Inventions I Like To See

From time to time I post on inventions I would like to see and discover from the comments that some either already exist or have been made unnecessary by an

another way of doing what I want done. This time I am short-circuiting the process by posting on already existing inventions, most of which we take for granted, that strike me as ingenious solutions to one or another problems. Here are some of them:

Ziplock As Backup

I buy flatbreads that come in a sealed plastic bag. After you tear it open you can reseal it with a ziplock built into the bag just below the seal. A simple, elegant solution to a common problem — in an unsealed bag the flatbreads dry out. I have seen the same system on a variety of other products in recent years, conjecture that it is a recent invention, one that, once observed, seems obvious.

Shower Design

The design problem for a shower is making it possible for a user to adjust the temperature without getting exposed to either freezing or scorching water. There are lots of complicated solutions, some described in a previous post, but the simple solution is the combined tub and shower common in inexpensive motels and houses. You adjust the temperature in the water coming out of the tub faucet then pull up on the diverter knob on the faucet, give it a few seconds for the warm water to replace the cold in the pipe to the shower head, then step into a comfortably warm shower

Kitchen Gadgets

Using a corkscrew to pull the cork out of a wine bottle is made easier by a clever application of the principle of mechanical advantage. The principle has been known since classical antiquity; I don’t know when the gadget was first invented.

I own at least three different gadgets for unscrewing a jar lid. One of them works. Turning it counter-clockwise to unscrew the lid tightens the jaws, one force doing two different jobs at once.

The standard can opener cuts the lid off a can, giving you access to the can but leaving a sharp edge of metal that can cut you. The improved model, sometimes referred to as an edgeless can opener, breaks the bond between can and lid, leaving no sharp edges and giving you a lid that can be put back on the can, although no longer attached.

The problem is how long to boil an egg to get it to the desired end-state, in my case the yolk soft, the white hard. Timing works pretty well but not perfectly, especially if you sometimes cook at different altitudes or on different stoves. The solution is a plastic egg. You put it in with the real eggs, judge how well they are cooked by how far in it has changed color.

Upside down ketchup

It used to be that after I took a half full bottle of ketchup out of the refrigerator I had to turn it over and shake it to get the ketchup down and out. Now the ketchup comes in a container designed to rest upside down with the opening and the twist valve that closes it at the bottom. I don’t know whether it took so long because nobody thought of the idea or because it had to wait on improvements in the valve that let you store the bottle upside down without a risk of the contents leaking.

Solo cups

The red plastic ones, shaped as a stepped truncated cone. The stepping is not just decoration; the steps mark off the cup at 1oz, .5 cup, 1.5 cups, 1.75 cups and 2 cups.

And, from a poster on my favorite forum with a taste for antique hardware:

Two tanks in one

The fuel tank on a 1978 Triumph Bonneville motorcycle has one tap on the left, one on the right, one a little lower than the other. When you run out of gas from the main tap you open the other one and it gives you enough more to, with luck, get to a gas station.

(I couldn’t find a picture that showed the taps)

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