"He's always thinking about lots of things — he's a pollinator, he brings ideas to the table" You probably know Neal Stephenson for his work as an author (generally in or adjacent to the Science Fiction genre), but he's also an inventor at Washington based "Idea Factory" Intellectual Ventures, a place with modern goals like stomping out malaria and preventing hurricanes. This is after his old job as part-time rocket scientist.
posted on Sep 1, 2008 - View this thread

Explore the playful side of invention and the inventive side of play in Invention at Play. Learn how play connects to the creative impulse of both historic and contemporary inventors.
posted on Jun 1, 2008 - View this thread

Not content to rest on his laurels after creations like the portable kidney dialysis machine, the IBOT robotic wheelchair, the Segway, and the innovative cyborg replacement limbs, DEKA Research President Dean Kamen demonstrates his new vapor compression distiller on The Colbert Report.
posted on Mar 21, 2008 - View this thread

On November 24, 1874, Joseph Glidden was granted patent number 157124. The invention decribed within is the subject of striking images, body art, and painfully bad movies. Yet, the history of barbed wire is interesting enough to warrant multiple museums.
posted on Mar 6, 2008 - View this thread

Cutlery pen caps l Top 10 Picks of the Dining in 2015 competition.
posted on Feb 1, 2008 - View this thread

Reporter whacks man with shovel [video]. d30 (dee-three-oh) is a specially engineered material made with intelligent molecules. They flow with you as you move but on shock lock together to absorb the impact energy.
posted on Oct 7, 2007 - View this thread

Lazy-Ass Nation. "Somewhere along the way, we fell in love with the dream of the effort-free existence."
posted on Sep 19, 2007 - View this thread

AmazingFilter: foolish fun inventions, lovey dovey, trompe l'oeil and anamorphosis art by Eduador Relero, Bev Doolittle(?), on buildings, kirigami, photographs [disturbing] and irony.
posted on May 19, 2007 - View this thread

Gizmo - using news footage from the 1920s to the 1950s, Howard Smith created an amusing 1977 documentary about contraptions made by the inventors, technophiles, and eccentrics of yesteryear. The last 7 minutes is Letterman interviewing Smith. (Google video, 1 hr., 19 min. Via beans beans good for your heart)
posted on Apr 24, 2007 - View this thread

Australian inventor Chris Bosua, frustrated by the inefficiency of his air compressor, devised a method of recycling the exhaust air from air tools. His Exhausted Air Recycling System (E.A.R.S.) improves efficiency by eighty percent. It runs cooler, almost halves the power consumption, extends the life of the compressor, provides a cleaner working environment, and reduces the noise of an air tool to that of a sewing machine. Happy Earth Day, everyone!
posted on Apr 22, 2007 - View this thread

The Beer Launcher. From the starry eyed minds of the students of Duke University comes the next great innovation in humankind's continued struggle to stay sedentary.
posted on Feb 26, 2007 - View this thread

Yoshiro Nakamatsu aka Dr. NakaMats has invented everything, other than all the other stuff that the rest of us have invented. He has 3218 patents to his name. (Edison had 1093.) Among his many inventions? The compact disc, the compact disc player ('natch), the digital watch, a unique golf putter, the floppy disk (!), and a water-powered engine. Besides being the founder of the World Genius Convention (where the world first learned of ingenuity of ADR ceramic disks, for instance), Dr. NakaMats was voted by the US Science Academic Society as one of five greatest scientists in history - in the company of Archimedes, Michael Faraday, Marie Curie, and Nikola Tesla - and he plans to live until 144!
posted on Feb 23, 2007 - View this thread

Some new gadgets, things and inventions: solar bikini that charges your ipod, paper soft wall, waterproof laptop, million dollar fishing lure, Obvio hybrid micro-car, needle-free injection, hi-tech dummies that can speak, breathe, bleed, react to drugs & die, dragon bag. Interactive sight, sound and physical objects from the student artists of the NYU Interactive telecommunications biannual showcase [video], including Animalia Chordata and Botanicalls, building telecommunications between people and their plants.
posted on Jan 7, 2007 - View this thread

Time Magazine has released its picks for the best inventions of 2006. Youtube beat out a vaccine that cures a STD that causes cervical cancer. Not to mention this extremely lifelike robot, this magic mirror, a wine-tasting robot and a shirt that simulates a hug!
posted on Nov 13, 2006 - View this thread

Leonardo is overrated: the steam turbine was invented two millennia ago by Hero of Alexandria who developed the aeolipile as a toy. Hero was also responsible for the first vending machine (for holy water) and hydraulic automatic temple doors, along with advances in areas as diverse as physics and mathematics. A translation of Hero's influential Pneumatics is available online, featuring illustrated examples of many of his inventions, many of which are related to clever devices for drinking or prayer, or both.
posted on Jun 20, 2006 - View this thread

Device warns you if you're boring or irritating MIT develops emotional intelligence prosthetic.
posted on Mar 30, 2006 - View this thread

The Modern Marvels Invent Now Challenge named 25 finalists (selected from over 4,000 entries) in a competition to find the greatest invention of 2006. The winner will be named during History Channel's Great Inventions Week (May 24-27th), but you won't have to wait to check out the finalists. MAKE: Blog briefly profiled each invention in a series of posts this week: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5. The inventions will also be on exhibit at the California Science Center in Los Angeles (April 7-15th), the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago (April 20-30th), the Museum of Science in Boston (May 5-14th) and Vanderbilt Hall in Grand Central Terminal in New York City (May 22-27th), and finally, the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, OH (through August 2006).
posted on Mar 22, 2006 - View this thread

Where Science Meets Fiction "Explore the wide variety of inventions and ideas of science fiction writers - over 975 are available on Technovelgy (that's tek-novel-gee!)." Science fiction inventions become reality. Sort of.
posted on Mar 10, 2006 - View this thread

The World's Most Underrated Inventions A curious list of the world's most underrated inventions. Including: the chariot; concrete; horse collar; longbow; eyeglasses; rotary printing press; barbed wire; carborundum; and bakelite.
posted on Nov 14, 2005 - View this thread

"What did you do to my Intelligent Synthesizer?" Wonderful collection of DIY sound gizmos from Mike Walters at Mystery Circuits. Includes the Pena-Tron, the Electronic Earthball and detailed instructions for the Moog Source Membrane Switch Cure. Most recent: The Melloman, a hilariously elliptical DIY Mellotron. [note: 3rd, 4th and 8th links are mp3s] [via]
posted on Oct 17, 2005 - View this thread

Concealed hearing devices of the 19th and 20th centuries. Great images in this delightful exhibit of wacky yet charming devices like auricle headphones, dentaphones, concealed beard receptors, barrettes, jewelry, hats, and acoustic chairs.
posted on Oct 15, 2005 - View this thread

Since Sliced Bread: A union-sponsored contest to find and develop ideas to improve the U.S. economy - the winner will receive $100,000. Entries range from virally-spreading an anti-exploitation shame meme to increasing US world domination. Other greatest ideas since sliced bread include your own personal jesus toast, corporate logos on toast, and Liberty.
posted on Oct 8, 2005 - View this thread

The Virtual Museum of Ancient Inventions, most of the discoveries and inventions on which modern societies have been constructed were made in prehistoric times. Ancient inventions tell detailed stories of complex knowledge for which no written records exist.
posted on Jul 12, 2005 - View this thread

Captain Cornelius is a superhero and is also an ear of corn. He's probably destined to fall for Zea Mays, who is also corn, and encourages children to invent things.
posted on May 18, 2005 - View this thread

Necessity has nothing to do with it. But I'm glad someone's dreaming up these things.
posted on Mar 26, 2005 - View this thread

the simplest ideas are usually the best ones. Its easy to forget that the internet is a relatively new medium. Whats the bet that in the future that we will all be wishing that we still had all of our content that we contributed to "cyberspace" such as reviews, comments, posts... Who knows if 10 - 15 years from now, if the sites we post on will still be up, even stable sites such as MetaFilter may not exist in the future. sites have shut down before, taking everyones content with it. Its a simple idea, why not just store your content, be it on your desktop or a web application? So who wants to start a MeFi label over at bulletin board buddy.
posted on Mar 16, 2005 - View this thread

Keitai Vyuun! - but is it really the best invention ever? I say "no".
posted on Feb 22, 2005 - View this thread

Ron Popeil's Pocket Fisherman has been updated since it's intro in the 50s, but it's the original that makes Mobile PCs list of The Top 100 Gadgets of All Time. Many you'd expect to find, some I was suprised by. And the big surprise? iPod isn't the #1 gadget. Mostly, I'm distrubed by the number of these gadgets that I've owned at one point or another.
posted on Feb 18, 2005 - View this thread

It shakes me that something as prosaic and taken for granted as a paper clip was once an innovation. Someone actually invented it. It revolutionized. It evolved. At one point, it became a political symbol strong enough to warrant arrest. Eventually, it became something so ho-hum that it could be artistic, profound. In short, it became indispensable -- er, ubiquitous. Before I die, I would like to visit a paper clip factory.
posted on Dec 16, 2004 - View this thread

Meet Charles Brannock. In 1926, he invented a foot-measuring device that has become an industry standard and a landmark of American innovation, now preserved in the Smithsonian.
posted on Dec 16, 2004 - View this thread

Technovelgy lists inventions from science fiction novels, including the Tasp, the Delpi Pool, Retinal Projection and the Invisible Teenager.
posted on Jun 10, 2004 - View this thread

Maybe the age of the individual inventor isn't over. Woody Norris is the inventor of the personal helicopter, precise Hypersonic sound emitter, and the first palm-size digital voice recorder... And never graduated from college.
posted on May 20, 2004 - View this thread

The Early Office Museum :: check out communications technologies used by our Grandparents, as well as Punched Card Tabulating Machines and much, much more!
posted on Mar 3, 2004 - View this thread

The Pencil Pages :: An Introduction to Pencils and Pencil Collecting
with gallery, pencil geek humor, pencil trivia, and much more
posted on Feb 18, 2004 - View this thread

A Short, Illustrated History Of The First Toasters
Suitable for those with short attention sp--- Huh?
posted on Jan 20, 2004 - View this thread

Top 10 impossible inventions that allegedly work. Includes such conspiracy-nut favorites as a system for sending power wirelessly, an anti-gravity device, the cloudbuster and an electronic telepathy device. [Snagged from Disinformation.]
posted on Jan 15, 2004 - View this thread

Time mag lists this year's 'coolest' inventions, in their humble opinion. For archival fun check out their lists for 2001 and 2002.

Fish-skin bikinis?
posted on Nov 12, 2003 - View this thread

Lifecase. Briefcase to Bullet Proof Vest in Seconds!
posted on Oct 1, 2003 - View this thread

Prisoner Inventions. The craftiness of the confined. [via boingboing.net]
posted on Aug 29, 2003 - View this thread

Industrialised society's fascination with useless invention: as a kid I used to love the work of Heath Robinson, inventor of (among others) a method of testing safety matches, the potato peeler, and an inoffensive method of weighing a lady friend. His American equivalent was the slightly more scientific Rube Goldberg. Occasional attempts of the patently useless to make the leap into the real world have been furthered considerably by the Japanese art of Chindogu, made popular by Kenji Kawakami, inventor of (among others) the Hay fever hat, the portable road crossing, and dusting shoes for cats. Maywa Denki seems to transcend earthy Chindogu with fish-based and musical (via sharpeworld) inventions.
posted on Dec 29, 2002 - View this thread

Time Magazine's 2002 Best Inventions
I love my toys and gadgets, and I especially fancy the Air Surfer, @ $75 it looks like the glider for klutzes like me. However, I'm not ready just yet to take the hoots of derision that this Bluetooth Mobile Phone Headset will bring. This new chip looks set to improve digital photography... I do fancy that! But will Foveon have the muscle to bring the X3 to fruition?
This, though, is as close as we'll ever get to 'vaporware': Nasa's AeroGel... find out what earthly purpose it could serve.
Some on the list are little more than product placements (I'm looking at 'Breathe Strips' and 'Ultra-Cashmere' now), and some - Mr. Dyson's Cyclonic spin vacuum, I'm surprised to see - are hardly new. Others [Nano-Tex, Date Rape Drug Spotter & The Scramjet] I'm sure we've discussed before (but they don't figure in Mefi searches).
How many of these will change our lives - and how many will improve them? Is there something cool missing from the list? - something tells me that their gushing over their discovery of '3D Online Entertainment' ["...you can do it all and more in Second Life, a startlingly lifelike 3-D virtual world now evolving on the Internet"] gives it the Kiss O' Death. [...via blogdex]

posted on Nov 19, 2002 - View this thread

Present day Thomas Edison strikes again. More fine stuff from the guy who brought you the Segway HT. Dean Kamen, and his fine folks at DekaResearch, appear to have invented a device which promises to save countless lives across the globe, power villages, and runs on water. What's next? The perpetual motion machine?
posted on Nov 17, 2002 - View this thread

Chindogu is the ancient Japanese art of the Unuseless Invention -- that is, a creation which seems like a great idea, but which, in reality, causes more inconvenience than it cures. Behold the almost handy Backstratcher's T-Shirt, the Eyedrop Funnel Glasses, the Butter Stick and the Kitty Dust Slippers. Because everyone enjoys a good Unuseless Invention, I have given this book as a gift more than any other.
posted on Aug 19, 2002 - View this thread

Inventor Woody Norris has cooked up a device capable of sending soundwaves to specific targets, these sounds are inaudible to anyone besides the intended target.
posted on Aug 11, 2002 - View this thread

The Ant Farm: A small inventor success story. Levine, who never attended college, gave lectures, wrote chatty books about ants and made appearances on "The Shari Lewis Show." "I spoke to Lamb Chop for a half an hour about ants," he said. "I felt like an idiot." Reg: cpunks/cpunks
posted on Aug 5, 2002 - View this thread

Happy 100th Birthday to one of the most important inventions of the 20th century, not to mention the coolest. I would bet that most people that are reading this right now, at least in the US and other parts of the Northern Hemisphere, are benefiting from this invention, originally designed to take the curl out of paper. It also made summer blockbusters like Mr. Deeds bearable. (I guess every good thing has some downside.)
posted on Jul 16, 2002 - View this thread

U.S. claims Canada's greatest invention. Congress awards creation of telephone to Italian inventor living in New York. Uh oh. Canada's inferiority complex takes another blow.

"Bell was either a thief, a fraud, or extraordinarily lucky."
posted on Jun 22, 2002 - View this thread

Okay, so there's the Halfbakery for us amateurs with bizarre inventions. But what about the ideas that seemed so good to someone that they actually got patented?
posted on May 20, 2002 - View this thread

How about another gadget to carry around? A laptop, an mp3 player, a cell phone, a PDA, a digital camera, and now, i-glasses?
posted on Dec 25, 2001 - View this thread

Although there is no mention on Good Mornins America's website, according to this Wired.com article, Diane Sawyer announced that they would reveal Dean Kamen's intensely hyped invention on Monday, December 3rd. Perhaps it will actually deserve to have been listed as one of the best inventions of 2001 by Time Magazine.
posted on Nov 29, 2001 - View this thread