Speaker 1: Guess what, mango? What's that? Well? All right, so I
Speaker 1: know we've both got little inventors in our families and
Speaker 1: it's so much fun to see what they come up with.
Speaker 1: But actually read this story recently and I thought i'd
Speaker 1: share it with you. Know, have you heard of this
Speaker 1: Guy's name was Robert W. Patch. I don't think I have.
Speaker 1: You haven't heard of the patch manse Well, this was
Speaker 1: a little over fifty years ago, and Robert got this
Speaker 1: patent for a toy truck design. And the thing is,
Speaker 1: he was just six years old when he got this,
Speaker 1: and he built this toy truck using shoe boxes and
Speaker 1: bottle caps and some nails. But here's the clever thing
Speaker 1: about it. Actually he could transform it from a flatbed
Speaker 1: truck to a dump truck just by moving some of
Speaker 1: the axles. And so his dad, who happened to be
Speaker 1: a patent attorney, sees this and he realizes this is patentable.
Speaker 1: So of course Robert was actually so young that he
Speaker 1: couldn't even write his name at the time. So if
Speaker 1: you look back at the patent application, he just signed
Speaker 1: it with an X. That's pretty cute that, like, he
Speaker 1: can invent a truck but he can't sign his name.
Speaker 1: But did he ever make money off it? No, he didn't,
Speaker 1: and you know, they just looked at it is something
Speaker 1: that was more fun and fun to get the patent.
Speaker 1: But actually he did get some publicity out of it.
Speaker 1: And then you know, Marketers realized that the shoebox he'd
Speaker 1: used had been built using a CAD shoebox and so
Speaker 1: we got a free pair of kids from it. So
Speaker 1: I'm not a bad prize for this. But anyway, that's
Speaker 1: just the first of nine stories of inventions that we've
Speaker 1: got for you today. So let's dig in. Hey, their
Speaker 1: podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
Speaker 1: and as always I'm joined by my good friend Man
Speaker 1: Guesh Ticketer and sitting behind the soundproof booth surrounded by
Speaker 1: I'd say it's at least what do you think somewhere
Speaker 1: around there? It's hard to say, but it's a lot
Speaker 1: of bags of shelled peanuts. I mean, this guy, I
Speaker 1: haven't seen him this inspired by something he's been reading
Speaker 1: in a long time, but he's been reading George Washington
Speaker 1: Carver's biography. I think it's actually his second go of
Speaker 1: the biography. It's been fun to watch him just so inspired. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Now me go,
Speaker 1: I know one of your goals as a kid was
Speaker 1: to be an inventor as well, Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean I had I think four goals as a kid,
Speaker 1: and this was when I was super young. But I
Speaker 1: wanted to be an inventor, a composer, a cartoonist, and
Speaker 1: a writer. And obviously, you know, a lot of those
Speaker 1: things didn't pan out. But I used to watch doctor
Speaker 1: pretty good at most of those things. I used to
Speaker 1: watch Dr Fat on TV, who like had invented that
Speaker 1: wacky wall walker, and he'd celebrate kid inventors every week.
Speaker 1: And in first grade I came up with this idea
Speaker 1: for like a glow in the dark patch that you
Speaker 1: could attach to the zipper of a ten, so like
Speaker 1: you could find it easily at night. And I actually
Speaker 1: think that idea came out of necessity when I was
Speaker 1: camping and had to use the bathroom badly. But I
Speaker 1: would just go around inventing cute things like that all
Speaker 1: the time. I mean, that's a great idea, And the
Speaker 1: thing is, honestly, I don't think we've ever owned a
Speaker 1: tent that had a glow in the dark zipper on it.
Speaker 1: So that's there's still room for this. And you know what,
Speaker 1: it's also weird. I haven't thought about those wall walkers
Speaker 1: until you just said that. Those things were so much fun.
Speaker 1: We played with those all the time, all right. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons we wanted to do an episode
Speaker 1: on Amateur Inventors was because inventions it kind of feel
Speaker 1: like one of those truly American things, like, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody gets their fifteen seconds of fame, everybody's got a
Speaker 1: novel in them, and everybody probably has a brilliant idea
Speaker 1: for some invention, and whether or not they make money
Speaker 1: off these inventions, we thought it'd be fun to celebrate
Speaker 1: some of that, roll up your sleeves and build something
Speaker 1: in genuity. So go I kicked this off with Robert W.
Speaker 1: Patch's toy truck. And you know I have to say
Speaker 1: the full name. I can't just say Robert or Patch.
Speaker 1: I say Robert W. Patches, Old Patch, Old Patchy. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: where do you want to go from there? So I
Speaker 1: actually want to talk about a story I heard from
Speaker 1: our old pal Ethan treks and this is forever ago.
Speaker 1: But this is about Frank Dorset, who is the genius
Speaker 1: behind Ego Frozen Waffles. And he started a food company
Speaker 1: from his parents basement, which I do want to point
Speaker 1: out is a good sign note to parents about why
Speaker 1: not to kick your adult kids out of your basement
Speaker 1: because it could pan out. But Ego actually started as
Speaker 1: a mayonnaise company, which is why it was called Ego.
Speaker 1: You know, I never put that together. But the mayo
Speaker 1: spread was actually so popular that Dorset and his brothers
Speaker 1: ended up with this extra cash and they decided to
Speaker 1: use it to make a waffle batter that they could
Speaker 1: sell to like local chains. And when they realized the
Speaker 1: market was limited in the region, Dorst a breakd up
Speaker 1: this merry go round motor and he built this giant
Speaker 1: thirty foot whirling machine that you could pour batter into
Speaker 1: and it would prepare a foul in waffles for freezing
Speaker 1: in an hour. I mean, it's remarkable. Yeah. And and
Speaker 1: so the frozen waffles were originally called Froffles. I love
Speaker 1: that name so much, A great name. I honestly hope
Speaker 1: there's a documentary about Frank because he sounds like such
Speaker 1: a wonderful man like according to his obituary, and I
Speaker 1: think I saw in the Seattle Times he had no hobbies.
Speaker 1: He just invented tons of things, like he made this
Speaker 1: some squeegee for cement, and this commercial potato peeler which
Speaker 1: you could use to make potato chips, but it basically
Speaker 1: made it unnecessary to peel potatoes by hand anymore. And
Speaker 1: the rest of the time he just spent being a
Speaker 1: great husband and father. But apparently he did have this
Speaker 1: one white whale that he never conquered, like all his life.
Speaker 1: He tried to make a delicious frozen pancake, but it
Speaker 1: just never happened. Oh man, But that is a great story.
Speaker 1: A thousand waffles in an hour, just coming up with
Speaker 1: this motor idea that is really impressive. And I did
Speaker 1: not know that about the mayonnaise company. All right, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stick with that food theme and talk about
Speaker 1: the invention of one of the greatest snacks of all time. Ango.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about none other than the cheese puff. And
Speaker 1: I found this story from the Tedium newsletter. And you know,
Speaker 1: just like Alexander Fleming and penicillin, cheese puffs were really
Speaker 1: more of a discovery than an invention. So I love
Speaker 1: your idea of comparing cheese puffs and penicillan, like those
Speaker 1: things have equal way in human history. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, penicillin is more important than you realize. It's
Speaker 1: it's as important as the cheese puff, I think. But
Speaker 1: it happened that this little company in Beloit, Wisconsin, where
Speaker 1: they made animal feed, and so basically the company ran
Speaker 1: all their food through this industrial grinder to make the
Speaker 1: food softer for the cows so they could chew it
Speaker 1: more easily, and then they would be able to eke
Speaker 1: out every last bit of corn that they were using.
Speaker 1: And what came out the other end were these thin
Speaker 1: little flakes. So the grinder worked pretty well, but there
Speaker 1: were some kinks and the machine would get stuck, and
Speaker 1: so they were looking for ways to make the process
Speaker 1: a little bit smoother. So what they did was, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes the operators would moisten the corn before it went through,
Speaker 1: but as this one employee, Edward Wilson, noticed, when the
Speaker 1: moist corn hit the heat of the machine, it actually
Speaker 1: puffed up on the other side without any of the kernels. Now,
Speaker 1: since this was going to animals, most people just went
Speaker 1: back to not moistening the corn and running it on through.
Speaker 1: But Wilson decided to try something out. He took some
Speaker 1: of the puff corn home, he seasoned it, and then
Speaker 1: he tried it out to see how it tasted. And
Speaker 1: then the process he created what he called corn curls.
Speaker 1: And these were the predecessor to so many things. We've
Speaker 1: got cheese wizz, cheese doodles, cheetos. I'm just getting so
Speaker 1: hungry thinking about it. But for what it's worth, the
Speaker 1: company decided to change their name to the Adams Corporation,
Speaker 1: and they shifted to being a snack company, and they
Speaker 1: marketed their new cheese puff as quote the Aristocrat of Snacks,
Speaker 1: And I can't think of a more perfect slogan. It
Speaker 1: is so so fancy anyway, So what do you have next, Mago. Well,
Speaker 1: one person I'm grateful for is Chester Greenwood, who, like me,
Speaker 1: didn't like cold weather because his ears used to get
Speaker 1: super cold, and he didn't love wearing hats because he
Speaker 1: was allergic to the wool. Unlike me, though, he loved
Speaker 1: ice skating, so he was looking for any way to
Speaker 1: stay out playing with his friends, and he enlisted his
Speaker 1: grandmother to make him some earmuffs he had are so
Speaker 1: some fur or flannel pads onto a wire that he
Speaker 1: could slap onto his head. And while his friends initially
Speaker 1: mocked him for these ridiculous looking muffs, before long they
Speaker 1: were actually clamoring for them too. And over the years
Speaker 1: he made some improvements that eventually landed him a patent.
Speaker 1: But what's amazing is that this eventually became his family business,
Speaker 1: like within ten years, and this was in the eighteen eighties.
Speaker 1: He built a small factory of about a dozen workers
Speaker 1: and they turned out fifty earmuffs a year, and I
Speaker 1: guess it put Farmington, Maine on the map. Is the
Speaker 1: earmuff capital of the world, the ear muff capital of
Speaker 1: the world. That is unbelievable. Though, fifty thousand a year
Speaker 1: at that time, I can't imagine being able to crank
Speaker 1: that out with what technology they would have had available
Speaker 1: to them. Where do you find the market? It's pretty impressive. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, I wanted to talk for a second
Speaker 1: about Josephine Cochrane, who we've talked about before. She invented
Speaker 1: the dishwasher, and many people may have heard this story
Speaker 1: before that Cochrane was a socialite, who invented the appliance
Speaker 1: out of frustration. But actually it wasn't because she didn't
Speaker 1: like doing the dishes. I mean, the truth is she
Speaker 1: had never really been doing the dishes in the first place.
Speaker 1: She was actually so rich that she had the domestic
Speaker 1: help to do the dishwashing for her. But where her
Speaker 1: frustration came in was that, you know, the people who
Speaker 1: were washing the dishes were often so rough with the
Speaker 1: plates and saucers that they'd often end up chipped. So
Speaker 1: what she did she went out back to the shed
Speaker 1: and this is all true, and she figured out this
Speaker 1: system for washing dishes. Now what's amazing is that she
Speaker 1: came to inventing things naturally. Her dad was a civil engineer,
Speaker 1: her great granddad had all these inventions related to the steamboat,
Speaker 1: and so she came up with a dishwasher that you
Speaker 1: cranked by hand, but then you used hot water to
Speaker 1: clean all these plates carefully. So did this thing take
Speaker 1: off immediately? I mean not really in middle class households,
Speaker 1: because you needed hot water on hand, and these didn't
Speaker 1: function with electricity just yet. But she debuted her dishwasher
Speaker 1: at the Chicago World's Fair, and so it was restaurants
Speaker 1: and these commercial establishments that actually went crazy for it first.
Speaker 1: And then she eventually grew this little company into a
Speaker 1: brand you probably have heard of, and it's called Kitchen Aid.
Speaker 1: That's funny. I didn't know that, so I think Josephine
Speaker 1: and Cochrane would have actually admired my next inventor on
Speaker 1: the list, whose name is Francis Gabe. And according to
Speaker 1: her obituary in the New York Times, frances was sick
Speaker 1: of the fact that quote, house cleaning was a woman's
Speaker 1: chronic lot, so she began to dream of a house
Speaker 1: that would see to its own hygiene, tenderly, washing, rinsing,
Speaker 1: and drying itself at the touch of a button. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a great obituary the Reindeer, But basically, she built
Speaker 1: this car wash in her kitchen, and she'd hide under
Speaker 1: umbrella and then press the fun and suddenly all these
Speaker 1: sprinklers would wash down all the cabinets and counters and
Speaker 1: the floor, and then the second spray, which would miss
Speaker 1: the soapy water, would cover everything, and then a third
Speaker 1: spray would wash it down again, and finally a gigantic
Speaker 1: blow dryer would push warm water across all of the
Speaker 1: surfaces to dry everything off. The whole process took about
Speaker 1: an hour, and apparently the thing worked like a charm.
Speaker 1: Is pretty amazing. That is pretty amazing. And you know what,
Speaker 1: I think somebody stole this idea. I think I remember
Speaker 1: Tim the tool Man Taylor himself having a kitchen with
Speaker 1: pretty much this exact system. But the thing I always
Speaker 1: wondered there is the same thing I'm wondering here, and
Speaker 1: that is where did all the water actually go? So
Speaker 1: she ingeniously had designed these very slightly sloping floors like
Speaker 1: they were so gentle you couldn't tell, and then there
Speaker 1: were these greats where the water would get pushed out of.
Speaker 1: But apparently even that was ingenious because before the water
Speaker 1: was sent to the lawn or the drain or whatever,
Speaker 1: it's cycled through her doghouse where would actually give her
Speaker 1: dog a shower. My gosh, this is brilliant, Like you
Speaker 1: just want to see this whole system in action. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: I've got a slightly different fact about an invention that
Speaker 1: that might have been almost as brilliant. So I want
Speaker 1: to talk about slap bracelets. And of course we remember
Speaker 1: these from the nineties and they've made a comeback recently,
Speaker 1: as they seemed to every few years. But apparently they
Speaker 1: were the invention of a high school teacher and his
Speaker 1: name was Stuart Anders. Now, Anders was messing around in
Speaker 1: his father's shop with some steel ribbon and the idea
Speaker 1: literally slapped him on the wrist. This was back in
Speaker 1: the mid eighties, and over the years he decided to
Speaker 1: put a little bit of fabric on it. He showed
Speaker 1: it to a friend. That friend happened to be an
Speaker 1: agent for toymakers, and so they were off to the
Speaker 1: races with a product they called slap wraps. And so
Speaker 1: the New York Times wrote about this product and called
Speaker 1: it the biggest cheap novelty craze since pet Rocks. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've heard how slap bracelets were banned from
Speaker 1: so many schools and other places because they were truly
Speaker 1: slicing kids hands up. Yeah, they were pretty dangerous him.
Speaker 1: I think I'd probably cut myself a time or two
Speaker 1: with them as well. But you know, that wasn't ander
Speaker 1: slap rap product. And in fact that he and the
Speaker 1: toy company that he had been working with initially delayed
Speaker 1: the rollout of the product because they wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure these bracelets were safe for kids. You know, these
Speaker 1: slap wraps actually changed their product to be able to
Speaker 1: prevent these injuries. But when they started doing something like
Speaker 1: fifteen million dollars in sales each year, you had these
Speaker 1: knockoff toy companies that you know, they smelled opportunity, they
Speaker 1: rushed their less safe products to market, and those are
Speaker 1: actually the ones that that you know, resulted in killing
Speaker 1: the craze. I mean, it is so weird to me
Speaker 1: that you could just like put some fabric on some
Speaker 1: metal and kids just go wild for it. But I
Speaker 1: know the first time I slapped one on my wrist,
Speaker 1: I just thought it was magic. You know. Well, I
Speaker 1: know we've got two more facts to go, but why
Speaker 1: don't we take a little break first, welcome back to
Speaker 1: part time Genius who were talking conventions. All right, mego,
Speaker 1: we've each got one fact left, So what's your last
Speaker 1: one going to be? So I'm going to do mine
Speaker 1: on the band aid because I loved the story of
Speaker 1: Earl and Josephine Dixon. So Earle was a Johnson Johnson
Speaker 1: employee and he had a new bride, Josephine, who was
Speaker 1: apparently super super klutzy every time he'd come home, he'd
Speaker 1: find she'd hurt herself in some new and different way.
Speaker 1: Like the story honestly sounds like she had lived in
Speaker 1: like some sort of abusive kitchen, because like she'd burn
Speaker 1: herself on the stove where she'd like hit herself with
Speaker 1: a cabinet and end up with this cruise And it
Speaker 1: was horrible. And while Earl was super sympathetic at first,
Speaker 1: he got tired of dressing all the wounds every day
Speaker 1: after work. So he took a long roll of Johnson
Speaker 1: Johnson's surgical tape, and then he cut these squares of
Speaker 1: gauze which he spaced out evenly along the tape, and
Speaker 1: then he covered it all in this layer of crinoline
Speaker 1: so that it wouldn't stick to itself. And the whole
Speaker 1: idea was that any time just being banged yourself up,
Speaker 1: she could simply snip a bandage off the roll and
Speaker 1: place it on her new wound. So I've actually heard
Speaker 1: that part of the story before and and I thought
Speaker 1: it's really wonderful, But I was always curious, like how
Speaker 1: did band aids actually take off? And it turns out,
Speaker 1: once Johnson and Johnson found out about the product, and
Speaker 1: started making it themselves. They marketed it by sending free
Speaker 1: band aids to kids in the Boy Scouts. Like, wherever
Speaker 1: you were in the Boy Scouts, they would send you
Speaker 1: band aids for free for the first year. And with
Speaker 1: all the scrapes and bruises and cuts, you know that
Speaker 1: could now quickly be remedied and like conveniently treated. Den
Speaker 1: leaders were all about the band aids, and they spread
Speaker 1: the word to the rest of America. And that's how
Speaker 1: band aids became so popular. That is incredible and it
Speaker 1: makes all the sense in the world. But what a
Speaker 1: brilliant idea initially to do this. Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. So what's your last fact? All right, Well,
Speaker 1: I thought I could wrap up by celebrating Lillian Gilbreath.
Speaker 1: And now she's famous for a number of things. She
Speaker 1: was a psychologist and did some pioneering work and efficiency management,
Speaker 1: and then two of her twelve kids actually later wrote
Speaker 1: about this in a book that you might know called
Speaker 1: Cheaper by the Dozen. But yeah, so she was also
Speaker 1: an inventor who led this incredible life. She was the
Speaker 1: first woman to give a commencement address when she graduated
Speaker 1: from the University of California. She was the first female
Speaker 1: professor and engineering at Purdue, and by interviewing housewives and
Speaker 1: understanding their needs, she came up with a number of
Speaker 1: incredible household inventions, including I wrote some of these down
Speaker 1: the shelves on the refrigerator door that hold butter and eggs.
Speaker 1: She also invented the foot pedal that opens garbage cans,
Speaker 1: and for that I cannot thank her enough. I feel
Speaker 1: like I need to write her descendants thank you note.
Speaker 1: And then she held the patent on the electric can opener.
Speaker 1: I mean, what's funny to be about all these things
Speaker 1: is like there are things you just take for granted,
Speaker 1: Like I just always assumed that like the shells on
Speaker 1: fridge door has always existed, or like you know, trash
Speaker 1: can have had foot pedals forever. But it's remarkable that
Speaker 1: they weren't only invented by someone, but that they were
Speaker 1: invented by the same person. It's pretty pretty amazing. So
Speaker 1: I I think you have to take home with the
Speaker 1: trophy for discovering that. Well, thank you very much. This
Speaker 1: was a fun one to work on, and thanks as
Speaker 1: always to Eaves jeff Code for all of her great research.
Speaker 1: For Today's episode. Thank you guys for listening. We'll be
Speaker 1: back with a full length episode tomorrow