Pioneers of patents pending

PresentTense: As The Irish Times moves office, it may allow us answer at least one of the great mysteries surrounding the old building: just how many man-hours are currently lost to the hand dryers.

It's not unusual to find someone rubbing their hands fruitlessly under a gentle waft of cold air. Before eventually giving up, and either wiping their hands on their suit or returning to their desks, fingers dripping, and laying their fingers on the keyboard in the hope that they won't short-circuit the computer, the building or themselves.

The Germans probably have a word for an invention that should in principle improve everyday life, but which in practice becomes only an extra irritant. Which is why it was interesting to see James Dyson visiting Ireland last week to show off what he claims will be a major step forward in hand dryer technology. It involves, I believe, several blades and a powerful jet. Although, I may have mistaken it for the latest brand of razor.

Dyson's reputation was made in reinventing the vacuum cleaner, and has survived a less successful reinvention of the washing machine. He appeared on The Late Late Show in a segment that couldn't have been more like an infomercial if Dyson had shown off a new way to dice cucumber. Nevertheless, he was greeted with enthusiasm. Time was when the kind of technological pioneers that brought the Irish public out were those who landed plywood planes in fields in the west. But we live in more trivial times.

Then, this week it was announced that a young inventor had developed a method of boiling eggs without using water. Resembling the offspring of a lamp that's had a sweaty night with a cafetiere, it cooks the "perfect" egg in six minutes using four halogen bulbs, and then neatly slices the top off while making sure to leave enough room for dunking soldiers. Its creator had begun by cooking eggs under a standard table lamp. That took so long that the egg was in danger of hatching before cooking.

Viewers of the BBC's compelling Dragons' Den - in which entrepreneurs pitch for an investment in their business ideas - will remember an inventor appearing on that show with a similar promise. His device resembled an iEgg, a slick piece of design that kind of cuddled its eggs into edibility. And it didn't work. Yet, he walked away with the money, meaning that we may be entering an era in which the battle to put a waterless egg-boiler in every home will see embryonic feathers flying.

Dragons' Den, which is still available to view on the BBC website, has become a global hit, exported to Australia and New Zealand and proving that perhaps the best idea of the entire show is the show itself. What makes it most entertaining, though, are the more eccentric inventions. You might imagine that there are few new ideas left in the world, but it turns out there are plenty. Even better, most of them are dodgy ones. Take, for instance, the pitch for Superknees - wheels for your knees that will speed up jobs such as plumbing and gardening. Or the lounge chair that was just like any other, except it belched out a treadmill when required.

Previously, when a light bulb went on over somebody's head, if it turned out to be a cracked and flickering filament then its brilliance was likely to be hidden from everyone bar its creator.

The patents office was the place where the more fantastical impulses of human ingenuity went to be filed in triplicate and then ignored. Here lay the ignored evidence that someone had once seen the need to file a patent for a "toe puppet". That someone else felt the world wanted a dust cover for dogs. Or a device for sucking air from behind a toilet if a person is caught in a hotel fire.

But now the internet - arguably the single best invention of the past half-century if you don't count the electric screwdriver - opens them up to the world. The Irish Patents Office, www.patentsoffice.ie, has its archive online, should you feel inclined to sift through the collective inventiveness of this and several other countries. Or you could go to the very useful Free Patents Online, www.freepatentsonline.com, a database of US patent office archives that also has had the good grace to pick out some of the more ridiculous ones for your entertainment.

Ideas such as the "inclining coffin", patented in 2003. Its inventor explains: "A typical coffin is rectangular in shape and the deceased is generally laid flat. This is, however, a relatively unnatural position, and can be quite upsetting for a person to view their beloved in this manner." Yes, a standing corpse is so much more natural.

We also get a glimpse into minds that saw it fit to invent the kissing shield "in which a flexible membrane is used as a kissing shield to lessen one's chances of becoming infected by disease from casual contact". Or the smoker's hat, which not only extracts bad air but pumps in a freshly scented replacement. Or the intriguing "apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force".

At which point, it is customary for a columnist to say: "You couldn't make it up." Except, of course, someone already has.