Mad Ideas and Inventions from 'How to Make a Tornado'

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Mad Ideas and Inventions from 'How to Make a Tornado'

How to Make a Tornado is a new book that collects some of the strangest scribbles from the margins of scientific history. Read on for a sample of some of the oddest, silliest and most downright useless ideas and inventions ever.

Safety brolly
An ideal present for the anxious is an umbrella that protects them from fire. In 1991, Taiwanese inventors proposed such a brolly: it would look like and ordinary umbrella, but would be clad with ceramic insulation. So if the owner was caught in a fire, the brolly would protect the head. If that failed, said the inventors, the brolly could be used as a parachute to ‘help the user escape from a high-rise building’.

Smoker’s cough
In 1992, Wan Chung of Taiwan filed a patent application for an ashtray designed to turn against smokers. It has a slot at the side for a box of matches, and when a smoker picked up the box, the ashtray would make a coughing sound and warn against smoking.

Read this first
In 1996, reader John Isles wrote to tell us about information supplied with his Kenner Toy Company’s ‘Batman Returns’ costume. ‘Caution,’ it announced. ‘Cape does not enable user to fly.’

Bleeping Miss Daisy
In 1993, according to New Internationalist, cowherds in Japan were in short supply, so researchers tried developing pagers to attach to cows’ collars. They could then be ‘bleeped’ as milking time. The cows responded to musical notes, and were apparently particularly attracted by paino melodies. Only two weeks were needed to train the cattle to come home when paged.

Sporting Chance
In his book Gut Reactions: Understanding symptoms of the digestive tract, W. G. Thomson wrote that in preparation for the 1976 Olympics, East German swimmers has 1.8 litres of air pumped into their colons to improve buoyancy. Thomson said: ‘It apparently helped crawl and backstroke specialists, but a breaststroker complained that his gas-filled gut caused his feet to stick out of the water. Perhaps sports authorities will need to test athletes for flatus, as well as steroids.’

Mozart’s bra
The bicentenary of Mozart’s death in 1991 was celebrated by Japanese electronic wizardry. A lingerie firm in Tokyo made a musical bra containing a microcircuit in the clasp and a small loudspeaker which fitted into the wearer’s armpit. Hooking the bra up switched its audio system on, and it played a 20-second blast of Mozart. This was part of a miniature son et lumiere display, because the bra also featured tiny flashing lights that winked during the music.

Warning smile
In 1967, from the research laboratories of American industry there came a toothpaste which glowed in the dark and reflected the headlights of motor cars. It was the first toothpaste that could be advertised as making a definite contribution to road safety – so long as those who used it remembered to walk facing the traffic and to keep grinning.

Germany bans ‘rejuvinating’ sheep cell injections
In 1997, Germans were no longer permitted to have tissue from sheep foetuses injected into their buttocks. Several thousand people in Germany underwent this process every year, believing that the foetal cells had rejuvenating properties. But in the late 1990s, health officials in Bonn said that they had decided to ban the practice, pointing to severe immune reactions in some patients. A ministry of Health report said that up to 5 per cent of patients has reactions to the injection and in five documented cases patients had died.
Jutta Buscha, a doctor in the Bavarian town of Rottach-Egern who practised the therapy, said, ‘I don’t understand this enmity, this persecution. The people who sit in judgement on us never even came for a visit.’