Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Weird Inventions

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  THE SELF-CLEANING HOUSE

  By 1952 a 37-year-old designer and professional builder named Frances Gabe, of Newberg, Oregon, had had enough of the “thankless, unending, and nerve-twangling bore” of housework. So she designed and built a house that cleaned itself.

  The house is built of cinder blocks to avoid termites and other wood-burrowing insects, and each room is fitted with a ceiling-mounted cleaning, drying, heating, and cooling device. The interior walls, floors, and ceilings are coated with resin to make them waterproof. The furniture is made entirely from waterproof composites. There are no carpets. The beds are covered automatically with waterproof material that rolls out from the foot of each bed. Easily damaged objects are protected under glass.

  At the push of a few buttons, soapy water jets out from the ceiling to power-wash the rooms like an automatic car wash. The same jets then rinse off the soap, and then a huge built-in blower dries everything. The floors are sloped slightly at the corners so that excess water can run into a drain. The sink, shower, toilet, and tub clean themselves, too. So do the bookshelves and fireplace. The clothes closet serves as a washer and dryer, and the kitchen cabinets are dishwashers.

  Gabe’s been living in her patented house ever since—she’s nearly 100 now, so maybe not doing all that housework has been good for her health.

  VIDEO GAMES, WITH SMELLS

  For the better part of a century, Hollywood has tried and failed to win, in addition to the hearts and minds of film patrons, their nostrils, repeatedly trying to introduce smell into the movie-going experience. For example: Smell-O-Vision, Odorama, and Aroma-Scope.

  Either the folks at Scent Sciences and Sensory Acumen haven’t read up on these past novelties/debacles in which smells were piped into movie theaters, or they must feel like they really know the noses of video-game players, because both companies have introduced systems designed to deliver game-appropriate odors in hopes of further immersing participants in whatever virtual reality they may be experiencing. Scent Sciences promises, “When synched with the action, scent-enabled media directs the release of ScentScape scents, providing background scents such as pine forest or ocean and from more scene related scents such as flowers and smoke to games or entertainment media.” Indeed, in the description of the awesomely named GameSkunk, Sensory Acumen giddily warns potential buyers, “Just wait; you will be catapulted into a whole new way of game play.”

  CRIMINAL TRUTH EXTRACTOR

  Fear is a great way to get people to let their guard down and tell you things they might not tell you when they have use of all their faculties and self-control. Also, what’s the scariest thing in the world? According to this invention from the 1930s, a skeleton ghost.

  The Criminal Truth Extractor was designed for police to use to get suspects under interrogation to admit to the crimes for which they were being questioned. Here’s how it worked: The suspect sat in a chair in a small room. An officer in another room asked questions while viewing the suspect through a small window. (The whole thing would be recorded, too.) Also, the wall between the two rooms merely looked like a regular wall—however—it was extra thin, and when it looked like no good information was being given up, the interrogator could fire up the Truth Extractor—the lights went out and the thin wall lit up with he image of a ghostly skeleton with rapidly blinking eyes. The criminal gets scared, then confesses everything, so it went.

  FLESH BRUSHING APPARATUS

  Sure, it’s important to flesh-brush everyday, but it’s just so tedious and time-consuming. What? You don’t flesh-brush? Well, it’s no longer the 1880s, when the hottest hygiene fad going for the upper classes was using a soft brush to carefully scrub the body from head to toe and everywhere in between. It was so popular that in 1882 inventors Mary Stetson and William Bedell patented a mechanical Flesh Brushing Apparatus.

  Saving the filthy filthy rich (or at least their servants) from having to scrub their bodies clean by hand, the Flesh Brushing Apparatus was a large, coffin-like tube that covered the body from the neck down and was lined with a dense forest of bristles made from “sea roots,” whatever those are. A person simply climbed in, fully nude, and cranked a handle that was nestled amidst the thousands of brush fibers. This rotated the bristles around the body, which, according to the patent “effected a great saving of time and of exertion.”

  STAMP MOISTENER

  In the dark days before self-adhesive stamps, people actually had to lick their own postage before affixing it to an envelope. It was positively barbaric; not only was it time-consuming and a waste of precious saliva, it tasted nasty too. We’d rather brush our teeth and drink orange juice right after. And don’t even get us started on licking envelopes, what with the ever-present risk of debilitating paper cuts.

  Thankfully, a creative fellow named Donald Poynter sought to deliver us from our long national nightmare with an invention cleverly described as a “device for moistening the adhesive coating on stamps and envelopes.” Poynter’s device is shaped like a box of tissues and has a plunger on top. When the plunger is depressed, a moistening arm shaped like human tongue moves up from a reservoir of water and sticks out of the box through an opening designed to look like a pair of lips. No explanation is provided for how this is more efficient than just using a damp sponge, or why someone would want to have such a creepy-looking thing on their desk.

  THE VAPORTINI

  This product, introduced in 2013, looks like a glass orb with a straw sticking out of it—not unlike a crack pipe. But it’s used to ingest another drug: alcohol. The Vaportini vaporizes alcoholic beverages so that users can get wasted just by breathing. The Vaportini works by way of a tealight that heats up your tipple of choice (the manufacturer recommends liquor of at least 70 proof, such as absinthe), causing it to evaporate into a fine mist that can be inhaled through a straw. All that pesky sipping, tasting, and savoring are over. For just $35, you can bypass your buzzkill of a digestive tract and absorb alcohol straight into your bloodstream.

  The makers of the Vaportini claim that vaporizing alcohol removes all calories and carbohydrates, so you’ll never have to worry about feeling full or gaining weight. You can just keep inhaling and inhaling to your heart’s content, until your heart no longer works because you have died from alcohol poisoning.

  TV HAT

  Watching the two-minute commercial for TV Hat—not The TV Hat, mind you, just “TV Hat”—you start to feel bad for the folks who invented it. They obviously thought it was a million-dollar idea—a wearable shield that lets you watch portable video wherever you go—but failed to take into account their creation’s fatal flaw: It looks darn goofy.

  TV Hat is the quintessential late-night infomercial impulse buy, a product that seems like a good idea to customers in an altered state of mind at 2:00 a.m. The design is simply a ballcap with a flap of black fabric sewn along its freakishly long brim, forming a sort of rectangular tent that covers the user’s face. Slip a smartphone or iPod into the elastic pocket at the far end, put in earbuds, and you’re ready to watch video in complete privacy, with no glare, while keeping your hands free…so long as you don’t mind looking like the Elephant Man wearing a World War I gas mask. It’s like being in a private movie theater, where you cannot see or hear the inevitable mocking passers-by; TV Hat provides both a means to hide your face, and a reason to want to do so.

  SMITTENS

  Valentine’s Day falls in February, of course. The problem: That’s right in the middle of winter. Winter is cold in a great deal of the civilized world, and right around Valentine’s Day, people are left with a choice: hold hands with their sweetie, or wear mittens. Of course, you could wear mittens while you hold hands, but it’s almost impossible to get two hands covered in bulky fabric to stay locked together.

  Clothing designer Wendy Feller came up with a whimsical idea to allow lovers to hold hands in the cold: Smittens (smitten + mittens = smittens). It’s basically a pair of mittens sewn to each other to make one large mitten with two wrist
cuffs and one large pocket. Each lover puts their hand in their side of the Smitten, and they can hold hands inside, protected from the cold. Smittens are made of warm polar fleece, and they have been a huge hit in novelty catalogs.

  They come in black, blue, or red, and it’s no accident that a Smitten looks just like a Valentine heart.

  POLAR BEAR HATES SNORING

  Snoring and sleep apnea cost thousands of Americans millions of precious zzz’s every single night. A multitude of devices are available to aid the sleepless, but none of them is as innovative, or as strange, as the Jukusui-kun pillow.

  This bizarre robotic pillow, which debuted at the 2011 International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, could save your marriage. Users tuck themselves under a sheet lined with sensors that are attached to a large pillow shaped like a polar bear. When they start snoring or experience difficulty breathing, microphones in the bear trigger a robotic paw that tickles their forehead. This will, supposedly, encourage users to roll over and start breathing more normally without waking up.

  As if all of this weren’t cute (and weird) enough, the Jukusui-kun comes with a wireless monitor embedded in the tummy of an adorable teddy bear that attaches to the user’s hand. It tracks blood-oxygen levels and can also activate the paw. While it sounds completely ridiculous, one of these things could help untold numbers of people get a good night’s rest.

  WILD WEST MOUSETRAP

  The Old West was a dangerous place where everyday situations could suddenly take a turn for the worse. A game of cards may turn sour, a bank’s customer might stick up the place, or someone might make an unneighborly visit to your land claim. No surprise, then, that it was the heyday of the Colt Single Action Army Revolver, the Frontier Six-Shooter, and other revolvers known by such specific nicknames as “the Civilian,” “the Sheriff’s Model,” and “the Store-keeper.” Less known: “the Rodent Controller.”

  In 1882, the same year that Robert Ford shot Jesse James, a wily gunsmith patented the Wild West Mouse Trap. Imagine a standard, spring-loaded mousetrap, only with a gun attached. It consisted of a wooden stand that held a trusty six-shooter at a downward angle, locked and loaded, pointed at a metal plate where bait would be placed. A metal arm ran from the front of the contraption to the trigger of the gun so that any varmints that tried to make off with the vittles would trip the switch. Rodents that weren’t quick enough on the draw would be sent on to meet their maker. Like most mousetraps, this trap could only fire once before needing to be re-cocked and re-loaded.

  There is no telling why this invention didn’t catch on, although maybe it was because the idea of leaving cocked and loaded gun around might have been a bit too wild, even for 1882.

  FUTURISTIC JAPANESE TOILETS

  There’s a good chance that you’re reading this book while sitting on a toilet. A boring, uninspired, regular ol’ toilet that, at best, is one of the newer “low-flow” models. But if you were reading this book in Japan, there’s a good chance that you’d be doing your business on a more cutting-edge commode. Why Japan? It’s a culture that loves both creative sanitation (sophisticated drainage systems were in place in the 8th century) and advanced technology.

  While perfunctory squat toilets can still be found in public parks, much more sophisticated ones are commonplace in homes and offices across Japan. Typically referred to as washlets, these toilets offer a variety of nifty bells and whistles that are downright futuristic by American standards. The first high-tech toilets debuted in Japan in the early ’80s and, after initial public skepticism, they soared in popularity.

  Washlets often include features that are operated by video-game style controllers mounted on side panels. Most common among them is a bidet function that offers a wipe-free experience. Users can set the water temperature and control the pressure and direction of the stream. Other features include: heated seats, retractable cleaning wands, water massagers, air dryers, and, our favorite, automatic deodorizers. The seats on many washlets are automated and can be opened or closed with the push of a button or via an electronic motion detector.

  Toto is Japan’s best-known toilet manufacturer, and the company’s “Washlet Zoe” earned the title “World’s Most Sophisticated Toilet” in the 1997 edition of Guinness World Records. The Toto Neorest snagged another Guinness title in 2011 for “Most Functions in a Toilet.” How many functions? Ten: automatic lift of seat and lid, auto rinse, energy saving, deodorant, a seat sensor, a heated seat, auto cleaning, washer for the user, air dryer for the user, and remote control.

  In 2002 Matsushita created a toilet seat that can take a digital measurement of a user’s buttocks and determine their body-fat percentage. Inax, another competitor, released a toilet around the same time that glows in the dark and helps people relax by playing one of six recordings of chirping birds, bubbling brooks, wind chimes, or Japanese harps. And many women’s restrooms and private potties now feature a device called “The Sound Princess” that masks the noise of urination (a lot of Japanese gals find the sounds of nature completely mortifying).

  Newer washlets offer air-conditioning for the summer and heaters for the winter months. Another one can measure blood-sugar levels via a device attached to a retractable arm. Future models may be controllable via voice commands and could even transmit health data to doctors over the Internet.

  PERSONAL FIRE ESCAPE

  While fleeing a building during a fire, the difference between life and death could be seconds—you’ve got to get out of there, and get out of there fast.

  Benjamin Oppenheimer’s 1879 invention did not get a person out of a building quickly, easily, or possibly even safely. His fire escape consisted of a pair of giant, shock-absorbent overshoes with thick elastic soles, plus an awning or parachute that attached to the head with a thick wire helmet.

  In case of fire, you’d have to strap on the shoes and carefully place the helmet on your head, tighten the screws, and secure the chinstrap. Then, you could safely jump out the window and glide down to safety, with the parachute helping the journey to the ground and the shoes absorbing the impact of your landing. Just make sure the parachute doesn’t catch fire.

  LICENSE PLATE FLIPPER

  Do you go off-roading or engage in some other activity that makes your car preternaturally dirty, particularly the rear license plate? Do you feel distressed because you are a good, law-abiding citizen who desires to keep your vehicle’s identification clean and visible at all times, and wish to keep your license plate away from dirt and grime so that it’s clean and legible when back on regulated city roads?

  Well, then do you routinely drive way, way too fast and don’t want to get caught by the traffic police?

  Either way, the License Plate Flipper is a must-have. It’s wired into your car’s electrical system, and with a simple button push, it flips over the rear license plate to reveal, in its place, a previously concealed phony license plate. It takes just 1.3 seconds for the flipover to take place, which is about the same as the reaction time for a cop hiding behind a billboard to spring into action and try to catch up with you when you’re going 90 in a 55 zone.

  Cost of the License Plate Flipper: $445, which is more or less the price of a speeding ticket for going 90 in a 55 zone.

  SAUNA PANTS

  There are “hot pants” and then there are really hot pants, and it’s most definitely the latter category that this particular pair of trousers falls into. Developed to provide all of the benefits of sitting in a sauna without wasting valuable time by getting any semblance of relaxation out of the process, the eye-poppingly orange Sauna Pants are trumpeted on AsSeenOnTV.com as possessing the ability to “make you sweat quickly in the areas where you need it most,” meaning those troublesome fatty parts, such as the abdomen, waist, back, and hips. Like a real sauna, Sauna Pants help a person shed water and, technically, lose weight. Other assurances include the easing of tight muscles and sore joints, with a recommended usage time of a trifling 50 minutes per day.

  Although the curr
ent model features an adjustable temperature control with four-inch cord, the premise of Sauna Pants extends back to a bygone era when electricity wasn’t necessity. Indeed, an undated advertisement for Wonder Sauna Long Hot Pants that’s made the rounds on the internet seems to promote an inflatable, hot-water-filled version of the pants—one endorsed by the USA’s Amateur Athletic Union, no less—that’s aimed at helping “health-watchers of America look better, feel better, [and] wake up your body” by purportedly enabling them to “slenderize exactly where you want.”

  THE ICE CREAM CONE ZONE

  Many a modern-day invention is just a piece of molded plastic. It’s how that molded plastic is shaped, and then put to use, that can change how things have been done for decades, solve problems we did or didn’t know we needed to solve, and make millions for their inventors. Such is the case with the Buddy System. In 1997 inventor Bob Sotile ordered an ice cream cone at an ice cream shop and was grossed out when the worker handled his dirty money with her bare bands, then touched her hair, then handed him his waffle cone. So Sotile came up with the Buddy System (nicknamed “the Conedom”). Resembling a tiny, white traffic cone, it’s used to grab a waffle cone, preventing any touching of the food. Bonus: As the customer eats the ice cream cone, the recessed top of the Conedom serves as a drip guard for melting ice cream.