 Greetings from the National Archives Flagship Building in Washington, D.C., which sits on the ancestral lands of the Nacotch Tank Peoples. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's virtual author lecture with Jim Downey, co-author of Brainstorms and Mindfarts. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two upcoming programs you can view on our YouTube channel. On Wednesday, June 2nd, at 7 p.m., Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed presents her latest book, On Juneteenth. She will recount the origins of Juneteenth and its integral importance to American history. This program is presented in partnership with James Madison's Montpelier. And on Tuesday, June 8th, at 7 p.m., former President George H.W. Bush's chief of staff, Jean Becker, will tell us about her book on the Bush post-presidency, The Man I Knew. Jean Jean in Conversation is Warren Finch, director of the George Bush Presidential Library. In his new book, written with Tom Conner, Jim Downey promises to bring us the best and brightest, dumbest and dimmest inventions in American history. The book presents patents for products and services that change daily life as well as the unusual and peculiar. My own favorite, which I was delighted to see in the book, is Eye Protector for Chickens, patented on June 16, 1903. The drawing accompanying the patent application shows a plump chicken sporting wire rimmed glasses looking a bit like an avian Benjamin Franklin. The National Archives has roughly four million patents in its holdings, and the archivist who works with them shared his own quirky favorite, an 1887 application to patent an apparatus for propelling balloons. The surprise source of propulsion, birds, such as one or more eagles, vultures, condors. After today's talk, you may discover your own favorites. I'm sure Jim Downey will tell us his. Jim Downey is an author, career copywriter, award-winning NPR essayist and designer. Jim attended NYU's School of Visual Arts and worked in the advertising department at New York's Bonn-Witt-Teller department store, followed by a stint at Town and Country Magazine's editorial department. Following a move to Westport, Connecticut, he commenced a decades-long career as a freelance copywriter with multiple national and international clients. He's also the author, co-author, and co-producer of over a dozen books, including the national best-selling parodies, which are in my personal collection, Martha Stewart's excruciatingly perfect weddings, Martha Stewart's better-than-you-at-entertaining, and the Smythe and Hockham Gardening Catalog. His projects range from humor and satire to pop culture, politics, design, and style. Now let's hear from Jim Downey. Thank you for joining us today. Good morning. Are we on? Are we up? There we go. I think. I'm not seeing any art here. We get the slide up. There we go. Hello, and good morning from Olympia, Washington and the Great Pacific Northwest. It's lovely to be here. I never thought one thing. I never thought I'd see my name in the same sentence as National Archives, so I'm a proud guy today. So my partner Tom Connor and I, we've done quite a few books and projects together. We love details, and we love the inception of things, and we love inventions, and I'm a very technical, I kind of like all that technical stuff, and Tom to a certain extent does too. And we thought, boy, here's an area that hasn't really been looked into as far as being able to write a cohesive, concise book about it, but we feel like after we look through hundreds and hundreds of these patents, some of them dead serious and wonderful and, you know, telephone, radio, all that kind of stuff, we ran into time after time, we ran into frivolous, hard to believe that they're patented inventions. It's astounding. So along with the regular inventions that everybody is familiar with, we came up with about half the book is ridiculous, unbelievably strange and weird, and you can't figure out what the guy was thinking invention. So if we'll put up the first slide, we'll take it away. Next slide. OK. Here is the pencil with an eraser. The pencil's gone through, went through so many iterations and it was basically the graphite encased in a tube of wood. That got through first, but then people wanted to figure out how can we get this stuff out of there. And they finally, one guy put this guy, H. Lindman, put a rubber, a hard rubber tip on the end of one of these these pencils and low and behold, it erased it. And it's pretty obvious, but it took a long time to get there. We are now into the billions and billions and billions sold every year, even in spite of computers, they're still selling these pencils. And I know for sure the experience I've had with them is I use them to fill in those little black dots on the when I was a kid, fill in the little black dots on the on the test. That's about the only only use I ever had for them. But boy, they're still there and going strong. OK, next slide. The paper clip. So imagine it's turn of the century and you're in a downtown business district and you're taking a walk along and you turn into what appears to be an office and in there are rows and rows and rows of clerks typing, you know, clacking away, all that stuff. And there's no barely electricity. The cities had been electrified by this point, but not by much. And compare that to a modern office where it's cubicles or it's just desks in a row and guys sitting there, ladies sitting there and they're all in their computer screen is silent. And it's, you know, we all know what those those cubicle farms look like. Well, there's one thing in common that spreads across all these years, all these this this time and would be in both these offices, the turn of the century and the modern one, and that is the paper clip. We we don't probably use them as much now, obviously, because these were much less paper oriented than we were back then. Everything was paper, but five or six iterations. And the guy finally got the patent. This is the first patent here, the one the ones we're used to now. The oblong ones came along a little bit later, but there it was. And now it's it has never left. And these are out there. You'll these are every drawer in your kitchen that has the pliers. It will also have 15 paper clips in the bottom of it. And I'm pretty sure I'm right on that. So there's the paper clip. Next up. Here's one of my favorites, Velcro. We've all heard the sound of a who on the planet hasn't heard the sound of a Velcro surface being ripped apart from another one. It's it's all athletics. It's just everywhere military. Well, this came to be in 1950 in the 1950 or so. The gentleman named a French gentleman named de Mestral, George de Mestral, was walking his dog in the in the Alps in the in the mountain, a mountain pathway. And along the way, he noticed when he'd come home or even as it occurred that these birds kept attaching themselves to his pants. I mean, we've all been walking in a meadow and, you know, the those little birds that can catch on your pants or especially the coat of your dog, which upset him enough so he wanted to see what he could do about it. And he looked under a microscope at these at these little birds and he realized they're basically a hook, one of the little tendrils that comes up off the surface forms a hook with an open jaws. You can see in this in this illustration right here. And then he realized, well, I'll make I can maybe I could make something that this was loop into and he invented hook and loop, which is which is the patent for Velcro. And and it worked. And that's talk about it's everywhere. And the astronauts use it. Everybody has Velcro in their life. As I said, I remember saying that that flashlight that's hanging by your back door that's been there for four years and the batteries are long gone. But the Velcro is still holding it to the wall. So Velcro is something we can count on. And so it's a wonderful take from using a natural idea and making it into an industrial product sold by the billions the world around. Next slide, Secret Communication System. In the thirties, there was a movie actress. There was a lovely movie actress named Hedy Lamar. And she was known as the most beautiful woman in the world. And what very few people knew about her, she was signed by MGM and all the movies, Big, Big, Big Star, Lovely Brunette. But she was she wasn't happy to just be a star. She wanted to to do something to be of use. And she had heard that they were having trouble. The Army was having trouble with its communication devices because they could be listened to once once the enemy people locked on to a channel, they could hear once they broke the code, which was easy back then, they could hear everything that was was being said. So the genius thing that Hedy Lamar came up with was what if we create a circuit that will channel hop channel hop from one frequency to the next quickly, efficiently and and so fast that it would be undetectable. But also the fact that it kept changing channels, hopping means that the enemy couldn't let the minute they landed on one, it was on to the next one. So it worked and it was a big really helped in World War Two. And it's actually a very sophisticated version of it is being still used today, the channel hopping. So this was the invention of a movie star in Hollywood that helped to win the war. So not bad, Miss Lamar. And next slide, what needs to be said here, Wright Brothers flying machine, these, you know, the two bicycle mechanics came up with with talk about changing the world. They changed everything forever. Of course, before them, a long way before them, as as he was in so many inventions came Leonardo da Vinci. And the exquisite mind of Leonardo had come up with a glider. He he began to understood, understand the the shape of an airfoil, which is the the shape that causes a plane to to lift the the only problem he would have had working stuff, except he couldn't find anything to make the plan that was light enough back then in 1450 to that was light enough to actually work because the thing weighed, you know, 1,000 pounds and you couldn't get it off the ground. Well, Wright Brothers got past all of that stuff. And they their their first they did a few prototypes. And this was the Kitty Hawk one that's shown here. Single engine light worked. They flipped a coin and, you know, I think it was will I'm going to get this wrong. Now it's either it was either Wilbur or Orville. Let's just presume that and they flipped the coin. And on that windy day in Kitty Hawk, they got 12 feet off the ground and flew it and flew it and flew it. And here we go. Next slide is a good one. Somebody somewhere this is the patents under a company named Airbus. This was done hard to believe this was the patent was given in 2015, just six years ago, seven years ago. The idea here is we know how how crammed it is when you get in in the normal sort of passenger area, not first class, but the regular coach area in an airplane. I personally, I'm a big tall guy and I I I can't stand it. I can't get my feet to move nothing. Well, this idea was we need to get more passengers on a plane. So let's what do you say? We have a second row above the heads of the bottom row over here. And then we stack them like start literally like sardines in a can. We'll just stack them up and apparently gave no thought at all for passenger comfort safety. How do you get your peanuts? If you're in a stack of humans, how do you order a Coke? All of that stuff. It's it's beyond belief that this even got a patent in 2015. But no, it isn't not in this book. It's not beyond belief. Next slide. Aha. So here we were in the 80s and General Motors, one of the vice presidents there, a guy named John DeLorean, was a big was a big deal. He was a young up and comer at GM. And he's his his first car that he sort of developed on his own was the Pontiac Tempest, and it was a big hit. And especially when DeLorean thought we need to expand the market for this this these kind of cars. What if we take the Pontiac Tempest body and put a big giant V8 engine twice the size of the one that's already in there, and he invented the muscle car at that point. And his success there lasted quite a while, and then he thought he's going to I'm going to make my own car. So he does had this car design that DeLorean made out of stainless steel, a million production problems. It was never a clean sort of effort. It was sort of doomed. And it didn't sell well. And it sort of went down went down the tubes eventually. But he didn't apparently there was a problem with some taxes and the government sort of entrapped him into saying that he was he did a major he ran out. He was paying for the the less development money and manufacturing money on this car design. He needed a lot of money. And the story goes that he was involved in a multi hundred million dollar cocaine importing deal, the smuggling deal. And it was unfortunately for him, he made the deal with the guys from the FBI who were setting him up. So that was the end of DeLorean. He got he got he got in trouble for that one. But but meanwhile, this car gained fame in the back to the future as the had the flux capacitor and all that jazz. So that was a crazy story and a doomed a doomed car. The main thing was it wasn't fast. That's that's what really upset people. It was had a little engine and it didn't go fast. So that's that. Next slide. Aha. Need I say more than Viagra, the closest thing to a sure thing that's ever been invented. Oddly enough, in development for a heart medicine, which was the original design, it was designed for heart disease and and implementing help for the heart. They noticed a side effect with Viagra. And in this in this airspace, I'm not going to say what that side effect is, but I guess we can all presume to understand what that side effect was. And it was a welcome side effect to the company and also to the hundreds of millions worldwide that are graced with its capacity to increase male ardor, shall we say, and keep things happy around the household. So that's the. But there were lawsuits early on. There was a lawsuit that the guy had a side effect that he accidentally took too much Viagra and he claimed he had blue lightning bolts coming out of his fingers. So that's we'll see how that went in court. OK, next slide. Ah, this is there's a woman named Elizabeth Holmes, an inventor, a young, prodigious, sort of smart, smartest girl in the room, always top of her class. I think it was USC or UCLA, Stanford, maybe not forget, but she hated a finger prick to get when they take your blood that she couldn't stand it. It made her crazy and she wanted to do something to help that out. So she came up with the idea that create an algorithm or a physical machine with also all the software that would go with it that you could put one drop of blood in and it would diagnose. She claimed almost all diseases in one drop of blood. She could get all the blood analysis you ever would want. So she formed. A company, Theranos, which is a portmanteau of therapy and diagnosis, Theranos, and was so good at pitching this idea that she got unbelievable people to sign on to it. I think it was George Schultz, the Secretary of State, big corporations. She got funded. You know, she pitched it so well and it seems so doable. And her prototypes look so promising that she got funding and she got funding in the billions. Unfortunately, it never was never it never worked. She never got it to happen. She couldn't make it happen for even one one diagnosis on one drop of blood. So the whole thing kind of fell apart. And but she did a sort of a scientific Ponzi scheme, which is, by the way, being tried in court right now. So all of this is alleged. I should say that she was alleged to. And she's the company she's in court. The company's gone. She was the richest woman in America for a while. Now, she's worth nothing. And it's it's just a big it's just a big scheme that just never worked. So that was that was the blood analysis machine that never was. Next slide. The male chastity device. Hmm. Need I say more? Once again, male ardor occasionally needs to be constrained, shall we say, for whatever the reasons, political, personal, military. And this device is is is a way of stopping the proceeding, shall we say. And easy to use. Well, if you can see the drawing, it's far from easy to use. And I guess the very idea of it would stop the the proceeding. So simple, but impossible. This was again, this device was patented in 2013. So they're still trying. Next slide. This is this is one of my favorites. The forehead support device. Apparently, Mr. Eric Page, a citizen, thought that using the facilities in a men's washroom, the up the standing facility, was for some reason to him a shaky situation. He couldn't he always felt that he needed to triangulate his posture so that he was would have a place to hold hold his head against the wall and still leave both hands free for the proceedings. So this was his design. It's apparently what one does is you go into a male bathroom washroom and you take this invention, which has suction cups on it and you stick it on the wall in front of you. Then it's cushioned and it has four suction cups, as you can see right here. And then you lean your forehead against it and you feel you've been it's triangulated and you feel steady, like a like a three like a three legged milking stool. So that got patented, everybody. It's hard to believe, but it did. That that never lasts. I don't think anybody ever bought one of those. Next slide, the self tipping hat. So here we are in Victorian times, a time of extreme manners. Society was trim and proper. There were ways to greet women on the street by men would greet by just touching their hat is one way. But then occasionally you'd have a full introduction where it would require a bow and a removal of your hat. In other words, to salute the the person you're you're describing or talking to. This guy said, why should I what all the effort that's needed to reach up and take my hat off my head? That's just too much effort for anybody to do. So I'm going to invent a mechanical machine that will tip my hat for me. So here it is. And what it does is it's first of all, the thing must weigh five pounds because it's got a it's got an automatic clockwork pendulum driven mechanism inside it that requires you to bow as you that uses the energy of gravity as you bow forward and reach to your brim of your hat to remove it. And you come back up. You don't have to touch it anymore because the device inside will will prop it up over your head as what it must look like to a viewer is crazy. But it's a mechanical engine to tip your hat for you. I need say no more. They made zero of this one. I don't know if they ever made one. Next slide, Barbie. Well, this is one of the greatest success stories ever. And I guess you'd call it toys. Like, you know, I presume it would be a toy, not to millions of billions of girls around the world. So this came out of a toy manufacturer and it was a husband and wife team. And they they noticed that they were world travelers and they noticed in Germany the popularity of a of a doll, you know, a Barbie sized doll. But in Germany, it was supposed to be a tribute to a sort of shady woman character over there, not really a lady of the evening, but on the edge, perhaps she might have worked in a dance hall kind of thing, kind of a little bit of a wild woman. But they like the idea of the articulated arms and legs and all that. And they came back and after trials and tribulations, they came up with Barbie. And it's the success story of all success stories. It's you can get the now there's everything. Barbie houses, cars, boats, mansions, the whole Barbie, everything. And it's everywhere. And it's it's garnered billions and billions of dollars. So there's Barbie. Next slide. This is a great one. This guy, Ross Eugene Long, the third thought, you know what? Here's my dog. I love my dog. What does my dog love to do? He loves to chase a stick. So I'm going to grab a stick and I'm going to throw it all day long until he gets tired, excuse me, tired. So for some reason, he thought that the stick itself could be improved by making a stick out of some other man made material, painting it to look like a stick and having it be basically a stick. And that was his invention. And so he took the stick that was on the ground and jettisoned that quickly and pulled out this man made stick, which my guess is he throw it in the dog would have nothing to do with it because it's made out of plastic, but we'll see about that. Anyway, the dog toy, which is a stick. Next slide. Dishwashing machine, the 1880s, a woman named Cochran had married a successful, let me remember all this, a successful mercantile guy out West. And soon she was the richest person around. And she was famous for throwing big parties with all the modern conveniences that she could muster up. And this, you know, back then people that came to her parties didn't know what a convenience was. They just came to the party because they just, you know, watered the hogs and sloped up, you know, all that stuff. So she, after one of these parties, she goes, why should I, I just threw the party. Why should I be the one that has to do the dishes? So she invented the dishwashing machine in her out in the barn, out back. Got some hose full of water and an agitator and and did it. And Miss Cochran invented the dishwasher all by her lonesome stuff self way out there in the in the in the far West. Next one. Next slide. There we go. Microwave oven. This was a self taught physicist and he had about nine degrees by the time he got very this Percy Spencer. He was working for Raytheon, the big military industrial company and in the late forties. And they were playing around with with microwaves on an industrial level. And he was working on a machine, you know, the size of a big refrigerator and he was standing near it and he was adjusting it and making, you know, powering it up and down and up and down. And he felt something odd in his pocket and he reached in and the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted and he had no idea until he put it together. He goes, it was the microwaves that melted my chocolate. So that's the whole idea, how the whole idea to use microwaves in civilian form is a household appliance came out of the chocolate bar melting in in the inventor's pocket. And that's where that one come from. Do we have another one? That's it. Aha. Some questions are coming in here. By the way, you're free to call in. This is live now. We'd love to I'd love to not be not able to answer your question live. So you're you're invited. First one is what do most successful patents have in common? The the idea that I think that it's a kind of a tricky question because these are all so different. But I think one thing that's that is in common with all the patent applications is that they can paint a legitimate picture like the guy with this dog stick had to his patent had to describe that in a manner that would be acceptable to the patent office. And they go, well, you know, whatever their long list of questions that must be answered, all the all the patents have to come up and be described in minute detail, the tiniest detail and be acceptable as an answer to to a problem that perhaps doesn't exist as somebody as you can see that some of the ones were ridiculous. But what they have in common is they pitch themselves very well and they make them sound like a lot of people are going to get use out of this. It doesn't did the microwave disturb his skin at all, as well as meant to shock that there isn't any writing that says it did. It would it would seem that chocolate would melt before the human skin would would be burned. That's I'm just throwing that out there. What do I know? But it seems like that would be the chocolate bar would go first. Did Hedy Lamar have a genius level IQ? They say she did. She was an amazing woman. I mean, she was she always she said things like to look good. What's what's inside your head is much more interesting to me than how pretty you are. I mean, she was one of those kind of had it all figured out in her head and she didn't the beauty thing turned her off. She like the brain power aspect. Well, I suppose we're wrapping up. It's been a pleasure. If you have if any of this interested you, even in the slightest, our book Rainstorms and Mindfarts is available everywhere. Amazon, the works and I was happy to be here. And best of luck to all of you and to me. Thanks.