Tell Us About Your Invention - The one you thought of and someone else marketed

[Doc Tinker]

What did you dream up but thought it would never go?



Doc

 

[illflem]

Back when I was a kid I thought there must be a better way than using your hands to get dirt out of a hole. So I got a bent piece of metal and hooked it to a wood pole. Worked great but then my neighbor, Dute Shoval, saw it and took all the credit.

 

[kiwi bird]

I thought I was going to strike it big with my invention of disposable hyperbaric chambers for extremity injuries such as diabetics have - unfortunately someone else thought of it and marketed it first - rats.



Still think my sealing system was better though.

 

[Doc Tinker]

LOL illfem, I always thought you were as old as dirt.



Doc

 

[dmurdock]

Back a ways I invented the internet... i told my hippy girlfriend about the idea and then forgot about it. Well, she ended up marrying some dude named al goar or bore or gerr or something like that... .





Oh yeah, and my next door neighbor (that b***h) stole my recipe for cookies. . I don't know her name but her husband's name is jerry or jarod or something. . last name Crocker.



One more, don't even ASK me about that Dell b****rd I had for a roommate in college... (he stole another one of my ideas and on top of that introduced my girlfriend at the time to that Al G dude I talked about above... )

 

[Whitmore]

Hey Murdock

A little follow thru and you could have been someone



Having been in fire department related stuff , I some how got our dept involved with first alert smoke detectors and a cut rate price to just get the houses equipted with these new devices in the late 70's and we actually had a video tape of a christmas tree going up in flames in a hurry and basically just showed people the dangers and of course how much smoke and heat was involved and then the fire spread beyond the incepient stage to a free burn stage,all this was timed in the corner of the screen , the tape was Beta and not many people had them but we did flood the area hard with all kinds of smoke detectors and this was good but what I did was I wanted to make a smoke detector that was also a christmas tree decoration or possibly a star for the top and if you had a fire it was there on duty and lifes were saved , then I would be a rich inventor, well I never did persue the idea and guess what about 5 years later my wife showed me the Avon book at christmas time and my idea was in there..... lazy me ... ... ... . do not procrastinate on ideas that have potential... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Kevin

 

[RottnDogue]

You ever hear of Darren & Wesson? No of course not, that thief Smith beat me to it.



Darren



Oh yeah and those little umbrella's in the Drink's Yeah that's not me either.

 

[illflem]

All kidding aside this one is real, but a little complicated to explain. In the apple orchards we used sticky traps with a insect pheromone (scent) capsule that smelled like a female codling moth (the worm in your apple). The males would be attracted to the scent and get trapped, we could then count the trapped moths to monitor for sprays. My idea was to place hundreds of the pheromones capsules per acre to confuse the male moths so much they couldn't find the females to breed. I went to the USDA with my idea, they canned it, said it would just attract more moths to the orchard and create more problems. Lo and behold 15 years later my idea is successfully used on over 100,000 apple and pear acres in many cases eliminating chemical sprays altogether. The system is now widely known as mating disruption and is being developed for a number of insect pests on many crops. As far as I know no one has taken credit for the system and I don't think it would have been possible to patent anyways.



I did invent a tool for attaching the modern pheromones, which resemble twist ties, to tree branches. This eliminated much labor with ladders. I sold hundreds of the tools and it was widly known as the Bill Hoop. Problem is the tool is so simple anyone can make it.

 

[lgibson]

While I was a volunteer for the National Park Service at Lake Mead Nevada, I received a call about a "Floating outhouse" broke anchor and was floating some where in the Boulder Basin, close to 200 miles of shore line. Of course it was dark and no moon at all.

Well if you never seen a "floating outhouse" it is about 30'x30' and would tear a boat to pieces if one would hit it. After about three hours of searching I saw something way off. The ranger I was with said that is not it. He thought what I saw was just something small floating. We went over to check it out, and it took us about 15 minutes to get to it. Well it was the outhouse, and we towed it back to Callville.

I told the ranger that there sould be some reflectors or reflective tape so it would be easier to spot. Yep he turned that in has his ideal and received a bouns and a atta boy.

I got nothing, not even a thank you. It was fine with me because he was in hot water anyway.

A few nights before this we get a medical call out at sandy cove. This ranger, and one other one, took off in the brand new ranger boat. The boat was less than 5 days old. Well this ranger, and I will not saw Paul's name, miss judged the cove and ran this boat over a point of land back into the water and 100' onto land again. I had to go rescue this rangers who were red faced. The only thing that saved the boat was that Boston Whaler puts a medal skid plate covering the bottem. Only torn the lower unit out of it.

So next time you are out at a National park and see reflective tape on Floating outhouses, its my ideal... .

 

[rrausch]

Me: Nothing.



My Aunt, Emma Miller, invented the squeeze glue bottle. No kidding. She was working at the Spartan Aircraft Company, in Tulsa, Ok, during WWII and after the war Spartan started manuf'ing travel trailers! Emma worked in the woodworking dept. and at that time they used glue buckets and glue brushes. Emma got the idea to use a squeeze bottle to get the glue to the wood and made her own. She took it to work and soon other wood-workers wanted one too. She made a few, then the company found out and gave her a bonus, because of the boost to productivity. I have the original picture in which she is being given the award for inventing the glue bottle.



Also, my Pop invented the dating of milk (In Missouri at least). Back in the early 1950's he went broke farming and got a job driving a milk truck. One day a guy came up to him and complained about a quart of milk he had bought at the local market--(Moss Market, in Monett, Mo. ) Pop got to thinking. The name of the dairy was Holmes dairy. The name Holmes has 6 letters. He delivered milk 6 days a week. My brother and I had to get up at 4:30 and help him on the truck, and from then on, part of our job was to place a pencil mark above each letter to designate what day it had been bottled on. H-Monday, O-Tuesday etc. Soon word of this spread through the dairy industry and eventually sombody figured out a way to make a machine which dated milk, but my Pop, Loren Rausch, came up with the idea. He never made a cent from it.

True Stories!

 

[Champane Flight]

Not

I have plenty of ideas, but I am not tellin you guys... ... ... ... ...

 

[BigDaddy]

True Story,

I once worked with a fella that was always tinkering (not Doc) in his basement. Would be down there for hours, day after day. Well about fifteen years ago (or there about) he made two prototype high powered water guns with large water reservoir’s. One held it’s own reservoir and the other was a backpack model.



He approached several “market your invention” businesses and spent quite a bit of his own money and never had any luck with getting his idea sold.



Well, two years later guess what show’s up in the toy market. He did see a lawyer, but without a lot more of his own money and years of litigation, there was not much he could do

 

[DaveN]

When I was younger I used to do alot of waterskiing. When waterskiing, the special ski boats are generally "geared" lower so that they have more oomph out of the hole, for pulling people out of the water. Problem was is that they aren't very fast. Most of your other pleasure boats have a higher "gear" so that they cruise more efficiently, and have a higher top speed. I thought why not make a two speed transmission for boats? Sure enough six months later B&M announces their "brand new" two speed transmission for boats. :{



I also had an idea for a mosquito trap that I've recently seen that someone else is on to and is marketing. Unfortunaltely they aren't using the proper technique, I don't think that they are very successful. Someday when I get some ambition I will make one of those and become the next Bill Gates. :-laf I just don't know if the UL will approve it, it uses some unorthodox techniques, but VERY effective.

 

[Mr. Brewski]

I had an idea about 20 years ago for a circuit that would adjust the volume of the car radio whenever the background noise changed - I even tried to build it. I see that its a stock feature on GM's higher end Delco-Matics... .



My grandfather (A tool and die maker) made the first dies to put the frilly mylar stuff on toothpicks... .

 

[hdtrukn]

If I woulda just thought

I used to build docks and sea walls.

Made myself a neat little contraption to level things up.

You now those cheap A$$ little lazer pointers.

I duct taped one to my plastic ie floating level.

Used for a couple of years to level things.

Dont think you can buy a level these days that doesnt have a lazer attached.

Oh well

Who needs all the headaches of unlimited money anyway.

Thanks

Scott

 

[midnight1black]

Invention

:--) Anyone every heard of Air. I think a lot of folks out here are full of it... ha ha. maybe we can bottle it and sale it to,

 

[merryman]

2 of them;

1. About 20 years ago we were raising,training, showing and selling horses, so we were traveling to a lot of horse shows. At one point our best "show" mare did not tie-----she'd had a real bad experience when the prior owner tied her to a panel in his barn that fell over on her---- so I devised a portable corrall that folded up against the side of the trailer for travel.

Two or three years after we started showing up at horse shows with it, it appeared on the market!!



2. Near that same time ago, I started carrying a handgun due to fairly regular and a few times credible threats from courtroom customers, and did not find a holster I really liked so I made one that I could carry either in my pants hooked over the belt or in my boot. I liked it so well I sent one off to a well known northwest maker and marketer of firearm accessories. Asked them to take a lot and let me know if they were interested---yea, I knew there was a risk they would just use it ---but these were reputable people. Well, I never heard a word back, they did not even return the item, so out of curiosity, I kep an eye on their catalogue; about 2 or 3 years later, yup, there it was in their catalogue.



Vaughn

 

[jwgary]

I still have several things in the works, but there is one that did get produced. When the craze of receiver covers started going strong, I thought it would be a good idea to put a light in there. You could plug it into the trailer plug and have a third brake light. About a year later I saw one in the JCWhitney catalog. I am still working on another break light design, but I haven't had the time to mess with it.

 

[Scot]

The first DR Trimmer (grass and brush) I ever saw was the one I built. Electric Weed-Eaters had just hit the market. They had a tiny, underpowered motor.



Mine was much more crude than what is produced now (as I was 10-12yo). I used a vertical shaft 2 stroke engine turning an edger shaft vertical at 1:1. I took ~1 1/4" parachute strap and empregnated it with 3M Super Weatherstrip Adhesive (yellow). It was sandwiched between washers 3" or so in diameter.



The "blade" would take down brush up to 3/4" and would wear forever. Bearing life was short as it probably turned 7K RPM.

 

[WOWZY]

Originally posted by Scot

3M Super Weatherstrip Adhesive (yellow).

Also known as "Gorilla Snot" in the shadetree mechanic trade.