Jim Murphy - Weird & Wacky Inventions

The first is for Kyran Murphy

Copyright 2011 by Jim Murphy

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O ne day in 1849, Walter Hunt began tinkering with a piece of wire. Hunt was trying to invent an improved type of rifle for the army. One of the things he needed for his rifle was a small wire clasp that could be opened and closed many times without breaking. He also wanted it to have a spring so that it would open easily. After three hours of twisting and bending the wire, Hunt created something he didn't expect. Instead of a clasp to be attached to a rifle, he invented what turned out to be one of the world's greatest little gadgetsthe safety pin.

We all know what a safety pin looks like. Very few of us, however, think of such a common, everyday item as having been invented, let alone wonder who invented it. Look around the room you're in and you'll discover hundreds of things that did not exist before someone like Walter Hunt created them. In fact, just about everything you see or use has been invented: cars, faucets, nails, many types of flowers and plants, refrigerators, televisions, stereos, pens, hamburgers, and the catsup that goes on top.

Since its founding in 1790, the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued over 4 million patents for inventions of every conceivable kind. Our history books tell us about the most famous inventors, people like Benjamin Franklin, Eli Whitney, Cyrus McCormick, Charles Goodyear, Alexander Graham Bell, George Eastman, and Thomas Edison, to name just a few. Yet a surprising number of inventions were created by people who did not spend their working day in laboratories fiddling with metal, wood, and chemicals. Many of America's inventors were carpenters and mechanics, shopkeepers, artists, teachers, factory and office workersordinary people who simply had an idea they thought would be of some benefit to the general populace.

After these people had thought out their concept as much as they could, and maybe even made a working model of it, they applied to the Patent and Trademark Office for a patent. The general procedure for getting a patent is described at the back of this book; part of the procedure is to supply a drawing of the invention.

What follows is a good-natured quiz involving the patent drawings of some of the lesser-known inventors. Each of the drawings has a clue that hints, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, at what the inventions were supposed to do. A number of possible answers accompany the drawing and help you in your guessing.

As you turn the pages, you'll be surprised to discover the many kinds of things that were thought up over the years. Some of them were truly ahead of their time, interesting concepts but too complicated or not efficient enough to operate or manufacture. A few were useful in their time but seem very old-fashioned or quaint to us today. And just about all of them are now considered rather odd, or silly, or, as the title says, weird and wacky.

But we shouldn't judge these inventions too harshly. After all, the things we consider modern now will begin to look strange as new things are invented to replace or improve on them. What is more, each one of the inventions you will see, no matter how outlandish, represents an individual's attempt to come to grips with, duplicate, and in some cases overcome the forces of nature. Each is a step, sometimes a very tiny step, toward making things a little better or faster or more long-lasting. Above all, they are a tribute to the creative spirit that will work long into the night, overcome financial and educational obstacles, and endure ridicule in order to turn a dream into a reality.