Fiction Useless Inventions
The Fitted Sheet Folder That Hands Back a Neat Little Ball
A laundry gadget that promises to fold a fitted sheet into a crisp square and hands it back as a tidy round bundle, exactly as you would have done yourself.
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Fact-based How It Started
The Tea Bag Was Patented Years Before Its Famous Accident
The tea bag is said to have been born by mistake, when customers dunked silk sample pouches around 1908, but two women in Milwaukee had already filed a patent for one in 1901.
Fact-based Nature Did It First
A Firefly's Crooked Scales Showed LEDs How to Shine Brighter
The lantern of a firefly is covered in scales that fit together badly, like wonky roof tiles, and copying that jagged pattern let a lab LED give out up to 55 per cent more light.
Fact-based How It Started
The Barcode Began as Morse Code Drawn in Beach Sand
A young engineer on a Florida beach stretched the dots and dashes of Morse code into lines in the sand, and about 25 years later his idea rang up a pack of chewing gum.
Fiction Useless Inventions
The Coaster That Is Never Where the Mug Lands
A cork coaster on tiny wheels that rolls a few centimetres aside each time you lift your cup, so the mug always comes down on the bare table, just as it would have anyway.
Fact-based How It Started
The Bendy Straw Began With a Milkshake Too Tall for a Small Girl
A father watching his daughter struggle with a straight straw at a soda counter reached for a screw and some dental floss, and the first customers for his idea were not children at all.
Fact-based How It Started
The Slinky Began as a Ship Spring That Fell Off a Shelf
In 1943 an engineer working on springs to steady instruments on ships knocked one off a shelf, and instead of flopping in a heap it walked down to the floor and stood up.
Fact-based How It Started
Your Pencil Has Never Had Any Lead in It
The grey core of a pencil is graphite, a soft form of carbon, and the lead in its name comes from a mix-up on an English hillside more than 450 years ago.
Fiction Useless Inventions
The Jar Lid That Only Opens for the Second Person
A new jam jar lid stays firmly shut for whoever tries first and then twists off with a gentle turn the moment it is handed to someone else, exactly as everyone always suspected.
Fact-based How It Started
The Frisbee Took Its Name From a Bakery's Pie Tins
Long before plastic flying discs, people in Connecticut were said to be sailing empty pie tins from a Bridgeport bakery across the grass, and the bakery's name stuck.