by Red Green
His older brother John came downstairs one evening to find Glen peeing into a jar with a plastic bag around his head. John suggested that since zombies ate brains, Glen would probably be safe. Glen didn’t get it.
Later, Glen found the product Pablum, which he started hoarding along with condensed milk. He decided that condensed powdered food options were the way to go, so he began collecting and freezing bacon strips. When they were frozen and dry enough, he would use a belt sander to grind them down and a Shop-Vac to collect them, and then jar them and store them on shelving units. After a few months of this, Glen had quite a collection of powdered bacon.
Unfortunately, Glen had a massive gas leak in the middle of the night. And so did the house. That led to a series of explosions. First to go was the water heater, which knocked over the jars of bacon powder and reconstituted them with hot water.
When the furnace exploded, it blew out all the windows, showering the backyard with bacon bits, turning it into a giant Caesar salad. Sadly for Glen, this did not mark the end of the world, but it did mark the end of him living in his parents’ basement.
Glen Friedman, Possum Lake Punk Rocker Credit 49
PAINT ROLLER
Norman Breakey
Red Roller
The first paint roller was invented in 1940 by Canadian Norman Breakey, who was born in 1891. Breakey went door to door, trying to sell his invention to Toronto hardware stores. Norm was often mistaken for a door-to-door religious nut, which may be where the expression “holy roller” comes from.
After failing to attract investors, he was never able to afford a patent or even market his invention in large enough numbers to make any money at it. This was seventy years before Shark Tank. Competitors swooped in, made a few small changes to the paint roller’s design, and were able to market it as their own invention. Breakey’s paint roller got steamrollered.
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One of those swoopers was Richard Croxton Adams, who held the first U.S. patent on the paint roller. He claimed that he developed it in his basement workshop in 1940 while working for the Sherwin-Williams paint company. Canadians know the real story.
Hard to put a positive spin on this one. Feels like it should be called the achy-breaky, not the Norman Breakey.
This poor guy had a lot of hurdles to overcome. Too many, apparently. The biggest obstacle for any invention should be the idea itself. Breakey cleared that one. He got the hard part done, no problem. It was the “easy” stuff that did him in.
Things like protecting your intellectual property. That should be a right for everyone, not just for the people rich enough to afford the patent process. Most inventors spend all their money on building prototypes. By the time they get the thing perfected, they’re broke.
Breakey’s next challenge was to sell his new product to retailers by going door to door. Try to imagine how hard that would be to do. You’re talking to a buyer for a hardware store who is being courted by every major hardware manufacturer and distributor in the country, and then in you walk with a weird-looking gizmo that you’re asking him to buy a couple of. Kinda sounds like how it felt trying to get my TV show off the ground. That takes a super-salesman, and my guess is Norman Breakey was not one of those.
You could say the whole project failed because Breakey needed to be a wealthy, creative, personable, yet forceful businessman who also came up with a great idea. But I don’t see it that way. The only thing Breakey needed was venture capital—some person, or people, who saw the value in his invention and were prepared to become investors. An investment of ten thousand dollars would have made them all millionaires, including Breakey.
So why couldn’t Breakey raise the cash? Well, it was 1940 and the world was at war, so people were cautious. Also, there would be some skepticism as to why the big paint companies hadn’t already come up with this idea if it was so good. Maybe they even wondered why Breakey didn’t take it to the big paint companies. Maybe Breakey’s wife wondered that too. But I would say Breakey’s biggest obstacle was that in Canada in 1940, there weren’t a lot of people, and only a tiny percentage of that small population could be considered investors.
And as it happens, none of them was prepared to invest in a paint roller.
It’s a sad story, but I guess there are two good things that came out of this mess: 1) the lesson that inventors need to team up with people who can supply the cash and expertise they don’t have, and 2) thanks to Mr. Breakey, the world is a brighter place with far fewer brush marks.
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As you’ve probably figured out already, part of the purpose of this book is to show you how you don’t always need to invent the core ingredient. Sometimes all you need to do is to invent some new way of using the existing invention. Or, as in this case, creating a new way to apply the existing invention.
Norm didn’t invent paint, but he invented a better way to get it on the walls.
So if you’re getting frustrated coming up with a new product, maybe you can create a new way to apply an old product. A salt shaker that never clogs. Or a toothbrush that does all three tooth surfaces at once. Or an automated toilet brush that scrubs the bowl during every flush. The world is usually more receptive to a product that makes a good thing better rather than a product like Viagra, which probably quite often creates a supply for which there is no demand.
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We featured Mr. Breakey’s paint roller idea in a couple of our television shows. If we had gone another season, we would have used a paint roller to put maple syrup on waffles and sunblock on fat guys. Probably one of the reasons we weren’t renewed.
To see how we used a giant paint roller, go to the Book of Inventions page at redgreen.com and click on “Roller.”
When I was a kid, the only way to change channels on the radio was to turn a dial on the unit itself. The TV was the same, but as it only had one channel, this was less of an inconvenience. But pretty soon we were up to ten channels, and turning the dial became an issue.
It was good in a way, because you had to be sure you really wanted to change the station before going to the trouble of dead lifting your two hundred pounds out of the La-Z-Boy to walk all the way over there. The remote control changed everything. Now you didn’t have to leave the comfort of the couch to channel-flip. Just sit there and let ’er rip. And if you time it just right, you can miss whole blocks of channels just by pressing that changer really fast. You can adjust volume depending on the content of what you are watching or the sleeping status of the person beside you.
But it didn’t stop there. As TVs became more and more complicated, so did the remote controls that operated them. Now you have remotes that can pause and rewind the TV. They can switch between different inputs for all that other stuff that hovers around your TV in the wall unit. There are TVs that connect to the internet and remotes that can help you browse once you get there.
And now you can get universal remotes that control all of your electronic gizmos—the DVD player, Blu-Ray, VCR, stereo system and pretty much everything else in your house. A friend of mine was trying to turn up the volume on his TV for twenty minutes before the neighbour came over, asking why his garage door kept going up and down.
It’s not easy to figure out your remote anymore. It’s kind of like how society has gotten. By trying to make things more convenient with tons more options and choices, they’ve turned every remote into an IQ test. And I’m not doing well.
RATING: Nuh-uh. Candidate #9 might be the ticket.
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PIE-O-NEER
Edna Sanders, Owner of Edna’s Personality Pastries: “I’d rather be flaky than crummy.” Credit 52
In the early 1900s, Edna Sanders lost both of her parents in a tragic murder-suicide during a euchre game in which Edna’s father had decided to go alone with four nines.
Edna was an only child and inherited everything, which included a large oven and her father’s floor-refinishing business (Sanders’ Sanders). She decided to close do
wn the business, move her inherited stove into the store and convert it into a bakery shop.
She was unable to get all of the sawdust off the walls and ceiling, leading to problems with the flavour and consistency of her first batch of Nanaimo bars. But over time she attracted a large number of loyal customers.
She attributed her success to her ability to create a fun, friendly atmosphere and a natural talent for making up the catchy slogans she displayed in her front window: “Praise the Lard,” “This Baker Does What Other Bakers Dozen’t,” “Try Our Pink-eye Pies—Extra Crusty” and “If You’ve Got the Time, We’ve Got the Tarts.”
Then, in the summer of 1907, Edna was hit with a problem that would change her life and career path forever.
She had been contracted to supply all the pies for Possum Lake’s Centennial Celebration. They were expecting eight hundred people, and it was during a time when everyone was looking to get “their piece of the pie.”
Confronted with the challenge of making a lot of pies in a short period of time, Edna decided there must be a better way. Her first step was to examine the structure and design of a conventional pie.
The first thing that struck her was the roundness of it. The second thing that struck her was the way it was sliced. The third thing that struck her was that it was now Wednesday and it had taken her three full days to notice the first two things. Edna figured that the key obstacle was the pattern in which the pie was cut.
It limited each pie to a maximum of eight pieces, which meant Edna would have to make a hundred pies for the centennial. That would have drastically cut into her social life—if she had one. So instead, she toyed with the idea of slicing the pies in a different pattern.
Edna soon realized that the brilliance in the conventional way of cutting a pie was that every piece got a little bit of crust with it. She needed to do more thinking. She hated that.
Then one night she awoke from a sound sleep, sat bolt upright, catching the top third of her hairstyle in the ceiling fan and sending her cats flying. But she had the answer: the problem wasn’t the shape of the slices, it was the shape of the pie. She needed a better-shaped pie. But what shape would that be?
Edna recognized this as a geometry problem, so she went to her Grade 8 math teacher, who smiled calmly and simply said, “πr2.” Edna knew a bad joke when she heard one—pie are squared—but it got her thinking. Yes, square pies would generate more pieces and would allow more of them to fit in the oven. But how could they be cut so that every piece got some crust? It was hopeless.
Edna was so depressed that she stuck her head in the oven. She didn’t turn on the gas, but still, you could tell she was upset. It was a high-end oven, so the light came on when she opened the door. At the same time, a light went on in Edna’s head. She noticed that the shape of the oven was not a square but a rectangle. Forget “pie are squared”; make it “pi are rectangular.” Edna got busy collecting rectangular baking pans and laying out a cutting plan that would yield the greatest slice output while making sure every piece had a crust.
Edna knew she was on to something. The rest of the town thought she was on something. The interior of her oven was thirty-six inches by thirty. Using the customary ten-inch round pie pans, she could bake nine pies at once, for a total of seventy-two pieces.
Using ten-by-six-inch rectangular pie pans, she could bake eighteen pies at once, for a total of 144 pieces, a difference of seventy-two pieces.
Do the same with two racks in the oven, and that difference increases to 216 pieces, which is another 100 per cent uptick in output.
But Edna didn’t stop there. She added eight more racks to the oven, which allowed her to bake 1,440 slices at once, enough for the entire celebration.
Edna was so excited that she went all over town, boasting about her creation and allowing random strangers to pat her on the back—or anywhere else they wanted to pat her. Sadly, basking in her own glory, she forgot about the pies, which were burned beyond recognition. She tried to pass them off as apple crisps, but the event was a disaster. It was the end of rectangular pies and the end of Edna’s pastry shop.
Later, when asked about the failure of her pie design, Edna answered ruefully, “That’s what happens when you don’t cut corners.”
POUTINE
Quebec
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Poutine was invented in Quebec in the late 1950s or early 1960s, depending on which story you believe.
The most popular version has it being invented in 1957 at a small restaurant in Warwick, Quebec. The story goes that the restaurant had already started putting cheese curds in the fries, but one day a creative, devil-may-care truck driver named Eddy Lainesse was running late and had to eat on the road, so he ordered a side of gravy for his fries and then dumped it on top of the hot curds and fries. The owner of the restaurant, Fernand Lachance, said, “Ça va faire une maudite belle poutine!” which translates roughly to either “That will make a damn fine mess!” or “You’re going to need another shirt.”
Poutine has since grown into a national dish enjoyed by many people, most of whom should know better. It hasn’t hurt the manufacturers of heartburn pills any, either.
I guess I kinda get it. It feels like a throwback to my high school days, when one of the guys would say, “I dare you to eat that.” Or maybe you’re on death row and tomorrow’s the big day; then I guess it would be okay to order a large poutine to chow down on as your last meal. But on a regular basis? Like, more than once a lifetime? What’s goin’ on here? Okay, maybe back in 1957, when we didn’t know fancy words like nutrition or life expectancy, it was okay for good ol’ Eddy the truck driver to assault every artery with this little heart attack in a bowl.
But not now. We know stuff now. We’re not being fooled. Or at least, if we are being fooled, it’s an inside job.
We need to wake up here, people. Let’s be honest. Poutine could only happen in a country that has socialized medicine. Forget the literal translation; poutine is actually the French word for “goodbye.” That’s why most people order it “to go.”
And is this all truly necessary? Do you really need to put gravy and cheese curds on top of fries? Were fries on their own just too darn healthy? That’s like putting chocolate sauce and whipped cream and nuts on top of a sundae. Okay, that’s a bad example, but you know what I mean.
And poutine might have been the first offender, but it’s not the only one. For the last few years, KFC has been advertising a heart-stopping treat called a Double Down that’s a handful of bacon sandwiched between two pieces of fried chicken. Wow. What’s next? How about we stuff a turkey with a leg of lamb and then wrap the whole thing in bacon and deep-fry it in a vat of maple syrup? I know you can’t wait to try that.
But on behalf of all your friends and family who’ll have to carry the coffin, don’t do it. Please show a little restraint, a little respect for your God-given body and a little consideration for the medics who have to rush from their homes to stand over you with a couple of paddles.
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I gotta put this one in the category I call “accidental inventions.” We’ve all heard the story of the Post-It notes coming out of creating a new glue that turned out to be useless because it never dried. Or Velcro, which was developed after the guy got a zillion burrs on his sweater. Sometimes great inventions come along when you least expect it.
The key factor is that they present themselves to people who are paying attention and thinking about what they experience and are open to opportunities. This takes an almost childlike approach to life. You can’t be jaded, or you won’t see anything. You can’t be egotistical, or you’ll reject anything that you didn’t think of. You can’t be close-minded, or you’ll never see the value in the unexpected. So I guess you have to be immature and maybe even a bit of a dreamer to be an inventor.
That’s why it’s so important for an inventor to either have a steady income from a family trust or to have married well.
PULPED WOOD PAPER
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br /> Charles Fenerty
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Canadian inventor and poet Charles Fenerty was born in 1821 in Nova Scotia, where, as a kid, he worked at the family lumber mill. Just stop and think about that for a minute. This guy is an inventor and a poet, and where is he working? At a lumber mill. This is why government grants were created. But despite being an artist who also had to work for a living, Charles learned a lot about the properties of different kinds of wood. He kept applying what he’d learned, and by 1844 he had come up with a way to make paper from wood pulp.
For two thousand years before that, paper had been made out of rags or cotton or hemp. They even made hemp toilet paper, which had to be a little on the rough side. I think that’s why in most pictures from that era, the people are standing.
Charles came up with his invention at a time when the demand for paper was rising, and the switch to wood as a paper source was great for Canada, which has a zillion trees but not much hemp—unless you include British Columbia. When the Acadian Reporter did an article on Charles Fenerty, it was written on the wood pulp paper itself. Talk about inventive and poetic.
This is a great example of how your environment can send you down a certain path. Canada has a lot of natural resources. Minerals, freshwater, doughnuts, etc. And trees have gotta be near the top of that list. Even today, Canada has way more trees than people. No wonder we’re still not out of the woods.