Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Weird Inventions Read Online Free Page A
Author: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
out of a composite of glass, stainless steel, and “anti-bacterial” resin. Shove that end in your ear canal and clean away, all the while watching your progress on the screen.
It’s significantly more costly than a Q-tip at $90, but it’s way cheaper than buying a surgical “snake”-style camera, taping it to a Q-tip, and jamming it in your ear.
THE ELECTRIC DOORMAT
W hen you think of exhausting physical tasks that clearly need some sort of mechanical assistance to make them more feasible for the average person, obviously the first thing on that list is going to be “casually wiping your feet before you go inside a building.” Well, it was for Henry J. Ostrow of Palatine, Illinois, who in 1957 applied for a patent for an electric door mat, thus electrifying something that never, ever needed to be electrified.
Ostrow’s invention featured “a plurality of brushes which are automatically actuated when a person steps on the device to remove dirt and other foreign matter from the shoes,” and used pressurized air to dislodge any remaining undesirable material. The drawings that accompany the patent make the device look not unlike a conveyor belt, which stands to reason, given that the word “conveyed” is specifically used when describing the transportation of all the bottom-of-your-shoe nastiness into a nearby waste-storage system. Sadly, although it seemed as though it had the potential to literally sweep customers off their feet, the electric door mat never took off commercially.
PERSONALIZED ACTION FIGURE MACHINE
P ARTY is a Japanese company that in 2012 unveiled a new twist on the photo booth: tiny action figures built to look exactly like you, from head to toe. Here’s how “Omote 3d Shashin Kan” works:
The client sits or stands completely still for 15 minutes while multiple high-resolution cameras take pictures of every part of the body. (PARTY recommends wearing simply textured, solid-color clothing.) The images are then scanned into a computer. A month later, PARTY sends a figure to you, in your choice of 4, 7, or 8 inch height.
The company set up a public, reservation-only exhibition to produce dolls in Tokyo in 2012, and despite a ticket price of around $500, all viewing slots were filled up within days.
SOLAR-POWERED BIKINI
Y ou would think that by now beaches would offer phone-charging and power stations much like the ones typically found in airports. Until the National Park Service and/or David Hasselhoff rectify this terrible oversight, there’s always the solar-powered bikini.
This high-tech swimwear was created by Brooklyn-based designer Andrew Schneider in 2011. Each hand-stitched bikini is made out of thin, flexible photovoltaic film strips woven together with conductive material. USB ports are attached to the top and bottom pieces of the suit and can charge everything from iPods to iPhones while the wearer soaks up some rays. So technically it’s not a solar- powered bikini, it’s a solar- powering bikini.
The bikini is also safe to wear in the ocean (provided you remove any and all electronics connected to it before you take a dip). The suit’s solar panels are moderated by a five-volt regulator that prevents any unfortunate shocks.
Schneider has also revealed plans for a pair of men’s swim trunks, called the iDrink, that can chill beer.
THE DISAPPEARING DRESS
I t’s every teen boy’s dream and every father’s worst nightmare. If clothes are a way for a person to express themselves, then Studio Roosegaarde, a design agency in the Netherlands, has created the most expressive dress possible, as it relays information about the wearer’s immediate, most intimate feelings. Dubbed INTIMACY 2.0, the dress actually turns transparent when the wearer gets, well, “excited.”
The black (or white), otherwise conservative-seeming dress is made out of leather, opaque “smart e-foils,” LED lights, and a few additional electronics. Those doodads can read the heartbeat of the
It’s significantly more costly than a Q-tip at $90, but it’s way cheaper than buying a surgical “snake”-style camera, taping it to a Q-tip, and jamming it in your ear.
THE ELECTRIC DOORMAT
W hen you think of exhausting physical tasks that clearly need some sort of mechanical assistance to make them more feasible for the average person, obviously the first thing on that list is going to be “casually wiping your feet before you go inside a building.” Well, it was for Henry J. Ostrow of Palatine, Illinois, who in 1957 applied for a patent for an electric door mat, thus electrifying something that never, ever needed to be electrified.
Ostrow’s invention featured “a plurality of brushes which are automatically actuated when a person steps on the device to remove dirt and other foreign matter from the shoes,” and used pressurized air to dislodge any remaining undesirable material. The drawings that accompany the patent make the device look not unlike a conveyor belt, which stands to reason, given that the word “conveyed” is specifically used when describing the transportation of all the bottom-of-your-shoe nastiness into a nearby waste-storage system. Sadly, although it seemed as though it had the potential to literally sweep customers off their feet, the electric door mat never took off commercially.
PERSONALIZED ACTION FIGURE MACHINE
P ARTY is a Japanese company that in 2012 unveiled a new twist on the photo booth: tiny action figures built to look exactly like you, from head to toe. Here’s how “Omote 3d Shashin Kan” works:
The client sits or stands completely still for 15 minutes while multiple high-resolution cameras take pictures of every part of the body. (PARTY recommends wearing simply textured, solid-color clothing.) The images are then scanned into a computer. A month later, PARTY sends a figure to you, in your choice of 4, 7, or 8 inch height.
The company set up a public, reservation-only exhibition to produce dolls in Tokyo in 2012, and despite a ticket price of around $500, all viewing slots were filled up within days.
SOLAR-POWERED BIKINI
Y ou would think that by now beaches would offer phone-charging and power stations much like the ones typically found in airports. Until the National Park Service and/or David Hasselhoff rectify this terrible oversight, there’s always the solar-powered bikini.
This high-tech swimwear was created by Brooklyn-based designer Andrew Schneider in 2011. Each hand-stitched bikini is made out of thin, flexible photovoltaic film strips woven together with conductive material. USB ports are attached to the top and bottom pieces of the suit and can charge everything from iPods to iPhones while the wearer soaks up some rays. So technically it’s not a solar- powered bikini, it’s a solar- powering bikini.
The bikini is also safe to wear in the ocean (provided you remove any and all electronics connected to it before you take a dip). The suit’s solar panels are moderated by a five-volt regulator that prevents any unfortunate shocks.
Schneider has also revealed plans for a pair of men’s swim trunks, called the iDrink, that can chill beer.
THE DISAPPEARING DRESS
I t’s every teen boy’s dream and every father’s worst nightmare. If clothes are a way for a person to express themselves, then Studio Roosegaarde, a design agency in the Netherlands, has created the most expressive dress possible, as it relays information about the wearer’s immediate, most intimate feelings. Dubbed INTIMACY 2.0, the dress actually turns transparent when the wearer gets, well, “excited.”
The black (or white), otherwise conservative-seeming dress is made out of leather, opaque “smart e-foils,” LED lights, and a few additional electronics. Those doodads can read the heartbeat of the
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