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Top 10 Inventions Anyone Could Have Invented

Thursday, December 4, 2014 12:59
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We’re all surrounded by thousands of objects and devices in our daily lives, both simple and complex. And there are times when we look at them and think: “Why didn’t I think of that?” This question probably pops up in our minds because we know that the inception of these brilliant or simple (or brilliantly simple) products could easily have taken place in our own minds, but didn’t. Alas, we were too late, as others had got there hands on it. But this top ten list isn’t about bringing those negative emotions to the surface again, but about that great human need to create, and to improvise.

 

10. Mousetrap

Mousetrap

To date, there are 4400 patented mouse traps out there on the market; only about 20 make any money. The first trap was invented in 1897 by James Henry Atkinson a British inventor and his prototype of the wooden snap trap with springs and wires has not changed much at all since then. In the 1980’s  the glue board traps were invented for supposed humane purposes. They were quite popular until people realized that the mice were dying slow and agonizing deaths –  usually squealing and dying from exhaustion. Just about anyone with an engineering background could have figured out how this works.

 

9. Avocado Saver

avocado saver

Do you eat sandwiches with zombie avocado slices and fear you’ve been food poisoned? Well you can make sure your ripe and fresh avocados don’t try to kill you in your sleep with the Avocado Saver. It’s meant to keep your avocados fresh, but there are so many alternatives people already have in theirkitchen. Who wants another device to place in their drawers or dishwasher? There are hundreds of  other ways you can save your avocado without having to purchase some equipment in store. 

 

8. Tupperware

Tupperware

The huge success of the Tupperware range of plastic food containers wasn’t secured by Earl Silas Tupper, the inventor. A woman named “Brownie Wise” has earned her rightful place in Tupperware history and to ignore her part would be a great injustice. Tupper became a tinker at a young age; he developed different labour-reducing devices for his family’s farm. When Tupper worked for DuPont as a chemist in the 1930s, pottery containers, glass jars and tins were the only practical storage options available to people. What distinguished Tupper from many other chemists was his firm belief that plastics were positioned to be the commercially-superior materials of the future.

He left DuPont in 1938 to focus his efforts on setting up his own business: The Tupper Plastics Company. His research was mainly in the area of using waste materials for the production of plastics. Tupper usedhis close relationship with his former employer to request for materials with which he could experiment with. In response to this request, he was given a certain amount of polyethylene slag, a tough, black plastic by-product created from oil refining. And it was from this difficult waste material that Tupper was successful in creating a hard, flexible and mouldable plastic. He then set about researching different products that he could make from his revolutionary new plastic. It is said that he thought about creating shoe-heels. But the move towards the production of plastic food containers in 1945 or 1946 was how he made his name – and his fortune.

It was the airtight seal aspect of his Tupperware that he was able to patent, which was supposedly inspired by an upside down paint tin lid. Even though there were great advantages of Tupperware, the early sales figures were…modest. Enter Brownie Wise whose wise (pun intended) sales techniques helped put Tupperware in the map. It was her idea to demonstrate the “burping” (to expel excess air to make the seal airtight) of the plastic food containers she was tasked to market and sell to potential customers at Tupperware parties. It’s safe to assume that there was no actual eructation at these parties.

 

7. Automobile cup holder

cup holder

This invention can be considered as much a step forward in automobile design as much as a step forward for personal comfort and safety. The automobile cup holder has become ubiquitous in our lives – and clearly for the better. They have even been used as feats of one-upmanship among vehiclemanufacturers (they really don’t miss an opportunity to outshine the rival, do they?).

There seems to be differences in national attitudes about the automobile cup holder. It is believed that many drivers in the U.S. are more influenced by the location, design and number of cup holders in a vehicle; they also tend to be bigger in North America. It is also believed that their European counterparts are less fussy about them.

It was actually a seventy-something-year-old from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who played an unintended role in making the use of the automobile cup holder an industry-wide practise. One day, in 1992, Stella Liebeck went to her local McDonald’s and ordered a cup of coffee. At some point in the car she was sitting in, her coffee somehow spilled onto her pelvic region (ouch). She sued the giant corporation because of her third-degree burns – and won!. You may be wondering how this very unfortunate incident led to the turning point of this invention. Well, automobile manufacturers quickly realized how easily Stella could have sued her car’s manufacturer, so they made a strategic decision to introduce a built-in cup holder in all of their future vehicles. Some have called the lawsuit excessive, while others have believed it to have been worthy. Either way, you can thank Stella for your car’s cup holder.

 

6. Cotton swabs

Cotton swabs

The cotton swab – where would our hygiene be without it? First off, it has to be said that the inventor of the cotton swab – Leo Gerstenzang – took the human race a notch higher on the hygiene ladder. They’ve been around since the 1920s. And being around for decades and decades has always been a great indicator of an invention’s success.

Some back story. After seeing his wife trying to clean their newborn infant’s ear with a toothpick, the new dad did some improvising and ended up making an early version of the cotton swab, which is also called a cotton bud or ear bud in Britain. Apparently, he had first named his invention: The Gerstenzang Infant Novelty Company’s Baby Gays. Yes, it doesn’t take much mental effort to know what people at the time must have thought, but then again, it was a very different time (after all, this was the era of so-called “booze cruises” where cruise ships would go out into international waters and cruise in circles, allowing its passengers to drink copious amounts of alcohol as prohibition made the consumption of alcohol illegal). Thankfully, the name changed to “Q-tips” later on which over time became a generic trademark.

It’s a very simple invention consisting of a small plastic stem that has cotton wrapped around both ends, usually. It was originally conceived to be used to clean the outer ears – not the ear canals! Just as in the past, cotton swab manufacturers have always insisted users to never use them to clean the very inner areas of the ears. And just like in the past, most people today will use ‘em as they want to use ‘em. However, their use has expanded into other areas over the decades (e.g. applying and removing makeup; cleaning keyboards; cleaning jewellery; taking microbiological cultures; taking DNA samples; using them in the area of arts and crafts, applying medicines, etc.).

 

 

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