and glide down to safety, with the parachute helping the journey to the ground and the shoes absorbing the impact of your landing. Just make sure the parachute doesn’t catch fire.
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o you go off-roading or engage in some other activity that makes your car preternaturally dirty, particularly the rear license plate? Do you feel distressed because you are a good, law-abiding citizen who desires to keep your vehicle’s identification clean and visible at all times, and wish to keep your license plate away from dirt and grime so that it’s clean and legible when back on regulated city roads?
Well, then do you routinely drive way, way too fast and don’t want to get caught by the traffic police?
Either way, the License Plate Flipper is a must-have. It’s wired into your car’s electrical system, and with a simple button push, it flips over the rear license plate to reveal, in its place, a previously concealed phony license plate. It takes just 1.3 seconds for the flipover to take place, which is about the same as the reaction time for a cop hiding behind a billboard to spring into action and try to catch up with you when you’re going 90 in a 55 zone.
Cost of the License Plate Flipper: $445, which is more or less the price of a speeding ticket for going 90 in a 55 zone.
T
here are “hot pants” and then there are
really
hot pants, and it’s most definitely the latter category that this particular pair of trousers falls into. Developed to provide all of the benefits of sitting in a sauna without wasting valuable time by getting any semblance of relaxation out of the process, the eye-poppingly orange Sauna Pants are trumpeted on
AsSeenOnTV.com
as possessing the ability to “make you sweat quickly in the areas where you need it most,” meaning those troublesome fatty parts, such as the abdomen, waist, back, and hips. Like a real sauna, Sauna Pants help a person shed water and, technically, lose weight. Other assurances include the easing of tight muscles and sore joints, with a recommended usage time of a trifling 50 minutes per day.
Although the current model features an adjustable temperature control with four-inch cord, the premise of Sauna Pants extends back to a bygone era when electricity wasn’t necessity. Indeed, an undated advertisement for Wonder Sauna Long Hot Pants that’s made the rounds on the internet seems to promote an inflatable, hot-water-filled version of the pants—one endorsed by the USA’s Amateur Athletic Union, no less—that’s aimed at helping “health-watchers of America look better, feel better, [and] wake up your body” by purportedly enabling them to “slenderize exactly where you want.”
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any a modern-day invention is just a piece of molded plastic. It’s how that molded plastic is shaped, and then put to use, that can change how things have been done for decades, solve problems we did or didn’t know we needed to solve, and make millions for their inventors. Such is the case with the Buddy System. In 1997 inventor Bob Sotile ordered an ice cream cone at an ice cream shop and was grossed out when the worker handled his dirty money with her bare bands, then touched her hair, then handed him his waffle cone. So Sotile came up with the Buddy System (nicknamed “the Conedom”). Resembling a tiny, white traffic cone, it’s used to grab a waffle cone, preventing any touching of the food. Bonus: As the customer eats the ice cream cone, the recessed top of the Conedom serves as a drip guard for melting ice cream.
Another ice cream innovation: the Motorized Ice Cream Cone. Should you tire of moving your mouth all around an ice cream cone, or even worse, turning the cone now and then to lick up drips or evenly consume the ice cream, this contraption does the work for you. Just place a scoop of ice cream in the cone-shaped plastic machine, press the button, and you can swirl your chocolate-vanilla with no muscle effort.
