Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and How Stuff Works, and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech. And today I was feeling a little
Speaker 1: bit silly, probably because I didn't get enough sleep last night,
Speaker 1: and so to honor that silly feeling I have, I
Speaker 1: thought perhaps we would do an episode about odd inventors
Speaker 1: and inventions, the silly, the unnecessary, the wacky, sometimes just
Speaker 1: the unexpected. So not everything on this list is truly
Speaker 1: weird and bizarre. Some of them people have thought about
Speaker 1: as being odd, and in some cases they were purposefully
Speaker 1: made that way. And there are a lot of gadgets
Speaker 1: and technologies out there that you could describe as useless
Speaker 1: or counterproductive, or ineffective or just playing dumb. But I
Speaker 1: want to celebrate inventors who came up with gadgets or
Speaker 1: technologies that are, at least on first glance, just playing goofy.
Speaker 1: So in other words, I'm not out to skewer some
Speaker 1: sincere but failed effort to make a cool product. I
Speaker 1: don't want to hold something up and say, look, at
Speaker 1: what they tried to do and see how they failed.
Speaker 1: Ha ha ha. No, I really want to highlight stuff
Speaker 1: that was ingenious, perhaps in its entertainment value, if not
Speaker 1: in actual utility. So I think there's no better person
Speaker 1: to talk about when you're looking at silly inventions than
Speaker 1: Ruben Garrett Lucius Goldberg, better known as Rube Goldberg. And
Speaker 1: if you've ever heard about a Rube Goldberg device, this
Speaker 1: is the guy that that is named after. And if
Speaker 1: you haven't heard of a Rube Goldberg device, you've probably
Speaker 1: seen one in some shape or form. I'll talk about
Speaker 1: a few famous pieces of meat you that feature Rube
Speaker 1: Goldberg devices in a bit. But first, who was Rube Goldberg? Well.
Speaker 1: He was born on the fourth of July in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty three in San Francisco, California. As a kid, he
Speaker 1: loved to draw, and he showed signs of wanting to
Speaker 1: be an artist. He first started tracing pictures using thin
Speaker 1: trace paper on top of existing comics and drawings. Then
Speaker 1: he started to make his own drawings, but his father
Speaker 1: had other ideas for him. His father was a police
Speaker 1: officer and a fire commissioner in San Francisco, and he
Speaker 1: thought his young son, Ruben would make an excellent engineer.
Speaker 1: So after Reuben graduated high school, young Goldberg would enroll
Speaker 1: in the University of California at Berkeley and major in engineering.
Speaker 1: He graduated with a bachelor's degree in the field, and
Speaker 1: he went to work for the City of San Francisco
Speaker 1: as an engineer. And his day job had him designing
Speaker 1: and working on maintenance for sewer systems, and to say
Speaker 1: that he found the work unfulfilling would be an understatement.
Speaker 1: I guess he could say he thought it was a
Speaker 1: crappy job. He also was a witness to how politics
Speaker 1: works from the inside, and he saw city officials making
Speaker 1: deals with contractors in a way he found to be
Speaker 1: dishonest and corrupt, and that really rubbed him the wrong way.
Speaker 1: He did not want to work in that environment anyway.
Speaker 1: After only a few months of working as an engineer,
Speaker 1: Rube decided to make a massive career change. He applied
Speaker 1: to work for the San Francisco Chronicle as a sports
Speaker 1: writer and a cartoonist. Then he jumped ship to the
Speaker 1: San Francisco Bulletin. Again, working as a cartoonist, he would
Speaker 1: often illustrate articles that were about sports and things of
Speaker 1: that nature, and he created several long running cartoons, most
Speaker 1: of which have been largely forgotten today. He did create
Speaker 1: a comic strip called Mike and Ike, but today I'd
Speaker 1: argue that when people mentioned Mike and Ike there talking
Speaker 1: about the candy, and the candy may or may not
Speaker 1: have been named after the comic strip. The comic strip
Speaker 1: was already out of print by the time the Mike
Speaker 1: and Mike candy became a thing, so it may have
Speaker 1: just been true coincidence and not some a case where
Speaker 1: they named a candy after a comic strip. It's not
Speaker 1: likely the comic strip was super famous and beloved at
Speaker 1: that point. By seven, Goldberg was creating comics with absurd, bizarre,
Speaker 1: and sometimes very dark jokes and gags in them. Starting
Speaker 1: in nineteen fourteen, he also illustrated scenarios involving complicated contraptions
Speaker 1: designed to carry out some relatively simple task, and this
Speaker 1: would become his real claim to fame. Goldberg might start
Speaker 1: with a very simple action, such as pouring water from
Speaker 1: a water picture into a glass. Then he would concoct
Speaker 1: a series of improbable and complex actions that would lead
Speaker 1: to that conclusion. Sort of a very very complicated sequence.
Speaker 1: In a way, it's similar to elaborate Domino setups, where
Speaker 1: someone has created a really intricate design that a series
Speaker 1: of falling domino's reveals. In fact, there are typically some
Speaker 1: parallels between Rube Goldberg machines and Domino setups, and a
Speaker 1: lot of Rube Goldberg machines include Domino sequences in them.
Speaker 1: In nine, Goldberg created a character named Professor Lucifer Gorgon
Speaker 1: Zola Butts a k. This character would become the genius
Speaker 1: inventor of many of the zany designs Goldberg imagined to
Speaker 1: either accomplish a simple task or otherwise make some sort
Speaker 1: of social commentary. For example, in one fairly ghoulish illustration,
Speaker 1: Goldberg created a system to test someone to see if
Speaker 1: they had the right metal to invest in the stock
Speaker 1: market are they the right kind of person to take
Speaker 1: that gamble. The system included a pistol pointed at the
Speaker 1: back of the head of the would be investor, as
Speaker 1: well as a glass that would slowly get filled with poison,
Speaker 1: and should the person survive this experience, Professor Butts wrote,
Speaker 1: then that person would be suitable to act as an
Speaker 1: investor if they had a disregard for their own personal safety.
Speaker 1: So little social commentary there. Not all the inventions were
Speaker 1: quite so grim or packed with that kind of social commentary.
Speaker 1: Many were just plain silly, and people enjoyed the comics.
Speaker 1: Goldberg became so well known for these ideas that didn't
Speaker 1: take long for his name to become an adjective for
Speaker 1: such devices. In ninety one, the Miriam Webster Dictionary included
Speaker 1: Rube Goldberg and used as an adjective to describe any
Speaker 1: system of unnecessary complexity designed to complete and otherwise simple task.
Speaker 1: I find it pretty impressive that took less than two
Speaker 1: decades from the first invention cartoon for Goldberg's name to
Speaker 1: become officially associated with this general idea. Some people enjoyed
Speaker 1: the cartoons to the point of holding their own ridiculous
Speaker 1: complex devices to complete a simple task in real life.
Speaker 1: Physically building these things. They were bringing this philosophy into
Speaker 1: the real world, and the goal wasn't really to do
Speaker 1: whatever it was the machine did. It was to show
Speaker 1: off creative ingenuity as well as to celebrate this peculiar
Speaker 1: human desire to avoid having to do certain things. It's
Speaker 1: a bit of a cliche, but it's also true that
Speaker 1: many people would spend much more effort finding ways to
Speaker 1: avoid doing something then it would require if they just
Speaker 1: took the time to do the thing in the first place.
Speaker 1: Goodness knows, I'm guilty of this. I found creative ways
Speaker 1: to avoid having to do certain things that involved doing
Speaker 1: way more work than it would have been for me
Speaker 1: to just do the thing to begin with. Goldberg described
Speaker 1: it as quote man's capacity for exerting maximum effort to
Speaker 1: accomplish minimal results in the quote. In nine at Perdue University,
Speaker 1: to engineering fraternities called Triangle and Theta Tao would compete
Speaker 1: with one another to build actual physical machines following the
Speaker 1: Rube Goldberg esthetic as part of their Engineers Ball, which
Speaker 1: was a social event organized by those two fraternities over
Speaker 1: the course of the next few years. Until the Engineer's
Speaker 1: Ball was discontinued in nineteen fifty five, the competitions would
Speaker 1: happen annually, and the competitions were spirited, to say the least,
Speaker 1: and at one point the fraternities had to agree to
Speaker 1: a set of rules that would disqualify any team guilty
Speaker 1: of attempting to sabotage the other team. But after nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five, the competition was set aside and largely forgotten
Speaker 1: about until nineteen eighty three. That's when some members of
Speaker 1: the Theta Tao Phi chapter did some cleaning around the
Speaker 1: old frat house and they came across a rather odd trophy.
Speaker 1: After some research, they learned about the original competitions and
Speaker 1: decided that they should be revived. The first competition, sponsored
Speaker 1: by the fraternity, set the task as filling a cup
Speaker 1: with eight ounces of water. That was the end goal.
Speaker 1: You could get to that end goal, however, you liked.
Speaker 1: Once again, the competition became an annual event, and it
Speaker 1: began to attract attention beyond Perdue. University. Television personalities like
Speaker 1: David Letterman featured segments on the odd inventions, and by
Speaker 1: night a guy named Mike Barrett decide the celebration in
Speaker 1: Ridiculous and Unnecessary Inventiveness should really be a national competition.
Speaker 1: Since then, it has grown to become the biggest media
Speaker 1: event at Perdue, pulling in more media coverage than any
Speaker 1: sporting event held at the university. While the machines are
Speaker 1: supposed to be absurd and silly, they're also supposed to work.
Speaker 1: That is, ultimately they are meant to accomplish whatever the
Speaker 1: end task happens to be. This makes designing a good
Speaker 1: Rube Goldberg machine challenging. How can you create a level
Speaker 1: of complexity, perhaps one bordering on chaos, and still get
Speaker 1: the result you wanted by the end of it. It
Speaker 1: requires not just an understanding of engineering, but also physics.
Speaker 1: Many of these machines rely on careful timing that is
Speaker 1: determined by things such as the length or steepness of
Speaker 1: a ramp, the weight or size of a marble, or
Speaker 1: other physical factors. If you put a machine together without
Speaker 1: consideration for these factors, it might not work. You might
Speaker 1: find that one element isn't heavy enough or moving forcefully
Speaker 1: enough to activate the next part of the sequence. To
Speaker 1: use the Domino's analog, it would be like setting out
Speaker 1: a domino course and finding out you had spaced a
Speaker 1: couple of the dominoes too far apart from one another,
Speaker 1: so that they failed to make contact and the whole
Speaker 1: sequence just stops. Now. I have no clue how most
Speaker 1: engineers go about this, but I would probably start with
Speaker 1: whatever the end goal was and decide how I was
Speaker 1: going to achieve that very last step, and then work
Speaker 1: backward what action or event would do whatever it was
Speaker 1: I was trying to do. Then how could I make
Speaker 1: that action happen? And so on. I think of it
Speaker 1: sort of like writing a murder mystery. You might want
Speaker 1: to start with the end and then work your way
Speaker 1: back to the beginning to make it a real mystery,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just trying to make it up as
Speaker 1: you go along. You can see a lot of examples
Speaker 1: of Rube Goldberg devices in the media. Peewee's Big Adventure,
Speaker 1: the film that Tim Burton made ages ago, opens with
Speaker 1: such a device that uses everything from models of dinosaur
Speaker 1: skeletons to a large mannequin in the guise of Abraham
Speaker 1: Lincoln to cook breakfast for the main character. Likewise, the
Speaker 1: movie Back to the Future includes several devices, all triggered
Speaker 1: by a timer to do everything from start a coffee
Speaker 1: pot to open and empty a can of dog food
Speaker 1: into a bowl. So clearly Doc Brown has better things
Speaker 1: to do with his time than take care of menial tasks,
Speaker 1: you know, are things like stealing plutonium from terrorists. On
Speaker 1: one of several versions of the music video for Okay Goes,
Speaker 1: This Too Shall Pass, an incredibly impressive Rube Goldberg system
Speaker 1: is set in motion and in apparent synchronization with the music,
Speaker 1: activates numerous effects and even provides some of the musical
Speaker 1: notes for the song itself. It's one of my favorite
Speaker 1: examples of the Rube Goldberg design philosophy, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: hurt that I was already a fan of that particular band.
Speaker 1: The Guinness Book of World Records certified in twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: that an enormous Rube Goldberg machine designed to light the
Speaker 1: Christmas tree for the town of Riga in Latvia was
Speaker 1: in fact the world's largest Rube Goldberg machine. It takes
Speaker 1: about four minutes from initiating the sequence for the entire
Speaker 1: process to complete, and it's a fun watch on YouTube
Speaker 1: as well. When we come back, I'll cover other odd,
Speaker 1: silly and useless inventions, but first, let's say a quick
Speaker 1: break switching gears for a moment. I thought I'd talked
Speaker 1: about another inventor who came up with some ideas that
Speaker 1: turned out to be sort of the punchline for a
Speaker 1: lot of jokes. They were simultaneously successful from a sales
Speaker 1: standpoint and also the subject of ridicule by many. That
Speaker 1: inventor was Samuel J. Pope, Peel, father of the famous
Speaker 1: Ron Pope Peel now Ron Pope Peel, became known as
Speaker 1: the head of a company called Ronco that sold lots
Speaker 1: of kitchen gadgets, mostly for the kitchen itself, and Ron
Speaker 1: served as the host of many and infomercial coining phrases
Speaker 1: like but wait, there's more. He was a master of
Speaker 1: direct marketing, and we can thank him and his father
Speaker 1: for popularizing the suffix oh matic such as veggio madic.
Speaker 1: While Ron Popel is who a lot of folks think
Speaker 1: about when you hear the name Pope Heal, it was
Speaker 1: his dad who invented many of those weird devices in
Speaker 1: ron Co's early days, though Ron himself would go on
Speaker 1: to invent some of his own later on. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: story of the Pope Heals is one filled with an
Speaker 1: incredible amount of drama, which I think is already kind
Speaker 1: of unusual. Sam Popeal was born in New York in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen, and many of the men and his family
Speaker 1: worked as product demonstrators who would set up in various
Speaker 1: department stores to give personal demonstrations of different products that
Speaker 1: were for sale. At age seventeen, Sam was asked to
Speaker 1: fill in for one of his uncles to do that
Speaker 1: very gig and apparently didn't go so well. He apparently
Speaker 1: cut his finger badly on a vegetable slicer. But something
Speaker 1: must have made him feel like that was the right
Speaker 1: line of work for him. So as he got older,
Speaker 1: he began to come up with ideas for his own products,
Speaker 1: and he and his brother Raymond founded a company they called,
Speaker 1: appropriately enough, the Pope Peel Brothers. One of Sam Popil's
Speaker 1: first inventions was what he called the chopp O Matic,
Speaker 1: later known as the Veggio Matic. It's a manually operated
Speaker 1: food processor, and there have been many variations in the
Speaker 1: years since its introduction. The basic design had a pedestal
Speaker 1: with a round hole in the top surface of the pedestal,
Speaker 1: and in that round hole you would place the cutting
Speaker 1: blades for the vegeo maatic, so it might be a
Speaker 1: great might be a line of blades, and then positioned
Speaker 1: above this platform of blades was another surface that acted
Speaker 1: as the handle. So you would have a press essentially,
Speaker 1: and you would put the vegetable on the blades, and
Speaker 1: it would be essentially in between the blades and the
Speaker 1: top of the press. And uh or I guess you
Speaker 1: should say, the bottom side of the press, and so
Speaker 1: then you would push down on the handle side of
Speaker 1: the press and create enough pressure to push the vegetable
Speaker 1: through the blades, and thus the vegetable would be chopped
Speaker 1: or sliced or diced or whatever. It's classic, and I
Speaker 1: guess it's not really that crazy of an invention, although
Speaker 1: you could argue the amount of labor it's saved might
Speaker 1: be somewhat trivial depending upon what you were actually trying
Speaker 1: to do, so there was arguable effectiveness of this. The
Speaker 1: Popio brothers and later Ronco would produce lots of different
Speaker 1: inventions of debatable usefulness. My favorite has to be the
Speaker 1: pocket fisherman. This is a small fishing rod and reel.
Speaker 1: The base looks kind of like the handle for an
Speaker 1: appliance like a food mixer or a dustbuster vacuum cleaner,
Speaker 1: kind of has that shape to it, and it has
Speaker 1: a rod that folds down against this handle. So you
Speaker 1: unfold the rod from the base and then you have
Speaker 1: your little fishing pole. There's a compartment inside the handle
Speaker 1: on the base that could hold stuff like tackle and
Speaker 1: lures and bobbers and that kind of stuff, and yep,
Speaker 1: you can still buy these today. If you're so inclined,
Speaker 1: you could actually purchase Pocket Fisherman right now. I've seen
Speaker 1: some videos of it in action, and while it's one
Speaker 1: of those gadgets that made as seen on TV a
Speaker 1: household phrase, it actually seems to hold up pretty well.
Speaker 1: The reviews I've seen have been maybe not glowing, but
Speaker 1: not negative either. In other words, it just it works
Speaker 1: for what it is, and so if you have a
Speaker 1: desire to have a fishing rod stuffed in your backpack
Speaker 1: so it's not taking up too much space just in
Speaker 1: case you have the opportunity to fish, it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: a bad choice. In fact, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: the inventions from the Popeils probably hold up for the
Speaker 1: most part. You could argue they are unnecessary, but most
Speaker 1: of them seem to work at least as advertised. Apart
Speaker 1: from the more outlandish claims you'll typically see on infomercials
Speaker 1: about how the right product is going to transform your
Speaker 1: life forever and turn it into a Disney musical, that
Speaker 1: part still seems like it might be a bit of
Speaker 1: a reach. Ron Bobile's company, Ronko, went bankrupt in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, so he can still find the products he
Speaker 1: made famous for sale on sites like Amazon, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to end on a sad note, so I
Speaker 1: thought i'd explain why I wanted to include the Pope
Speaker 1: Pels in this section. It's because of a particular person.
Speaker 1: That person is weird Al Yankovic. Now, for those of
Speaker 1: you who are unfamiliar with weird Al, he's a comedian
Speaker 1: who writes humorous songs, and about half his songs are
Speaker 1: outright parodies of existing music. The other half our original songs,
Speaker 1: though some of them are what you might call style parodies,
Speaker 1: and that Yankovic is mimicking the sound of an established
Speaker 1: band or artist, just not picking a specific song to mimic.
Speaker 1: On his Weird Al in three D album, he has
Speaker 1: a song called Mr. Pope Peel that's done in the
Speaker 1: style of the B fifty twos. The song references some
Speaker 1: of Sam Pope Peel's memorable inventions, and that album was
Speaker 1: one of my favorites when I was a kid, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure surprises absolutely ly none of you out there,
Speaker 1: but it's why I decided to choose Mr pope Peel
Speaker 1: to be included in this particular episode. Ron Popeil Samuel's
Speaker 1: son was really the TV personality who would pave the
Speaker 1: way for other famous spokespeople like Billy Mays and Tony Little,
Speaker 1: among others. And he owed a lot to the pitchman
Speaker 1: who came before him as well, people like Crazy Eddie.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you could kind of trace the lineage of
Speaker 1: television spokespeople, and Ron Popel would be a very important
Speaker 1: part of that lineage. Now, there are a few inventions
Speaker 1: that aren't really inventions, nor are they really tech, but
Speaker 1: they tend to end up on lists about odd or
Speaker 1: useless inventions, and I want to spend a little time
Speaker 1: talking about a couple of those. One is the famous
Speaker 1: pet rock, which had a strong run for a good
Speaker 1: part of nineteen seventy five. It was the brainchild of
Speaker 1: a copy editor named Gary Doll, who, when listening to
Speaker 1: his friends complain about how high maintenance their pets were,
Speaker 1: bragged that he had the perfect pet. It was rock.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to feed it, you didn't have to
Speaker 1: walk it, you know, to clean after it. It was perfect.
Speaker 1: So Doll would then go on to sell pet rocks,
Speaker 1: and yes they were rocks, but they were packaged and
Speaker 1: what looked like a small pet carrier and more importantly,
Speaker 1: they came with a pretty decent book of instructions on
Speaker 1: how to care for the pet rock. And the book
Speaker 1: was really just a joke book that was filled with
Speaker 1: jokes and puns. So really, ultimately you were buying a
Speaker 1: book of jokes that happened to have a rock that
Speaker 1: came with it. And it was a cute idea and
Speaker 1: it was a successful one. It made Doll into a millionaire,
Speaker 1: so you can't really knock it. And yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: really tech, but hey, how about how about a USB
Speaker 1: pet rock? I think Geek sold these, and uh, it
Speaker 1: was a pet rock with a USB port, didn't do anything.
Speaker 1: You could just you can plug a USB cable into it.
Speaker 1: But then you had a rock on a USB cable
Speaker 1: and that was it. This is the joke. And just
Speaker 1: for the heck of it, I check to see if
Speaker 1: you can still buy pet rocks and I found one
Speaker 1: on Amazon that claims it was approved by Gary Doll himself,
Speaker 1: and the price on it is prepare yourself for this
Speaker 1: twenty bucks. And also it did not include the thirty
Speaker 1: two page care manual. I'd now like to introduce you
Speaker 1: to my brand new idea, the pet paper weight. Order now.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think without the Book of Jokes, it's
Speaker 1: really just a rock. Now, I never could have predicted
Speaker 1: the success of the pet rock, But do you know
Speaker 1: someone who might have predicted that success? This is my
Speaker 1: playful way to introduce a duo, that of Albert or
Speaker 1: maybe it was Alfred Harder at abe Bookman. Now I
Speaker 1: say Albert or Alfred because about half the sources I
Speaker 1: looked into on this story had it as one, any
Speaker 1: other half had it as the other. So we'll just
Speaker 1: call him al Anyway, these are the two guys largely
Speaker 1: responsible for the invention of the magic eight ball. So
Speaker 1: let's tell the story of this low tech novelty item.
Speaker 1: So Albert or Alfred again conflicting reports. There was the
Speaker 1: kid of a mother who did something pretty special for
Speaker 1: her profession. Carter's mother claimed to be clairvoyant. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: a skeptic and I do not believe in such things
Speaker 1: as clairvoyance or psychic powers, or telekinesis or anything of
Speaker 1: the sort. But never mind that Ma Carter was bringing
Speaker 1: in clients for her sessions in the nineties. One of
Speaker 1: the items she used was reportedly a container that had
Speaker 1: a slate and some chalk inside the container, and her
Speaker 1: clients would ask questions and the answers would reveal themselves
Speaker 1: on the slate. She would open up the container and
Speaker 1: the slate would have something written on it by the chalk,
Speaker 1: as if by magic. This is, by the way, a
Speaker 1: pretty popular gimmick was stage magicians who accomplished this task
Speaker 1: without the dreadful responsibility of being psychic. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: if there's a way you can do it by trickery,
Speaker 1: that indicates that any quote unquote real version of the
Speaker 1: phenomena is questionable at best. If there are ways to
Speaker 1: do it without it being from some supernatural source, chances
Speaker 1: are it was a perfectly normal source. Anyway, This gave
Speaker 1: her son Al an idea. Al wanted to build something
Speaker 1: that he could sell to folks, and his first version
Speaker 1: of the gimmick was a cylinder look a bit like
Speaker 1: a soda can or a beer can, a little narrower
Speaker 1: than what you would see with a soda can, and
Speaker 1: the two ends of the can were transparent, so the
Speaker 1: top and the bottom of the can had these transparent
Speaker 1: discs there instead of solids. Inside the cylinder was a
Speaker 1: syrupy liquid uh largely described as molasses in the reports
Speaker 1: I read, and inside were a couple of dice that
Speaker 1: had different phrases written on the face of the dice.
Speaker 1: So you would ask a yes or no question, you
Speaker 1: would give the cylinder a shake, and you would wait
Speaker 1: for one of those dice to float up to the
Speaker 1: surface and you would see your answer. And he called
Speaker 1: it the Psycho sear s Y c O S E
Speaker 1: E R. Carter brought his invention to a store owner
Speaker 1: named Max Levinson, who thought it was a pretty clever gimmick,
Speaker 1: and he contacted his own brother in law, the aforementioned
Speaker 1: Abe Bookman, who had an education in engineering. So Bookman's
Speaker 1: task was to you take Carter's invention and figure out
Speaker 1: a way that they could mass produce it in order
Speaker 1: to sell it to a wider audience. Bookman simplified the
Speaker 1: design somewhat, making only one end of the cylinder transparent
Speaker 1: so the other one was solid, and he also switched
Speaker 1: the molasses out for water with ink inside of it,
Speaker 1: and he renamed it the Psycho slate. Bookman and Carter
Speaker 1: formed a company called a Labe Crafts. A Labe was
Speaker 1: the combination of Al and Abe's first names. Carter had
Speaker 1: applied for a patent for his invention, calling it a
Speaker 1: liquid filled dice agitator, which also describes some of the
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons players I know. But he would pass
Speaker 1: away before the patent office would grant the patent in
Speaker 1: There's not much info on how al Carter passed away,
Speaker 1: though it seems like alcoholism may have played a part.
Speaker 1: The next evolution of the idea involved changing the shape
Speaker 1: of the gimmick so that you had a crystal ball
Speaker 1: surrounding the cylinder, make it more like a fortune teller
Speaker 1: type of gimmick. This got the attention of a company
Speaker 1: called Brunswick Billiards, which saw the opportunity for promotional tie in,
Speaker 1: so they had Bookman make a version of the crystal
Speaker 1: ball fortune telling device that was, and they had him
Speaker 1: painted like an eight ball and billiards and it did
Speaker 1: very well, so well that once this promotional contract was over,
Speaker 1: Bookman started making these magic eight balls on his own.
Speaker 1: He found that marketing it as a toy got him
Speaker 1: the most success, Like if you called it a toy
Speaker 1: rather than some sort of psychic aid, you could do
Speaker 1: really well. In nine Bookman sold the Labe Crafts Company
Speaker 1: to another company called the Ideal Toy Company. That's the
Speaker 1: same company that would later produce the Rubik's Cube. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Mattel would end up with the i he for the
Speaker 1: Magic eight ball, so they didn't end up with all
Speaker 1: the stuff from Ideal Toy Company, but they do own
Speaker 1: the rights to the Magic eight ball, a modern eight ball.
Speaker 1: Magic eight ball that is, has a twenty sided die
Speaker 1: in it, which you could also call an icosahedron. That
Speaker 1: means there are twenty different phrases inside of Magic Eateball.
Speaker 1: Ten of the phrases are versions of yes or in
Speaker 1: the affirmative, five are versions of no, and five are
Speaker 1: versions of beats me or just beat a kid. You're
Speaker 1: bothering me, so like ask again later. Essentially, there are
Speaker 1: lots of variations of the Magic eate ball. For instance,
Speaker 1: I have a licensed Simpson's version of one at home.
Speaker 1: For example, we have a few more weird, odd and
Speaker 1: useless inventions to cover, but first let's take another quick break.
Speaker 1: I can't let this episode go by without an entry
Speaker 1: from Japan. Invention and creativity in Japan is celebrated on
Speaker 1: a grand scale, and there are countless technological entries that
Speaker 1: we could focus on. In this episode, but one of
Speaker 1: my favorites was a promotional gadget created by a juice
Speaker 1: company called Kagome. The invention was Tomaton, a robot that
Speaker 1: would ride piggyback on a human and feed that human
Speaker 1: a steady supply of tomatoes. You never knew you needed
Speaker 1: a robot to do that, did you, So stick with
Speaker 1: me on this Tomaton looks like a very odd child
Speaker 1: that has a tomato for a head. It's designed to
Speaker 1: rest on the shoulders of the person wearing it. On
Speaker 1: the back of the robot is a clear container holding
Speaker 1: a series of tomatoes, and it has a switch on
Speaker 1: the bottom of one foot. When you flick that switch,
Speaker 1: it puts the robot in action, so it's arms reach
Speaker 1: back over its head, rotating all the way back behind
Speaker 1: to the base of that clear container on the robot's back,
Speaker 1: and then it picks up the tomato that's at the
Speaker 1: base of that container, and then lifts the tomato back
Speaker 1: over the back of the robot, over the robot's head,
Speaker 1: over the wearer's head, and then positions it in front
Speaker 1: of the wearer's mouth, so then you can just lean
Speaker 1: forward and start chewing on a nice juicy tomato. Finally,
Speaker 1: you don't have to spend all that time feeding yourself
Speaker 1: tomatoes on your daily jog. You can have a robot
Speaker 1: do it for you. And yes, I realized hearing about
Speaker 1: this is bizarre, but trust me, guys, you need to
Speaker 1: find the video of this thing, tomaton. It will change
Speaker 1: your life. Just go to YouTube and look for robot
Speaker 1: tomatoes jogging and that'll be enough for you to be
Speaker 1: able to see this thing. Um. Obviously, this was a
Speaker 1: promotional gimmick. It wasn't meant to be like a actual
Speaker 1: practical product that everyone would go out and buy. It
Speaker 1: was meant to get attention and generate conversation, and it worked.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about it now. And some inventions didn't start
Speaker 1: out with the intent to be really useless or just
Speaker 1: to grab attention. They might have had an intended use
Speaker 1: that you know, just didn't work out. Such is the
Speaker 1: topic of our next tail, which begins in World War Two.
Speaker 1: The United States government's War Production Board was searching for
Speaker 1: ways to meet the demands of a modern military at war,
Speaker 1: and that included getting hold of basic production materials as
Speaker 1: quickly and cheaply as possible. One holdout was rubber, so
Speaker 1: rubber can be found in nature. You probably heard about
Speaker 1: rubber trees. They are in parts of Southeast Asia in abundance.
Speaker 1: So rubber trees produce this elastic substance, typically in a
Speaker 1: form of latex, and it comes from tree sap. Some
Speaker 1: tree SAPs have more of this elastic material in them
Speaker 1: than others, particularly trees that are in the Haya and
Speaker 1: Ficus genera. You gather this stuff by making an incision
Speaker 1: in such a plant, and then you place a cup
Speaker 1: below that incision, and sap slowly fills the cup, and
Speaker 1: then you have to take that sap and refine it
Speaker 1: to get usable rubber. And rubber is useful in all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff. It's resilient, it's flexible, it's stretchable, it's waterproof.
Speaker 1: But the collection and processing of natural rubber is inefficient
Speaker 1: when you need to make a lot of rubber for
Speaker 1: a lot of military gear during wartime, stuff like tires
Speaker 1: and boots and tons of other stuff. Plus, the Japanese
Speaker 1: military had either outright attacked or was in position to
Speaker 1: attack many rubber producing regions, which meant the supply chain
Speaker 1: was interrupted. Well. Since the nineteenth century, engineers had been
Speaker 1: experimenting with ways to make synthetic rubber with varying degrees
Speaker 1: of success, but even the successful attempts were still fairly
Speaker 1: inefficient and slow, plus at least some of the ingredients
Speaker 1: in most of the existing approaches were equally hard to
Speaker 1: get hold of, particularly in wartime. So the War Production
Speaker 1: Board tasked an engineer named James Wright to come up
Speaker 1: with an alternative to the synthetic rubber of the day,
Speaker 1: and Right got to work. His lab was set up
Speaker 1: in New Haven, Connecticut as part of General Electric In
Speaker 1: One of Right's experiments could combine boric acid and silicone oil.
Speaker 1: Boric acid is a kind of wonder material. It can
Speaker 1: be used in stuff like flame retardants, antiseptic insecticide, tons
Speaker 1: of stuff. Silicone oils are used in stuff like hydraulic
Speaker 1: systems or as an industrial lubricant. Combined, they make a
Speaker 1: substance that consists of long chain polymers. These different things
Speaker 1: can come together. Sometimes they can be in liquid form
Speaker 1: and they form a solid. It has many remarkable properties.
Speaker 1: You can shape it. You can bounce it against a
Speaker 1: hard surface. You can stretch it. If you strike it
Speaker 1: hard enough, it will actually shatter instead of bounce. You
Speaker 1: can actually leave it out forever and it won't rot
Speaker 1: or have mold form on it. It could do so
Speaker 1: many amazing things, but one thing it couldn't do was
Speaker 1: stand in for rubber, so the military had no real
Speaker 1: use for it. In fact, for a while there was
Speaker 1: no use at all for rights invention, but Right decided
Speaker 1: to market it as a consumer product. He called it
Speaker 1: nutty putty when he started selling it in the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: but when a marketing consultant named Peter Hodgson brought the
Speaker 1: rights to nutty putty, he renamed it silly putty, and
Speaker 1: he introduced it around Easter, which might be why the
Speaker 1: stuff found its way into plastic eggs, which became the
Speaker 1: classic packaging for the material. Now, according to most histories,
Speaker 1: in the early days, the focus was to try and
Speaker 1: sell silly putty as a practical putty. Practical to what purpose,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it found its way into the
Speaker 1: market as a toy. It didn't immediately succeed even in
Speaker 1: that context, but a New Yorker article mentioned silly putty
Speaker 1: and that got things moving pretty quickly for the stuff.
Speaker 1: Now that being said, people would come up with a
Speaker 1: few practical uses for silly putty for one thing. It
Speaker 1: can be used to remove lent from clothing for another.
Speaker 1: Astronauts apparently took the stuff with them up into space
Speaker 1: so that they could stick silly putty to walls of
Speaker 1: the spacecraft and then hold various tools in place in microgravity.
Speaker 1: So you're working with a tool, you put it, push
Speaker 1: it against the silly putty that's on the wall, and
Speaker 1: it will stay there instead of just floating off. It
Speaker 1: makes sense. You don't want your thing, a jig, to
Speaker 1: go floating off a mid job. But it's not exactly
Speaker 1: the practical use case that we can all identify with
Speaker 1: down here on Earth. It's rare that we need to
Speaker 1: make such considerations. Now. One other person I should mention
Speaker 1: in this episode is someone dedicated to coming up with
Speaker 1: ridiculous inventions that solve precisely zero problems, and this is
Speaker 1: all on purpose. His name is Matt Benedetto, and I
Speaker 1: have never met Matt Benedetto. I do not know Matt Benedetto,
Speaker 1: but I admire him and his ingenuity. He has the
Speaker 1: Instagram account Unnecessary Inventions, and I think he's kind of brilliant.
Speaker 1: His inventions range from the chuckle inducing silly like gloves
Speaker 1: that mimic crocs sandals to potentially disastrous such as his
Speaker 1: Right Round Cone device, which is an ice cream cone
Speaker 1: holding drill bit that you would put on the end
Speaker 1: of a power drill. It's got a place where you
Speaker 1: would then slot in an ice cream cone. That way
Speaker 1: you can get perfect coverage. When you're licking the ice
Speaker 1: cream cone, you just pull the trigger on your power drill.
Speaker 1: It'll spin the cone as you lick the ice cream.
Speaker 1: As you can imagine, this would create disastrous but potentially
Speaker 1: hilarious results. Other inventions include a pizza Fannie pack so
Speaker 1: that you can have slices of pizza at the ready
Speaker 1: you wear them on a belt, or the text Bumper
Speaker 1: t x T bumper, which is a headband with a
Speaker 1: bumper built into the headband so that you can look
Speaker 1: on your phone while you're walking around and not worry
Speaker 1: about bumping into stuff like street signs and telephone poles
Speaker 1: and trees and other stuff. I could definitely use one
Speaker 1: of those. Or the sweat gutters, another headpiece you would
Speaker 1: wear that collects the sweat dripping down from your head
Speaker 1: and funnels it into gutters, complete with down spouts so
Speaker 1: that the sweat doesn't get in your face. How thoughtful.
Speaker 1: These are all jokes, obviously, and they are pretty amused ing. Also,
Speaker 1: there aren't really that far off from some of the
Speaker 1: stuff we've seen on television or in stores, whether those
Speaker 1: stores were selling stuff as novelties or genuine products. So
Speaker 1: I recommend you take a look at the Unnecessary Inventions
Speaker 1: Instagram account to see his work, because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. I actually saw one of his videos up
Speaker 1: on Facebook the day that I'm recording this podcast, probably
Speaker 1: because the Facebook algorithm is super creepy and pays attention
Speaker 1: to what I'm browsing so they can serve up related
Speaker 1: content on my feed. But that's a topic from a
Speaker 1: different show. Anyway. I once did an episode about a
Speaker 1: guy named Marvin Minski. He's an artificial intelligence pioneer, or was,
Speaker 1: I should say he passed away in two thousand and sixteen. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's he was an artificial intelligence pioneer. He was also
Speaker 1: a cognitive scientist. Minsky helped establish the AI laboratory at
Speaker 1: m I T. He created the first head mounted display
Speaker 1: back in nineteen sixty three. His work lead to the
Speaker 1: development of sophisticated artificial neural networks. He made numerous contributions
Speaker 1: to science and technology, and he also made a truly
Speaker 1: useless machine on purpose. He spent some time at Bell
Speaker 1: Labs along with Claude Shannon, another important figure in the
Speaker 1: world of technology. I've done an episode about Shannon as well,
Speaker 1: and he amused himself by inventing all sorts of different gadgets,
Speaker 1: and one of those was the Useless machine. And it's
Speaker 1: pretty simple in concept. The machine looks like a box.
Speaker 1: The original was about the size of a cigar box.
Speaker 1: The top of the box has a trap door or hatch,
Speaker 1: and a single toggle switch. Turning the switch on activates
Speaker 1: the machine. The hatch pops open, a small mechanical arm
Speaker 1: pops out, hits the switch to the off position, then
Speaker 1: retracts back inside the box, which then shuts. So in
Speaker 1: other word, it's a machine that only turns itself off.
Speaker 1: That's all it does. But it's incredibly amusing to see.
Speaker 1: I had a commercial version of this gadget once upon
Speaker 1: a time, and it certainly was an amusing piece of technology,
Speaker 1: and it also got me thinking about how it worked.
Speaker 1: In another reality, perhaps I would have pursued that feeling
Speaker 1: of curiosity I had, and maybe I would have ended
Speaker 1: up an engineer. The gadget has inspired lots of people
Speaker 1: to make similar devices, many of which you can find
Speaker 1: on YouTube. Some of them have different behaviors set up
Speaker 1: as a sequence so that the box appears to behave
Speaker 1: in a way that implies it is growing frustrated or
Speaker 1: exasperated with the user's efforts to flip the switch, so
Speaker 1: it continues to turn itself off, but it does so
Speaker 1: in different ways as the sequence continues. One of my
Speaker 1: favorites has a sequence that's perhaps twenty different behaviors long
Speaker 1: until you get to the twentieth one, where flipping the
Speaker 1: switch makes the hatch pop up, and then a little
Speaker 1: white flag comes out, indicating the machine has given up
Speaker 1: in the face of the user's persistence, and then the
Speaker 1: sequence starts over again. Minsky has had an incredible impact
Speaker 1: on technology in general, and it would be easy to
Speaker 1: dismiss this particular device as just a whimsical exercise, but
Speaker 1: I maintain it also gets people interested in tinkering and engineering,
Speaker 1: thus playing a very important role of its own. So
Speaker 1: arguably the useless machine isn't so useless after all. I
Speaker 1: think there's a real place for silly inventions. In some
Speaker 1: cases they may be practical, though in very narrow scenarios.
Speaker 1: At times they might serve to inspire others, either to
Speaker 1: use ingenuity and creativity to build something whimsical, or to
Speaker 1: investigate how stuff works and to become more mechanically knowledgeable.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they might just make us laugh, which I'd argue
Speaker 1: is an incredibly valuable service all in its own. This
Speaker 1: is just a small sample of some of the ridiculous
Speaker 1: things that have been made in the past, and there
Speaker 1: are obviously countless others that have come out. The ones
Speaker 1: I focused on were from the modern age, but there
Speaker 1: are also plenty of ridiculous inventions throughout all of history,
Speaker 1: some of which were supposed to do something actionable and
Speaker 1: useful but either failed to do that, or maybe they
Speaker 1: were never really made to do it, but we're sold
Speaker 1: as if they were a solution. In other words, in
Speaker 1: other words, they were a con. These cases that I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, they're not cons. They weren't created that would
Speaker 1: by somebody who knew it didn't work but was selling
Speaker 1: it as if it did work. So that's something I
Speaker 1: could do a full episode on cons and I've talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about some in the past, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to kind of focus more on the fun
Speaker 1: elements then not so much on the let's trick people elements.
Speaker 1: Do you guys have any favorite, weird, odd, or completely
Speaker 1: useless inventions that tickle your funny bone. I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear about them. You can send me a message. The
Speaker 1: email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can pop on over to our website that's
Speaker 1: tech stuff podcast dot com. There you'll find an archive
Speaker 1: of all of our past episodes, as well as the
Speaker 1: links to where we are on social media, and you'll
Speaker 1: also find a link to our online store, where every
Speaker 1: purchase you make goes to help the show and we
Speaker 1: greatly appreciate it, and I will talk to you again
Speaker 1: and really soon. Text Stuff is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.