Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what, mango? What's that? Well? All right, so I
know we've both got little inventors in our families and
it's so much fun to see what they come up with.
But actually read this story recently and I thought i'd
share it with you. Know, have you heard of this
Guy's name was Robert W. Patch. I don't think I have.
You haven't heard of the patch manse Well, this was
(00:20):
a little over fifty years ago, and Robert got this
patent for a toy truck design. And the thing is,
he was just six years old when he got this,
and he built this toy truck using shoe boxes and
bottle caps and some nails. But here's the clever thing
about it. Actually he could transform it from a flatbed
truck to a dump truck just by moving some of
(00:41):
the axles. And so his dad, who happened to be
a patent attorney, sees this and he realizes this is patentable.
So of course Robert was actually so young that he
couldn't even write his name at the time. So if
you look back at the patent application, he just signed
it with an X. That's pretty cute that, like, he
can invent a truck but he can't sign his name.
But did he ever make money off it? No, he didn't,
(01:04):
and you know, they just looked at it is something
that was more fun and fun to get the patent.
But actually he did get some publicity out of it.
And then you know, Marketers realized that the shoebox he'd
used had been built using a CAD shoebox and so
we got a free pair of kids from it. So
I'm not a bad prize for this. But anyway, that's
just the first of nine stories of inventions that we've
got for you today. So let's dig in. Hey, their
(01:48):
podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
and as always I'm joined by my good friend Man
Guesh Ticketer and sitting behind the soundproof booth surrounded by
I'd say it's at least what do you think somewhere
around there? It's hard to say, but it's a lot
of bags of shelled peanuts. I mean, this guy, I
haven't seen him this inspired by something he's been reading
(02:09):
in a long time, but he's been reading George Washington
Carver's biography. I think it's actually his second go of
the biography. It's been fun to watch him just so inspired. Well, anyway,
that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Now me go,
I know one of your goals as a kid was
to be an inventor as well, Is that right? Yeah?
I mean I had I think four goals as a kid,
(02:31):
and this was when I was super young. But I
wanted to be an inventor, a composer, a cartoonist, and
a writer. And obviously, you know, a lot of those
things didn't pan out. But I used to watch doctor
pretty good at most of those things. I used to
watch Dr Fat on TV, who like had invented that
wacky wall walker, and he'd celebrate kid inventors every week.
(02:53):
And in first grade I came up with this idea
for like a glow in the dark patch that you
could attach to the zipper of a ten, so like
you could find it easily at night. And I actually
think that idea came out of necessity when I was
camping and had to use the bathroom badly. But I
would just go around inventing cute things like that all
the time. I mean, that's a great idea, And the
thing is, honestly, I don't think we've ever owned a
(03:15):
tent that had a glow in the dark zipper on it.
So that's there's still room for this. And you know what,
it's also weird. I haven't thought about those wall walkers
until you just said that. Those things were so much fun.
We played with those all the time, all right. Well,
one of the reasons we wanted to do an episode
on Amateur Inventors was because inventions it kind of feel
like one of those truly American things, like, you know,
(03:37):
everybody gets their fifteen seconds of fame, everybody's got a
novel in them, and everybody probably has a brilliant idea
for some invention, and whether or not they make money
off these inventions, we thought it'd be fun to celebrate
some of that, roll up your sleeves and build something
in genuity. So go I kicked this off with Robert W.
Patch's toy truck. And you know I have to say
(03:59):
the full name. I can't just say Robert or Patch.
I say Robert W. Patches, Old Patch, Old Patchy. Well, anyway,
where do you want to go from there? So I
actually want to talk about a story I heard from
our old pal Ethan treks and this is forever ago.
But this is about Frank Dorset, who is the genius
behind Ego Frozen Waffles. And he started a food company
(04:20):
from his parents basement, which I do want to point
out is a good sign note to parents about why
not to kick your adult kids out of your basement
because it could pan out. But Ego actually started as
a mayonnaise company, which is why it was called Ego.
You know, I never put that together. But the mayo
spread was actually so popular that Dorset and his brothers
(04:40):
ended up with this extra cash and they decided to
use it to make a waffle batter that they could
sell to like local chains. And when they realized the
market was limited in the region, Dorst a breakd up
this merry go round motor and he built this giant
thirty foot whirling machine that you could pour batter into
and it would prepare a foul in waffles for freezing
(05:01):
in an hour. I mean, it's remarkable. Yeah. And and
so the frozen waffles were originally called Froffles. I love
that name so much, A great name. I honestly hope
there's a documentary about Frank because he sounds like such
a wonderful man like according to his obituary, and I
think I saw in the Seattle Times he had no hobbies.
He just invented tons of things, like he made this
(05:22):
some squeegee for cement, and this commercial potato peeler which
you could use to make potato chips, but it basically
made it unnecessary to peel potatoes by hand anymore. And
the rest of the time he just spent being a
great husband and father. But apparently he did have this
one white whale that he never conquered, like all his life.
He tried to make a delicious frozen pancake, but it
(05:44):
just never happened. Oh man, But that is a great story.
A thousand waffles in an hour, just coming up with
this motor idea that is really impressive. And I did
not know that about the mayonnaise company. All right, well,
I'm gonna stick with that food theme and talk about
the invention of one of the greatest snacks of all time. Ango.
I'm talking about none other than the cheese puff. And
(06:08):
I found this story from the Tedium newsletter. And you know,
just like Alexander Fleming and penicillin, cheese puffs were really
more of a discovery than an invention. So I love
your idea of comparing cheese puffs and penicillan, like those
things have equal way in human history. But yeah, yeah,
I mean, penicillin is more important than you realize. It's
(06:28):
it's as important as the cheese puff, I think. But
it happened that this little company in Beloit, Wisconsin, where
they made animal feed, and so basically the company ran
all their food through this industrial grinder to make the
food softer for the cows so they could chew it
more easily, and then they would be able to eke
out every last bit of corn that they were using.
(06:49):
And what came out the other end were these thin
little flakes. So the grinder worked pretty well, but there
were some kinks and the machine would get stuck, and
so they were looking for ways to make the process
a little bit smoother. So what they did was, you know,
sometimes the operators would moisten the corn before it went through,
but as this one employee, Edward Wilson, noticed, when the
moist corn hit the heat of the machine, it actually
(07:12):
puffed up on the other side without any of the kernels. Now,
since this was going to animals, most people just went
back to not moistening the corn and running it on through.
But Wilson decided to try something out. He took some
of the puff corn home, he seasoned it, and then
he tried it out to see how it tasted. And
then the process he created what he called corn curls.
(07:32):
And these were the predecessor to so many things. We've
got cheese wizz, cheese doodles, cheetos. I'm just getting so
hungry thinking about it. But for what it's worth, the
company decided to change their name to the Adams Corporation,
and they shifted to being a snack company, and they
marketed their new cheese puff as quote the Aristocrat of Snacks,
And I can't think of a more perfect slogan. It
(07:55):
is so so fancy anyway, So what do you have next, Mago. Well,
one person I'm grateful for is Chester Greenwood, who, like me,
didn't like cold weather because his ears used to get
super cold, and he didn't love wearing hats because he
was allergic to the wool. Unlike me, though, he loved
ice skating, so he was looking for any way to
(08:15):
stay out playing with his friends, and he enlisted his
grandmother to make him some earmuffs he had are so
some fur or flannel pads onto a wire that he
could slap onto his head. And while his friends initially
mocked him for these ridiculous looking muffs, before long they
were actually clamoring for them too. And over the years
he made some improvements that eventually landed him a patent.
But what's amazing is that this eventually became his family business,
(08:40):
like within ten years, and this was in the eighteen eighties.
He built a small factory of about a dozen workers
and they turned out fifty earmuffs a year, and I
guess it put Farmington, Maine on the map. Is the
earmuff capital of the world, the ear muff capital of
the world. That is unbelievable. Though, fifty thousand a year
at that time, I can't imagine being able to crank
that out with what technology they would have had available
(09:02):
to them. Where do you find the market? It's pretty impressive. Yeah, yeah,
all right, Well, I wanted to talk for a second
about Josephine Cochrane, who we've talked about before. She invented
the dishwasher, and many people may have heard this story
before that Cochrane was a socialite, who invented the appliance
out of frustration. But actually it wasn't because she didn't
like doing the dishes. I mean, the truth is she
(09:23):
had never really been doing the dishes in the first place.
She was actually so rich that she had the domestic
help to do the dishwashing for her. But where her
frustration came in was that, you know, the people who
were washing the dishes were often so rough with the
plates and saucers that they'd often end up chipped. So
what she did she went out back to the shed
and this is all true, and she figured out this
(09:44):
system for washing dishes. Now what's amazing is that she
came to inventing things naturally. Her dad was a civil engineer,
her great granddad had all these inventions related to the steamboat,
and so she came up with a dishwasher that you
cranked by hand, but then you used hot water to
clean all these plates carefully. So did this thing take
(10:05):
off immediately? I mean not really in middle class households,
because you needed hot water on hand, and these didn't
function with electricity just yet. But she debuted her dishwasher
at the Chicago World's Fair, and so it was restaurants
and these commercial establishments that actually went crazy for it first.
And then she eventually grew this little company into a
(10:25):
brand you probably have heard of, and it's called Kitchen Aid.
That's funny. I didn't know that, so I think Josephine
and Cochrane would have actually admired my next inventor on
the list, whose name is Francis Gabe. And according to
her obituary in the New York Times, frances was sick
of the fact that quote, house cleaning was a woman's
chronic lot, so she began to dream of a house
(10:45):
that would see to its own hygiene, tenderly, washing, rinsing,
and drying itself at the touch of a button. I mean,
it's a great obituary the Reindeer, But basically, she built
this car wash in her kitchen, and she'd hide under
umbrella and then press the fun and suddenly all these
sprinklers would wash down all the cabinets and counters and
the floor, and then the second spray, which would miss
(11:08):
the soapy water, would cover everything, and then a third
spray would wash it down again, and finally a gigantic
blow dryer would push warm water across all of the
surfaces to dry everything off. The whole process took about
an hour, and apparently the thing worked like a charm.
Is pretty amazing. That is pretty amazing. And you know what,
I think somebody stole this idea. I think I remember
(11:28):
Tim the tool Man Taylor himself having a kitchen with
pretty much this exact system. But the thing I always
wondered there is the same thing I'm wondering here, and
that is where did all the water actually go? So
she ingeniously had designed these very slightly sloping floors like
they were so gentle you couldn't tell, and then there
were these greats where the water would get pushed out of.
(11:49):
But apparently even that was ingenious because before the water
was sent to the lawn or the drain or whatever,
it's cycled through her doghouse where would actually give her
dog a shower. My gosh, this is brilliant, Like you
just want to see this whole system in action. All right, Well,
I've got a slightly different fact about an invention that
that might have been almost as brilliant. So I want
(12:10):
to talk about slap bracelets. And of course we remember
these from the nineties and they've made a comeback recently,
as they seemed to every few years. But apparently they
were the invention of a high school teacher and his
name was Stuart Anders. Now, Anders was messing around in
his father's shop with some steel ribbon and the idea
literally slapped him on the wrist. This was back in
(12:31):
the mid eighties, and over the years he decided to
put a little bit of fabric on it. He showed
it to a friend. That friend happened to be an
agent for toymakers, and so they were off to the
races with a product they called slap wraps. And so
the New York Times wrote about this product and called
it the biggest cheap novelty craze since pet Rocks. Now,
I'm sure you've heard how slap bracelets were banned from
(12:53):
so many schools and other places because they were truly
slicing kids hands up. Yeah, they were pretty dangerous him.
I think I'd probably cut myself a time or two
with them as well. But you know, that wasn't ander
slap rap product. And in fact that he and the
toy company that he had been working with initially delayed
the rollout of the product because they wanted to make
(13:13):
sure these bracelets were safe for kids. You know, these
slap wraps actually changed their product to be able to
prevent these injuries. But when they started doing something like
fifteen million dollars in sales each year, you had these
knockoff toy companies that you know, they smelled opportunity, they
rushed their less safe products to market, and those are
(13:34):
actually the ones that that you know, resulted in killing
the craze. I mean, it is so weird to me
that you could just like put some fabric on some
metal and kids just go wild for it. But I
know the first time I slapped one on my wrist,
I just thought it was magic. You know. Well, I
know we've got two more facts to go, but why
don't we take a little break first, welcome back to
(14:09):
part time Genius who were talking conventions. All right, mego,
we've each got one fact left, So what's your last
one going to be? So I'm going to do mine
on the band aid because I loved the story of
Earl and Josephine Dixon. So Earle was a Johnson Johnson
employee and he had a new bride, Josephine, who was
apparently super super klutzy every time he'd come home, he'd
(14:29):
find she'd hurt herself in some new and different way.
Like the story honestly sounds like she had lived in
like some sort of abusive kitchen, because like she'd burn
herself on the stove where she'd like hit herself with
a cabinet and end up with this cruise And it
was horrible. And while Earl was super sympathetic at first,
he got tired of dressing all the wounds every day
after work. So he took a long roll of Johnson
(14:52):
Johnson's surgical tape, and then he cut these squares of
gauze which he spaced out evenly along the tape, and
then he covered it all in this layer of crinoline
so that it wouldn't stick to itself. And the whole
idea was that any time just being banged yourself up,
she could simply snip a bandage off the roll and
place it on her new wound. So I've actually heard
that part of the story before and and I thought
(15:13):
it's really wonderful, But I was always curious, like how
did band aids actually take off? And it turns out,
once Johnson and Johnson found out about the product, and
started making it themselves. They marketed it by sending free
band aids to kids in the Boy Scouts. Like, wherever
you were in the Boy Scouts, they would send you
band aids for free for the first year. And with
all the scrapes and bruises and cuts, you know that
(15:35):
could now quickly be remedied and like conveniently treated. Den
leaders were all about the band aids, and they spread
the word to the rest of America. And that's how
band aids became so popular. That is incredible and it
makes all the sense in the world. But what a
brilliant idea initially to do this. Yeah, I think it's
pretty amazing. So what's your last fact? All right, Well,
(15:56):
I thought I could wrap up by celebrating Lillian Gilbreath.
And now she's famous for a number of things. She
was a psychologist and did some pioneering work and efficiency management,
and then two of her twelve kids actually later wrote
about this in a book that you might know called
Cheaper by the Dozen. But yeah, so she was also
an inventor who led this incredible life. She was the
(16:16):
first woman to give a commencement address when she graduated
from the University of California. She was the first female
professor and engineering at Purdue, and by interviewing housewives and
understanding their needs, she came up with a number of
incredible household inventions, including I wrote some of these down
the shelves on the refrigerator door that hold butter and eggs.
(16:36):
She also invented the foot pedal that opens garbage cans,
and for that I cannot thank her enough. I feel
like I need to write her descendants thank you note.
And then she held the patent on the electric can opener.
I mean, what's funny to be about all these things
is like there are things you just take for granted,
Like I just always assumed that like the shells on
(16:56):
fridge door has always existed, or like you know, trash
can have had foot pedals forever. But it's remarkable that
they weren't only invented by someone, but that they were
invented by the same person. It's pretty pretty amazing. So
I I think you have to take home with the
trophy for discovering that. Well, thank you very much. This
was a fun one to work on, and thanks as
always to Eaves jeff Code for all of her great research.
(17:18):
For Today's episode. Thank you guys for listening. We'll be
back with a full length episode tomorrow