Inventions Someone Could Have Thought Up Years Earlier
by Alan S. Brown
What makes a design obvious?
The U.S. Supreme Court and European Patent Office have both weighed in on the issue. While they diverge on the details, they both agree that an invention is something that would not be obvious to a "person having ordinary skill in the art." In other words, this hypothetical PHOSITA (an abbreviation common in patent law circles) would not solve the problem the same way as the invention.
That's all well and good. Yet there remain some inventions that seem so obvious—after they are invented— that they inspire us all to slap our foreheads and ask, "Why didn't I think of that?" They could have been invented years earlier, if only somebody had seen the problem differently—or even noticed the problem at all.
The best of these innovations share all the hallmarks of good design. They are useful, intuitive, unobtrusive, durable, and affordable. They are also economical in the sense that they do a lot with a little. That is what makes them elegant.
Everyone probably has a list of inventions like these—so useful and simple no one knows why they weren't invented sooner. We’d like to hear some ideas from your list. Send comments and additions to memag@asme.org.
Here are some favorites from the staff of Mechanical Engineering.
Tilt-and-roll luggage. Today, tilt-and-roll suitcases are so common, we would be hard pressed to find a traveler without one. And certainly, there is nothing complex about attaching two wheels and a handle to a suitcase. It requires no more prior art than the knowledge of wheels and levers.
One of the earliest attempts to put wheels on a suitcase dates back to Denton Chester Crowl, a Chautauqua entertainer. Sometime around the advent of the motorcar, Crowl began selling the Ali Carrier, a set of removable luggage wheels invented by fellow performer J. Mohammad Ali. According to Crowl's advertising, the invention "took the lug out of luggage."
Over time, wheels became a part of luggage. By the 1980s, many large pieces featured four wheels (some detachable) and a leash to drag the suitcase along.
The inventor who got it right was Robert Plath, a pilot for Northwest Airlines (now part of Delta). In 1987, he stood his carry-on upright and added two wheels to the bottom and a retractable handle to the top. Other crewmembers wanted one too. Plath founded TravelPro International to sell his new tilt-and-roll luggage, and sold the business in 1999.
One-way assembly. Fifteen or 20 years ago, buying preassembled products often involved disassembly as well as assembly. That was because many parts had nearly identical shapes. It was easy to screw, glue, or pound them in backwards or in the wrong place.
Some engineers must have recognized our plight (or perhaps it happened to them), because many of today's products will fit together one way and one way only.
Take, for example, the fax ink film cartridge pictured above. When the film roll comes to the end, you could buy a whole new cartridge. Or you could buy just a roll of film. The cartridge's design will not let you install it the wrong way.
To put in the new roll, we remove the old roll and take off the plastic gears that jog the film forward. There are three green gears and one blue gear. The green gears have two ribs 180 degrees apart that slide into the new roll of film. The blue gear has two ribs 90 degrees apart and will only slide into one side of the film roll with 90 degree slots.
The carriage has a blue marking to show where the blue gear goes (plus instructional pictures on its front). In case you're not paying attention, only the blue gear is narrow enough to fit into the correct location on the cartridge.
A blue tab on the fax machine shows you where to line up the blue gear and cartridge marking. If you're not paying attention and put the cartridge in backward, fins that extend over the component's top will keep the fax from closing.
The system is not foolproof, but a fool would have to make a very determined effort to mount the cartridge backwards.
Color-coded connectors. To hook up a sophisticated stereo once required some knowledge of where to attach the phonograph, speakers, tape player, antenna, and ground. This sounds complex, but it was by no means as hard as putting together today's home theaters, which include all of those components plus televisions, cable or satellite receivers, DVD players, recorders, multiple speakers, and more recently, computers and home networks.
Yet home theaters are far, far easier to hook together. Why? Because jacks and wires are color coded. For the most part, it's as easy as matching red to red and yellow to yellow. Those cables that do not have a color code have connectors with unusual shapes that match up easily with the odd-looking ports on the back of your equipment.
Color coding is common in consumer electronics, and is moving into industry as well. It is an innovation that could have happened any time in the past 75 years or so. All it took was a committee of competitors to agree on a color scheme. (And you thought decorating your home was hard.)
Two-sided keys. This was a slick invention for anyone who ever fumbled with a car key in a cold parking lot late at night. Instead of looking for the business end to align up or down, the two-sided key works no matter which way you insert it into the door lock.
Actually, there were two-sided keys before automakers began using them several decades ago. But they had different patterns on each of the two sides and were designed to make locks harder to pick. Once a luxury and now common, today's two-sided keys are being replaced with electromechanical systems that include circuitry to open the door.
Squeeze bottles. Once upon a time, a ketchup maker spent millions to advertise how hard it was to get the company’s thick, rich ketchup out of its glass bottle. A generation grew up thinking that vigorous shaking (and splattering ketchup on plates, tables, and occasionally walls) was a good thing.
Because the advertisers wanted to sell ketchup rather than educate engineers, they didn't mention that ketchup is pseudoplastic. In its sitting state, ketchup is viscous, like lava, blood, whipped cream, nail polish, and molten plastic. Applying force perpendicular (shear) to such materials thins them out so they move freely. Caterers have known this for years. When they empty one half-filled bottle into another, they invert the bottle and slap the neck with two fingers to thin the ketchup so it will move along.
A better way to apply sheer is to switch to a plastic bottle that you can squeeze. This not only thins the ketchup, but forces it out of the bottle. The ketchup comes out in a strong spurt that goes on your hamburger and not on your walls.
Heinz introduced the first ketchup squeeze bottle in 1984. Sixteen years later, the company redesigned the squeeze bottle with a wide top so you can store it upside down. That way, there's no waiting for the ketchup to roll down the bottle. But leave it outside at a picnic and the sunlight will heat and expand the air inside, pressurizing the ketchup. Open the lid too fast and you'll get more ketchup than you need in one place.
Fat pens. Once upon a time, elegant pens were thin but they were hard to hold. Today, pens have grown fatter, with pliant plastic bulges and shapes that make them easier to get your fingers around. The same is true for tools and industrial products.
The inspiration for many of these designs originated with Sam Farber, who founded kitchenware maker Copco in 1960. But he didn't really get going as a designer until he retired in 1989 and his wife developed arthritis. She found conventional cookware hard to hold and use. So Farber called in designers Patricia Moore and Smart Design. Together, they developed a set of kitchen tools with fat, pliable handles for twist and push-pull tools like knives and potato peelers.
This made them easier to grasp and use. People with arthritis loved them, and so did everyone else. Farber's new company, OXO International, became an overnight sensation. Other designers began applying the pliant polyurethane grips to other products, and they began to show up on everything from hammers and screwdrivers to bicycle handlebars. And pens.
Running bra. Women have long played tennis and ridden horses, but it was not until the start of the jogging craze that anyone thought they needed a special type of bra to support their breasts and protect their chest ligaments during high-impact exercises.
The first sports bra was created in 1977 by Hinda Miller, a costume designer at a Vermont Shakespeare festival (and a graduate of Parsons School of Design) and her colleague, Lisa Lindahl. In what was surely one of the great ironic moments of the women's movement, the women stitched their first prototype together from two jockstraps. It later evolved into something that resembled a tank top.
Miller's and Lindahl's Jogbra was a huge success. The women later sold the business to Sara Lee. Miller continued to run, but not just on the track. She ran for the Vermont State Senate in 2002 and was elected. She ran for mayor of Burlington in 2006 and placed second. | 
