In the late nineteenth century, Emile Kinst decided that the game of baseball was too easy, so to make it more challenging he invented a curved bat which came to be known as the "banana bat". Obviously his invention never caught on. But Kinst made several hundred of these bats, and the few that are still around are quite valuable. The one shown below sold for $2880.
Bats have been the subject of brain cogitations by ambitious inventors. Some years ago the players became familiar with what was called the flat bat. This was never patented, but it showed the inventive genius of some player. This bat was made by shaving one of the round bats with a knife until a part of the bat near the end was flat. The object of this was to give the player a chance to bunt the ball by catching it a short clip...
There was another bat invented, however, and the man who originated it had such faith in his idea that he had it patented in 1890. This bat had a curve in it and was something like a lacrosse stick. According to the theory of the inventor, Emile Kinst, when the ball was struck by a certain portion of the bat, in addition to the regular flight produced by the blow the ball would receive a rotary motion more or less violent. The result was supposed to be a ball not only difficult to handle by the fielder if it were to come straight at him, but also hard to hold if it were a fly and he got under it, because of the spinning produced by the bat.
It was also designed to produce the effect of a bunt, but in a better way, for the inventor claimed his bat would cause the ball to land near the batter and stay there under certain conditions. With these results Mr. Kinst claimed that it would make the game more difficult to play, and therefore more interesting and exciting. But his hopes were not realized, for the bat never got the official sanction of the league.
The pyrophone or "flame organ" is a musical instrument "in which musical sounds are produced by the vibration of flames of hydrogen gas with glass or other tubes." It was invented in 1871 by Frederic Kastner, who was only nineteen at the time.
One of these would look way cooler than a piano in the living room.
To operate the assembly, the operator places the inlet tube with its valve open adjacent his anal region from which a colonic gas is discharged. The piston is then withdrawn to a degree producing a negative pressure to inhale the gas into the combustion chamber to intermix with the air therein to create a combustible mixture. The ignitor is then activated to explode the mixture in the chamber and fire the missile into space.
Zanakis argued that his toy wasn't just amusing but also offered safety benefits, because using it was safer than lighting your farts on fire:
A recreational activity practiced by some individuals is ignition of one's own flatus. This is performed by using a lit match or candle, or a cigarette lighter. So widespread is this activity that there are web sites on the Internet devoted exclusively to explaining proper lighting techniques.
A major drawback of this popular practice is that it usually involves the hazardous coupling of fire, combustible gases and inebriated participants. Reports of serious burns to body parts are not uncommon, this being especially true when the participants remove their clothing...
In view of the foregoing, the main object of this invention is to provide a safe toy which exploits the combustible properties of flatus to fire a toy missile into space.
Accelerators have inspired a number of weird inventions. For example, a few years ago we posted about the "Deaccelerator" which was a device that aimed to prevent speeding by making it harder to depress the pedal in your car once you reached a pre-set speed (usually 50 mph).
We've also posted about an effort to replace the accelerator with a pedal. The faster the driver pedaled, the faster the car would go. This was designed to give drivers some exercise as they commuted to work.
And yet another odd accelerator invention is the whistling accelerator. The idea is that if the accelerator is depressed too rapidly it will produce an annoying whistle. This will remind the driver not to accelerate too quickly, thereby saving gas.
Another whistling accelerator was patented in 2012. Its design was more sophisticated, but it was overall the same idea — accelerate too quickly and the thing starts whistling. The patentees described it as a "vehicle fuel efficiency monitor and signalling device".
Personally, I'm content to drive without any bells or whistles attached to the accelerator.
In 2005, John Paul Castro of Santa Monica, CA was granted a patent (No. 6,840,665) for what he called the "Balance Watch". From his patent:
A balance watch, a combination of two watches, one measuring hours, the other measuring minutes and/or seconds. Each watch is worn on a separate wrist simultaneously.
Based on the quality of the artwork in his patent, it's apparent he chose not to splurge and hire a professional illustrator.
As far as I know, the balance watch never made it to market. But it would seem easy enough to make your own. Get two identical watches. Remove the minute hand from one, and the hour hand from the other. Then wear them simultaneously on opposite wrists.
We've previously posted about "cheese candy", which was the invention of Wisconsin lumberman Stuart Stebbings. Another of his inventions was cheese-filtered cigarettes. He was, apparently, a man driven to find new uses for cheese.
Lab tests demonstrated that a cheese filter could remove 90 percent of the tar in cigarettes. A hard cheese worked best, such as Parmesan, Romano, or Swiss. Although an aged cheddar could also be used. Or even a blend of cheeses.
In 1966, Stebbings was granted Patent No. 3,234,948. But as far as I know, his cheese-filtered cigarettes never made it to market.
Alexander Barash of Illinois was recently granted a patent for an "apparatus for opening and holding eyelids open" (Patent No. 10842477).
The apparatus includes a supporting platform having a Y-type shape and including an upper beam configured for extending between a nose bridge and a forehead of the patient and for positioning on the forehead, a left leg and a right leg coupled to the upper beam, and configured for straddling a nose bridge of the patient and for positioning on patient's left and right cheeks, and a cross-arm mounted on the upper beam of the supporting platform. The apparatus also includes an opening assembly mounted on the cross-arm and configured for pulling an upper eyelid up for exposing an eye and retaining the eye of the patient in the open position.
I guess that A Clockwork Orange didn't count as prior art.
Madeline Robertson was recently granted a patent for a pillow with a foam hand sewn onto it. She explains that the hand (or 'tactile object,' as she refers to it) "provides tactile sensory feedback to the user designed to comfort the user."
Ida Helen Jarvis came up with the idea of making pictures out of feathers. She would travel around the world, visiting zoos and aviaries to add to her feather collection. Then she would arrange the feathers to form pictures of landscapes, gluing or stitching the feathers onto a cardboard mat.
She was so taken with this idea that she decided to patent it (Patent No. 1,395,575, 1921). Included in her patent was the idea of using down to represent foam in a stream of water.
Her feather paintings must have been quite colorful. But unfortunately the only image of one I can find is the black-and-white drawing included with her patent.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.