Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Weird Inventions (7 page)
Read Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Weird Inventions Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
The process to create poop steak involves the extraction of bacteria-spawned protein from human excrement and cooking it to kill off the harmful bacteria. The extracted protein is then combined with a chemical-reaction enhancer and put through an extruder to create the new meat product. This so-called meat is enhanced with soy protein (for flavor, naturally) and colored with red dye. The resulting “steak” is 63 percent protein and reportedly contains fewer calories than conventional meat, meaning the kind that didn’t come from poop.
Currently the main obstacle to producing this new meat en masse is the high production cost. And the fact that most people have an aversion to eating poop.
E
vidently childbirth wasn’t scary and potentially dangerous enough, and it lacked an element in which a woman was strapped down to a table and spun around at high speed. So said inventors George and Charlotte Blonsky, who devised an “apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force.”
In their patent application, the Blonskys awkwardly and racistly say that “primitive peoples” have muscle systems so developed that childbirth is a breeze; not so for “civilised women, who do not have the opportunity to develop the muscles” within the realm of polite society.
Their apparatus aids in the delivery of a baby via 125 separate components, among them bolts, brakes, a variable-speed motor, stretchers, ballasts, clamps, a girdle, and more. In short, it uses repetitive, mechanical power and centrifugal force to both help the woman push out the baby and force the baby out of the woman in as timely and grueling an ordeal as possible.
Obviously, this invention was patented during the mechanics-obsessed and kind-of sadistic Industrial Age. But it wasn’t. No—it was patented in 1963.
F
or centuries, the greatest minds in engineering have struggled with the dilemma of how to effectively combine the boredom and discomfort of sitting in an oversize, wooden rocking chair with the tedium of knitting large quantities of wool hats. But now, after it seemed all hope was lost, we have the answer: the Rocking-Knit Chair.
Credit for the Rocking-Knit Chair goes to students Damien Ludi and Colin Peillex, who created it for the University of Art and Design’s Low-Tech Factory Exhibition in Langenthal, Switzerland. The back-and-forth motion of the chair powers a set of gears that automatically draw yarn from a spool and knit it into a tube pattern. The knitted yarn can be used to make hats, large socks, and more hats.
Supposedly, the chair was meant to show how a relatively simple machine could perform relatively complex tasks, but we all know better. The Rocking-Knit Chair is obviously the first phase of an insidious master plan to enslave grandparents around the world and put them to work producing millions of useless items while making them think they are just relaxing.
I
f you really want breast implants but just can’t bring yourself to pick a size, science finally has an answer for your unique and indecisive vanity: the Hinging Breast Implant, a gadget that unites humanity’s timeless breast obsession with the technology behind Reebok Pumps.
It works, so to speak, by inserting what looks like a teardrop-shaped accordion file into the breast with—and here’s the crucial part—a nozzle poking out of the skin. If you’re a man, you probably read that part in slack-jawed astonishment; if you’re a woman, you’re most likely wincing the way guys do whenever some poor dad gets whacked in the jimmy during an episode of
America’s Funniest Home Videos
. Either way, you get the idea: The nozzle allows the Hinging Breast Implant owner to inflate or deflate according to her mood, outfit, or whatever reason a lady might possibly have for an impromptu cup-size adjustment.
Although a patent was issued for this way back in 2005, it hasn’t caught on yet—perhaps because enough of us still remember Reebok Pumps—but in a world where bagel-shaped saline face implants are a thing in Japan (
see here
), anything is possible.
A
tari Mindlink.
This bizarre controller for the Atari 2600 was announced in 1983, but was never officially released. Ads promised gamers the ability to play games not with a joystick or a wireless remote, but with
their minds
. Well, sort of—the Mindlink was a headband that connected to the Atari via infrared sensors that were supposed to pick up on subtle movements the player made with muscles in their head. (The accessory’s designers came up with a game called
Mind Maze
that really was supposed to have been playable via ESP.) The Mindlink never hit stores. A presentation at the 1983 Consumer Electronics Show proved it didn’t really work at controlling on-screen movements, and testers complained that the device gave them headaches.
Wii Car Adaptor.
Nintendo’s Wii system is a home gaming console that attaches to a TV. One of the Wii’s many optional accessories is the Car Adaptor, a monitor that snaps onto the system for gaming-on-the-go in the (hopefully) backseat of a car. However, the Wii is played via motion capture, requiring players to wave their arms around, an activity that’s not exactly conducive to road safety.
Wii Bowling Ball.
The Wii is packaged with a disc full of sports games, including bowling. When the Wii was first released in 2006, YouTube quickly collected hundreds of videos of people accidentally throwing their wireless Wii remotes through their TVs, windows, etc., which led Nintendo to make wrist straps for the remotes. Nevertheless, CTA Digital manufactured this accessory specifically for Wii bowling—a plastic bowling-ball-shaped Wii remote. The instruction book helpfully advises, “Never, ever release the ball!!”
T
he major occupational hazard of boxing is probably all of the punches to the head and face, particularly if you’re a bad boxer who takes a lot of blows, as they can lead to brain damage. This invention, filed with the U.S. patent office in 1987, sought to make boxing safer, if not an entirely different sport altogether. The Bubble Head is a durable plastic bag filled with a clear, thick, shock-absorbing gel. The Bubble Head leaves the face completely unguarded and vulnerable, but protects the rest of the head, on all sides, with a barrier of goo-filled safety plastic.
Another feature of the Bubble Head: a touch-sensitive reservoir filled with red dye. This red dye would create a surefire way to score boxing by counting blows—every time an opponent punches the wearer in the head, the dye would be released into the clear fluid. At the end of the fight, the loser is the fighter with the most red dye in their Bubble Head bag (instead of another red substance on the canvas).
T
here are two facts of life that seem to be increasingly irrevocable: that cell phones keep getting smaller and smaller, and that we, the cell phone users, are obsessively attached to our cell phones, what with their abilities to text, browse the Internet, take terrible pictures of ourselves, and shoot pigs at birds. (Science has even coined the term
nomophobia
to describe the fear of being without a cell phone—
nomo
being a contraction of “no mobile.”)
Two students from the Royal College of Art in London have chosen to accept this reality, rather than try to pry the masses away from their handheld devices. Instead, they’ve made possible the next step in the cell phone size and addiction progression and invented the Audio Tooth Implant. In short, it’s the bare-bones, working parts of a cell phone…surgically implanted into a cavity in a tooth.. It’s a tiny contraption, about the size of a tooth filling, made up of a vibration device and a low-frequency receiver. Via your jawbone, it transmits sounds directly to your ear (the jawbone is an excellent transmitter of sound). All told, it allows you to receive calls, and then talk to people, inside of your own head, in total privacy. Bystanders will simply think you ate your Bluetooth.
T
here are lots of ways to get rid of pigeons or other unwanted birds that hang around on your roof, doing who knows what degenerate bird activities. You can stick metal spikes up there, set up a speaker to play ultrasonic frequencies that birds find annoying, or cover the whole mess in slippery or sticky substances.
Or you can set up a mechanical arm to throw ice cubes at them. In 2011 Preston Jones of California patented his Bird Repeller. In form and function, it’s a tiny catapult. Simply load the Repeller with water, plug it in, and let it make ice. The ice automatically flows out into a bowl and is then launched, via a spring-loaded arm, one story into the air, onto the roof, which apparently scares the heck out of birds. As a bonus, Jones note, ice is “environmentally friendly and will not jam gutters.” As another bonus, it can be set up to shoot ice via a timer or remote control, just in case those lousy pigeons get wise and connect your presence in the yard with scary ice bombs.
J
apan’s Nippon Sheet Glass Company makes all kinds of windows—virtually unbreakable windows, windows that can withstand bullets. Big deal. They also manufacture a window that can clean itself.
The Cleartect line of glass products is coated with titanium dioxide. That’s a photocatalytic material, meaning that it reacts chemically to light. When sunlight hits the glass, that unleashes a chemical reaction breaks down organic material on the window into smaller and smaller particles. The coating is also hydrophilic, so instead of forming droplets on the glass, rainwater forms an even sheet that flows down the window, taking the super-miniaturized molecules of dirt away with it. (Note: If it doesn’t rain often enough, you have to hose down the window yourself.)