The Inventions in Everything team celebrates the spirit of innovation, even when they fail to live up to the promises their inventors laid out in their patent applications. Usually, the IIE team focuses on the stories of inventions that were novel enough to be awarded patents, but today's feature is a truly failed invention that never made it past the patent application stage.

U.S. Patent Application 2008/0299533 A1 was filed on 4 June 2007. The application describes inventor Frank C. Orsini's vision of a "Naughty or Nice Meter", which would let children discover exactly how they stand in the eyes of Santa Claus.

That's right, the Santa Claus. Who, as we all know, determines whether or not any of the items listed on a child's Christmas wish list will ever show up among any gifts they open. Provided they don't forget to leave some cookies and milk out to snack on when he might visit.

All children have to do is submit their honest self-assessment of how well they've performed on twelve behavioral metrics, scoring each on a scale of 0-to-5, with the Naughty or Nice Meter tallying their total score to determine whether they qualify as naughty, nice, or something in between. Because apparently, Santa Claus believes these kinds of metrics are extremely valuable for assessing child performance and has chosen helpers who all aspire to work in the human resources department of a large, impersonal corporation to help him compile the records he needs to quantify their moral development.

To be fair, it could be worse. If the alternative is Santa Claus operating the most sophisticated personal surveillance system ever devised to actively and continuously monitor every person on the planet to find out who's really naughty and who's really nice, we should all be grateful of Orsini's proposed innovation. Here's a figure from the patent application we've colorized to give a sense of how the behavioral self-assessment might be presented to the child resource who needs their naughtiness/niceness score quantified:

Here are Orsini's suggested twelve metrics on which the child resource's morality might be assessed:

1. Listens to parents.
2. Tells the truth.
3. Says "Please" and "Thank You".
4. Eats all meals.
5. Has a Clean Room.
6. Helps around the house.
7. Completes homework on time.
8. Does well in school.
9. Follows Directions.
10. Plays nice with other children.
11. Respects others.
12. Goes to bed on time.

The Naughty and Nice Meter allows the user to input the scores into a calculator, which determines the child resource's final ranking. Orsini proposes the following scale, which closely resembles the kind of grading system you might have encountered in elementary school:

In any case, we can see why Orsini's Naughty or Nice Meter never became a patented invention. For an invention submitted in the 2000s, there's nothing truly patent-worthy about its physical manifestation, while its functionality relies on the previously patented technology of a calculator. The only thing really unique about it is the algorithm Orsini concocted for determining a Naughty/Nice score, but alas, algorithms are not patentable.

We can go on with our analytical critique, but we're afraid we'll have to leave shortly to meet with IIE's human resources department auditor. It seems we need to complete some kind of evaluation that will determine what our next year bonuses will be before the upcoming holiday break.

Halloween is here once again, which means its time to celebrate our most unusual and most erratic tradition. For us, there's nothing more scary than being invited to sit in a chair that, well, might as well be the spawn of the devil.

This Halloween, we have three unusual chairs to feature, which in a first for us, all involve video presentations by their designers. Are you ready to have a seat? How willing would you be to sit in any of these chairs?

The Sinking Chair

It's rare that a single movie inspires the design of a chair, but when that movie is The Shining, what kind of seat do you think will come out of that inspiration?

In our first featured video, Philipp Aduatz introduces us to The Sinking Chair, which we think takes the idea of an uncomfortable park bench to a whole new level:

Want to know more about how to approach this chair? Core77 provides this interpretation guide:

The Sinking Chair—seemingly descending into a pool of vivid red—captures a haunting interplay between modern design and profound narrative. Crafted from 3D-printed concrete and inspired by Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, the work symbolizes the enduring traces of trauma. Its clean, architectural form contrasts sharply with the fluid, organic resin symbolizing blood, evoking unease and introspection.

This piece embodies the idea that design holds the power to confront deeply human experiences. By addressing themes of collective trauma and the cyclical nature of conflict, the Sinking Chair invites viewers to reflect on the scars of the past and how they shape the present. It subtly alludes to contemporary political developments, including the resurgence of authoritarian tendencies and ideological divisions, which echo historical warnings and reinforce the importance of vigilance and empathy.

he chair explores the delicate tension between what is submerged and what persists, urging contemplation of memory, fragility, and resilience. Through its evocative design and material innovation, the Sinking Chair bridges the emotional and the functional, sparking dialogue about the evolving role of design in engaging with the human condition. It challenges us to consider not only what design can achieve aesthetically, but also how it can evoke empathy, reflection, and healing in an increasingly complex and polarized world.

And you can sit on it. Though perhaps not as comfortably as you might like.

The Spaghetti Western Saddle Chair

In the early days of radio, motion pictures and television, lots of entertainment was themed around the Old West in the United States. Eventually, people got tired of the genre and moved on to entertainment in other settings, but before they rode off into the proverbial movie sunset, a number of low budget Westerns made by Italians gave them their last true popular and critical success. Spaghetti westerns, as they came to be called, brought something new and different to the old Western tropes.

Well, saddle up pardner, because this time, Italian designer Raffaella Mangiarotti has brought the spirit of the spaghetti western to your home furnishings, in the form of the Pepe Chair. The following video tells the story....

As the video makes clear, there's a lot of skill and craft that goes into making a high quality leather chair that can truly make you feel like you're atop a horse while you watch television or toil away at your desk job.

The Banality of Evil in the Form of a Chair

Imagine you've been on your feet all day. You'd like nothing better than to plop down in your favorite comfy chair. But no, the twisted chair designer at Isekai.Lab has a different idea. Before you even think about sitting, first you have to solve... a Rubik's cube. But not just any Rubik's cube. The one you need to solve is the chair they've designed for you to sit upon, after you've successfully solved it. And then, it's not even a truly comfortable chair you can relax in, but rather a small stool. Here's a demonstration of their vision of evil in action (click the image to start playing the video):

Previously on Political Calculations

• Outside the Box Thinking: The Ghost Chair
• Cathisophobia
• Chairs to Haunt Your Dreams This Hallow's Eve
• Chairs of Terror
• Furnishings Fit for Halloween
• Happy Halloween! Now Have a Seat...
• Markets in Everything: Scary Chairs to Sit Upon

Outside the Box Thinking celebrates technology that both breaks the rules of convention and that, for one reason or another, will not be patented. Today's featured innovation meets both those requirements and could, for the right person, be an ideal Christmas gift!

Let's start with the basics. It's a battery-powered, handheld flashlight. Something that most people will be very familiar with because the basic flashlight design has been around for decades. If you close your eyes and think of a flashlight, you'll almost certainly envision a small cylindrical tube that easily fits in your hand, which has a glass-covered lamp on one end, is hollow except for the batteries that power it, and which you operate with switch on the outside of the tube.

So when we tell you today's featured innovation is a double-barreled flashlight, that description alone should clue you in that something very different is happening with this device. And that's before we even mention this flashlight, which has been inspired by the design of binoculars, uses lasers to project a "highly focused, ultra-long-range beam" that outperforms today's conventional flashlight technology.

And then it's also waterproof and very damage resistant.

What's more, it's a Kickstarter project that's still in its fundraising phase, but which has already surpassed it's funding goal, so it will be made. Here's their video pitch:

If all goes as its creators plan, it will ship in December 2025. As far as we can tell, the downside is that it's expensive. Even so, the Kickstarter project's funding phase has another two weeks to go and, at this writing, it's still possible to get in on the early bird specials. Which are still expensive, but are a big discount to what the creators indicate would be the regular retail price. If you could buy it in a store.

That's how outside the box this flashlight is.

For all the press that AI and all the companies behind it get, it's rare to find any story that identifies something the Large Language Models (LLMs) behind today's Artificial Intelligence technologies have accomplished that represents a true advancement.

Most stories are about AI's teething problems, such as its problems in creating images of people with too many figures or some other form of body horror dystopia. Other news items deal with how the ability of AI to completely automate writing is negatively impacting education, publishing, music, filmmaking, and other fields.

But stories involving AI systems doing anything new and useful, that hasn't been seen or done before, are rare.

That story still hasn't been written. At least in any traditional media. But there is breaking news of an AI system that's broken new ground in mathematics. By generating a new mathematical proof that mathematicians have verified is correct

That story came to our attention through a post at X and it's probably best to let that post tell the tale:

GPT-5 just casually did new mathematics.

Sebastien Bubeck gave it an open problem from convex optimization, something humans had only partially solved. GPT-5-Pro sat down, reasoned for 17 minutes, and produced a correct proof improving the known bound from 1/L all the way to 1.5/L.

This wasn’t in the paper. It wasn’t online. It wasn’t memorized. It was new math. Verified by Bubeck himself.

Humans later closed the gap at 1.75/L, but GPT-5 independently advanced the frontier. A machine just contributed original research-level mathematics.

If you’re not completely stunned by this, you’re not paying attention.

We’ve officially entered the era where AI isn’t just learning math, it’s creating it.

Here's the X post in which Bubeck announced the accomplishment.

But as Bubeck later notes, while GPT-5 did something that was both new and novel, humans still beat AI to the punch and delivered a better proof focused on the convex optimization problem that outperforms the AI-generated proof:

Now the only reason why I won't post this as an arxiv note, is that the humans actually beat gpt-5 to the punch :-). Namely the arxiv paper has a v2 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.10138v2 with an additional author and they closed the gap completely, showing that 1.75/L is the tight bound.

While that better proof clearly beat it, the unexpected artificially generated proof demonstrates AI systems are becoming more capable and useful. Because they are, more things are becoming possible.

The open question however is when will AI's promise and ability to deliver on it outshine all the AI-generated slop that dominates what it has done to date?

Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An image illustrating the concept of an artificial intelligence system creating an entirely new mathematical proof".

The pages of the calendar have turned forward to October once more. In the northern hemisphere, the days are getting shorter, their warmth becoming more and more fleeting. Increasingly bare branches on trees reach out like the fingers of skeletons that move as chilled winds blast through them. Nights are getting longer and seemingly darker.

In short, the conditions and circumstances of "spooky season" have returned. The growing sense of the season's eerie dread will only end after October 31, when Halloween has come and gone and we can turn our full attention to the coming winter.

The Inventions in Everything team likes to celebrate the arrival of the spooky season by exploring the patents whose inventors see opportunity in the celebration of the macabre. Which naturally leads to our latest featured innovation, given unending life in the form of U.S. Patent 7,627,935: the Doll Urn.

It's inventor, Deborah R. Ostrum, was awarded a patent for her invention that stores the cremated remains of loved ones inside dolls on 8 December 2009. Figures 1 and 2 of the patent illustrate her vision, depicting how the ashes of the dead might be kept within what we would describe as "creepy" dolls:

Inventor Ostrum makes plain the purpose of her innovation in the Background of the Invention portion of the patent:

The present invention features doll urn for storing a human's or a pet's ashes. The doll urn comprises a doll body, a doll head, a doll top, and a voice recorder for recording or playing a message. Disposed in the doll head is an internal compartment, wherein a secure container for holding the ashes may be inserted into the internal compartment via an aperture on the doll head. The doll top comprises a stopper for fitting into the aperture so as to prevent ashes from spilling out of the internal compartment.

Having a secure container for holding cremated remains within the body of a doll is important, less an unsuspecting, innocent child unleashes the deceased's remains while playing with what they might think to be a simple toy.

But the creepiness factor of Ostrum's invention cranks up to unnatural levels when you consider the full range of customization she envisions:

The doll urn may be constructed in a variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and/or designs to shape and look like the deceased. For example, in the doll urn is a female doll or a male doll. In some embodiments, the doll urn is a dog, a cat, a bird, or the like. in some embodiments, the doll urn features brown yes, blue eyes, green eyes, or the like. In some embodiments, the doll urn features short hair, long hair curly hair, straight hair, shoulder-length hair, brown hair, blonde hair, red hair, black hair, white hair, gray hair, the like, or a combination thereof. In some embodiments, the doll urn features dark skin, light skin, medium-toned skin, or the like. in some embodiments, the doll urn features a dress, a skirt, a shirt, a pair of pants, a pair of shorts, a hair ribbon, a headband, a bracelet, a necklace, a watch, the like, or a combination thereof.

Dolls holding the remains of the dead, intended to closely resemble them while alive, that you can keep on display in your home.

But wait, that's not all!

Her patent adds features to allow the doll to play a pre-recorded message from the deceased. If you weren't already unsettled by imagining a figure that looks like the dearly departed whose purpose is to hold their remains, imagine your unease when it plays their pre-recorded message to you from beyond the grave.

Are you properly scared yet? Because if you're not, we have other inventions we've previously featured that might finish the job....

From the Inventions in Everything Archives

The IIE team has previously covered the following "scary season" inventions:

• Outside the Box Thinking: The Ghost Chair
• Inventions in Everything: Life Support for Severed Heads
• Inventions in Everything: Pure Nightmare Fuel
• Inventions in Everything: Carvable Artificial Pumpkin
• Inventions in Everything: The COVID Candy Chute
• Inventions in Everything: Opening Doors in a Virus Filled World
• Chairs to Haunt Your Dreams This Hallow's Eve
• Happy Holographic Halloween!
• Self-Carving Pumpkins

U.S. Patent 75,874 is one perhaps one of the most non-descript patents to ever be awarded. Issued on 24 March 1868 to Newark, New Jersey-based inventors Zadoc P. Dederick and Isaac Grass, the letters patent proclaim their invention to be an "Improvement in Steam-Carriage".

Sounds pretty mundane. In 1868, practical steam engines had been around for more than 150 years. Steam-powered trains had been invented in the early 1800s and were rapidly expanding as a major mode of transportation. Without reading any further than its title, a patent for an "improvement in steam-carriage" then might almost certainly be assumed to involve a modest improvement in steam engine technology for powering locomotives.

It's only when you get to the basic description of the invention that alerts you that something very different is happening in this patent. Here's the standout text:

This invention consists in connecting a steam-engine or other motor to a system of levers, which, in imitation of the action of the legs of a man, by the reciprocating motion of the piston, are made to walk over the ground, and draw a vehicle attached thereto.

If that text isn't enough to alert you something very different from every transportation-related invention before it, perhaps your first look at the illustration of the invention would do the job:

For his part, inventor Dederick was something of a showman, who brought the prototype of his invention to the showiest place on Earth: Broadway! Early in March 1868, prior to the issuance of his patent, Dederick displayed his innovation to the public, earning the following coverage from the New York Express (and other newspapers that carried the story from the wires):

The inventor and exhibitor of the Newark Steam Man (Mr. Zado Dederick,) has improved the occasion of the Barnum fire excitement by hiring room s in the opposite house -- on Broadway -- for the purpose of exhibiting his eighth wonder of the world. As a speculative enterprise, the idea must have been a success, for at 10 o'clock this morning, a large number of persons had congregated at the door clamorously seeking admission.

Mr. Steam Man is a person of commanding presence, standing seven feet nine inches in his stocking vamps, weighs five hundred pounds, measures 200 inchies round the waist, and decidedly bucolic in general appearance. -- The legs are made of iron cranks, screws, springs, ad infinitum, not quite as attractive in exterior as those we see in the weekly pictorials, but evidently of greater durability and strenth.-- The motion of the legs is almost facsimile to that of the human extremities.

Nearly 160 years later, the sight of human-like automatons pulling carriages has unfortunately failed to become commonplace. The news coverage hints at why Dederick's invention, despite its pending patent and all his prowess as a showman, didn't catch on the way he might have hoped.

Mr. Dederick says that he can easily accomplish a mile in two minuytes on a level course, and offers to test this on Long Island Course as soon as the weather gets fine. The engine is four-horse power, and the man takes thirty inches in each stride. Perhaps the most extraordinary attribute of the animal is the faculty of stepping over all the obstructions not higher than a foot. (Of course all these assertions are the inventor's, and not the result of the reporter's investigations.)

Which is to say the Steam Man of Newark failed to demonstrate any of these capabilities while on public display. The reporter wrote the epitaph of Dederick's and Isaac's innovation:

Whether the steam man prove of any practical good or not, his is unquestionably a great curiosity.

That's almost the final word for the invention. It did however serve as an inspiration for an early contribution to new genre of fiction, Edward Sylvester Ellis' The Huge Hunter; Or, The Steam Man of the Prairies", which was first published in August 1868 and is arguably the "first example in literature of a mechanical man".

If not for Dederick's March 1868 showcase exhibition of his "improvement in steam-carriage", the era of robots in science fiction might have had to wait for decades longer to come to pass. When you consider the billions that intellectual properties derived from Dederick's innovation has made publishers and movie-makers over the years, the Steam Man of Newark might just possibly be the most successful failed invention of all time.

From the Inventions in Everything Archives

The IIE team has never covered anything quite like The Steam Man of Newark. We're stretching to identify the following articles that even mention robots in the archives!

• Outside the Box Thinking: Flying Robotic Firehoses
• How Does the Internet Know You're Not a Robot?

On 26 August 2025, SpaceX launched the world's largest rocket, successfully performing all parts of its planned mission, including "soft" splashdown landings of both its heavy booster in the Gulf of America/Mexico and the Starship spacecraft in the Indian Ocean after a one-hour, six-minute flight.

The following video covers the entire launch and presents about 50 minutes of background information before showing the launch. We recommend skipping ahead to a little past the 45-minute mark to get to the portion of the coverage that focuses on the launch and flight.

Watch Starship's tenth flight test → https://t.co/UIwbeGoo2B https://t.co/BFrpQPQFUw

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 26, 2025

The soft splashdown of the Starship vehicle is remarkable because it traveled over halfway around the world in little more than an hour, landing exactly where intended. The following video of its landing was captured by a camera SpaceX placed on a buoy at the target zone in the Indian Ocean:

If you're trying to get any spot on Earth, you usually won't ever need to fly more than halfway around the planet to get there. SpaceX just proved its Starship spacecraft can make that kind of trip in about an hour. That's a revolutionary capability in transportation.

But that's not all. The Starship spacecraft has the capability of carrying significant quantities of cargo, which will greatly reduce the cost of accessing space. Visual Capitalist's "Cost of Space Flight Before and After SpaceX" chart shows how Starship is expected to affect the cost to launch a satellite into Earth orbit:

Those reduced costs mean more than less expensive satellites, they also open the door to much wider space exploration, including interplanetary travel within the solar system.

SpaceX' tenth attempted mission of its prototype Starship vehicle is greatly expanding what's possible for transportation. After SpaceX' nine previous attempts, it's exciting to watch all the engineering it will take to make so much more possible finally starting to click together.

Quick, think of a classic clock!

You most likely have pictured a circular disk with a long and short needle-like "hands" mounted at the center that rotate at different speeds around a face with numbers marked on it. The slower rotating short hand points to the number that corresponds to the hour of the day, while the faster rotating long or big hand indicates the number of minutes that have elapsed during the hour.

The form factor of this kind of mechanical clock has been established over centuries. So much so that we use the word clockwise to describe the direction of rotation of any motion that is similar to how a clock's hands move.

The basic design of a clock has really only been challenged in more recent decades with the advent of digital technology, which replaces the sweeping hands with numbers that change to indicate the time as the minutes and hours tick by. The latest innovation down this line are the so-called smart watches that are little more than miniaturized computers and screens, whose pixels are used to simulate either the sweeping of mechanical clock hands or the ever-changing numbers of a digital clock display when used to indicate the time.

But should our concept of how clocks work be limited to these established designs? We came across two Kickstarter projects featuring unique clockwork mechanisms for watches that rethink how people might go about reading a clock to tell the time. While both projects are still actively funding, with about two weeks left to go, they have both achieved their funding goals, which means the watches will be produced.

The first concept we found interesting is the STRUC Time Shuttle Mechanical Watch. Designed by Hong Kong's StrucWatches, the watch aims to redefine how to read a clock. The following video presents the design which fits the equivalent of three clocks onto a single watchface, one telling the current time, the other two indicating the time one hour before and one hour into the future:

Putting so much information onto a single clock face makes for a intricate time-reading experience, so when we came across a second clockface redefining watch on Kickstarter, Svalbard's HX15/HX16 developed by Sergey Kozhukhov, we couldn't help but be impressed with its greatly simplified presentation that resembles a speedometer gauge. Here's the video introducing the project:

What makes Kozhukhov's watch fascinating is its combination of digital-like number to indicate the hour with the mechanical clock's minute hand that ticks clockwise from 0 to 60 to indicate the elapsed minutes of the hour before sweeping backward to zero at the beginning of a new hour.

The cool thing about both watches is that they're not just time telling devices, but conversation pieces. Both Kickstarter projects will be funding up until sometime on 6 September 2025.

Almost 25 years after the U.S. began deploying major parts of its national missile defense system, the technology of detecting and intercepting ballistic missiles has come a long way.

Earlier this year, President Trump unveiled the "Golden Dome" missile defense system, which builds on technological developments that greatly enhance the ability to both detect and intercept missiles launched against the U.S.

But inbound missiles aren't the only airborne threat Americans face.

We are of course referring to the mosquito, often considered to be the deadliest animal on Earth, if not also one of the most annoying.

That's why we were excited to learn via Core77 about Bzigo, a company that has taken major steps toward the detection of mosquitoes using technologies one might imagine has only been previously been used for defense against incoming missiles. Their 42-second video introduces their signature product, the Iris mosquito detection system:

While it is capable of tracking flying mosquitoes, it doesn't take them out, leaving that job to you as a vital part of your home's Golden Dome mosquito defense system.

If you were going to make a hat that embodies "high-tech" today, what would that mean?

We don't have to guess, because we've previously covered a number of innovations that could easily be built into a hat. It would probably involve things like wifi or perhaps a system that could help you avoid accidents or escape danger. Or maybe you would wear something that would help you breathe clean air. Or perhaps something that might automatically feed you a snack?

But what would it mean to invent a high-tech hat in 1890? What high-tech feature from that era would be something that would appeal to the hat-wearers of yesteryear?

On 18 September 1895, inventor James C. Boyle definitively answered that question when he applied for a patent for his invention of a saluting device. More remarkably, the patent examiners of the day agreed and awarded him with U.S. Patent 556,248, the hat that would automatically tip itself whenever social circumstances demanded it.

The internal apparatus Boyle wanted to incorporate within a hat is illustrated in Figure 1 from the patent:

Boyle describes the high-tech application he hoped his invention would achieve:

This invention relates to a novel device for automatically effecting polite salutations by the elevation and rotation of the hat on the head of the saluting party when said person bows to the person or persons saluted, the actuation of the hat being produced by mechanism therein and without the use of the hands in any matter.

But that's not all! In addition to this fantastic labor-saving capability, Boyle's self-tipping hat could be employed for a wholly separate and potentially lucrative opportunity by the hat-wearer:

The invention is also available as a unique and attractive advertising medium, and may be employed for such a purpose....

There may be a sign or placard placed on the hat having the improvements within it, and the saluting device be used to attract attention of the public on a crowded thoroughfare to the advertisement on the hat, the novelty of its apparent self-movement calling attention to the hat and its placard.

Unfortunately, Boyle's saluting device never caught on. We searched evidence his invention made it to the marketplace and came up nearly all but empty. We did find that the concept of a self-tipping hat was featured in the 1930 short film Soup to Nuts, which is better known for featuring the first appearance of the actors who would go on to become famous as The Three Stooges. Here's a clip:

As for his other patented objective of using a hat as an advertising medium, Boyle appears to have been just a bit ahead of his time. The first hats we can find with the equivalent of an advertisement placed on it are baseball caps, where hats were first transformed from a "sunshade into a billboard" by the Detroit Tigers, who added their original running tiger logo to their caps in 1901.

Today, hats with logos have attained a level of cultural influence, for which Boyle's 1896 invention would appear to be a significant step forward as the most high-tech hat of the 1890s.

From the Inventions in Everything Archives

The IIE team has previously covered the following stylish headgear items:

• Inventions in Everything: The Wearable Fire Escape
• Inventions in Everything: The Greenhouse Helmet
• Inventions in Everything: Substance Dispensing Headgear
• Inventions in Everything: A Third Eye for Smartphone Zombies
• Inventions in Everything: Has the Time of the Isolator Arrived?
• Inventions in Everything: The WiFi Wig

It's 2025. Where are the flying cars that science fiction predicted decades ago would exist by now?

It's not for lack of effort. Most flying car concepts that have been created over the years however have mostly involved taking a conventional car and modifying it with conventional airplane-like features. A good example of one concept that may actually make it to the marketplace is Klein Vision's AirCar, which is featured in the following short video, which recaps the long history of these concepts:

Klein Vision's concept of a car with retractable flying surfaces has potential, but also has limitations. You can drive it down the road with the wings and tail retracted into the vehicle's body, but to get airborne, you will still need something very much like a dedicated airport runway to transition from road to sky. It's not like you can just lift off the road to get around traffic, you need sufficient space to deploy the wings without potentially smacking into vehicles in adjacent lanes.

Solving that problem will take a very different kind of form factor for the flying car concept. It will take some true outside-the-box thinking because ideally, the successful flying car of the future will fully fit within the space available in a single road lane and be able to lift off and get above traffic without coming into contact with other vehicles sharing the road at will.

That's why we find CycloTech's CruiseUp concept to be fascinating. Introduced in the following video, if it proves technologically viable, it could deliver the kind of mobility that futurists and every motorist who has ever been stuck in traffic have long wanted in a flying car:

Klein Vision and CycloTech's concepts represent different paths to get from highway to skyway. At this point of 2025, we're just happy that both concepts are getting real world tryouts.

Lighting is one of the bigger expenses for modern sports venues, which can cover anything from a recreational baseball field all the way up through the largest of professional football stadiums.

According to Sports Light Supply, a modern LED lighting system for recreational soccer and baseball fields can run from $20,000 to $50,000. The lighting for a modern high school football stadium meanwhile may boost that cost up to $100,000 to $300,000. And then the kind of lighting systems you find in modern professional stadiums can run anywhere from $250,000 to $1 million.

Why such a range? Simply, the size of the venue that needs to be lit with the lighting requirements, which in the case of professional sports stadiums means lighting sufficient to support the televised broadcast of games. Traditionally, that means huge banks of powerful lights mounted on dedicated structures projecting high above the grandstands surrounding the field they are lighting.

But what if instead of all that dedicated structure, you could simply mount powerful lights on drones and fly them above the field where they could light up the action like the sun?

That's the thinking behind Freefly Systems' Flying Sun concept featured in the following 45-second video. Check it out:

As featured in the video, the initial application would be to provide overhead lighting for nighttime roadwork, construction projects, and emergency response applications. But if it proves effective for these uses, drone-based lighting systems for sports venues won't be far behind.

At this writing, Freefly is selling its "Flying Sun" drones for anywhere from $50,000 to $60,000 each.

That represents new product pricing with the potential to fall significantly if the demand for the innovation results in their being produced at higher volumes. They're just being rolled out commercially this month, so whether drone-based outdoor lighting systems becomes an established product category is now up to the marketplace.

Oppenheimer. That's the name of a popular movie that also happened to win the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2024, along with six additional Oscars. The movie told a story about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the U.S. physicist who led the successful American effort to invent the atomic bomb during the Second World War.

But that's not the only Oppenheimer who can claim credit for an invention. In 1879, Benjamin B. Oppenheimer of Trenton, Tennessee was awarded U.S. Patent 221,855 for his invention of an improvement in fire-escapes. His innovation was making a fire-escape into something a person seeking to escape a blazing building could wear in high fashion.

But don't take our word for it. Here's the illustration from the patent, which we've colorized:

Here's how Oppenheimer describes how he envisioned his inventions would work in practice:

The accompanying drawing represents a side view of a person with my improved fire-escape, shown as applied for use.

This invention relates to an improved fire-escape or safety device, by which a person may safely jump out of the window of a burning building from any height, and land, without injury and without the least damage, on the ground; and it consists of a parachute attached, in suitable manner, to the upper part of the body, in combination with overshoes having elastic bottom pads of suitable thickness to take up the concussion with the ground.

Referring to the drawing, A represents a head-piece, constructed in the nature of a parachute, and made of soft or waxed cloth, awning-cloth, or other suitable fabric. The parachute is about four-or-five feet in diameter, stiffened by a suitable frame, and attached by a leather strap or other fastening, in reliable manner, to the head, neck, or arms.

In connection with the head-piece or parachute applied to the upper part of the body are used overshoes B, with elastic soles or pads C, of suitable thickness, that take up the sudden shock on arriving on the ground.

The parachute serves for the purpose of buoying the body in the air after the person has leaped from the window of the burning building, while the padded shoes secure the safe landing on the ground.

Sixty-five years later, another Oppenheimer would, perhaps inspired by the concept of mushroom-like parachute rising above the intense heat of flames in the atmosphere, re-envision the other Oppenheimer's innovation as something quite different.

In any case, Benjamin Oppenheimer's invention combining a mushroom-like parachute hat (or even a parachute-like mushroom hat) with padded platform shoes ultimately led nowhere, with no indication of any modern application where they might be considered a vital fashion pairing for escaping a burning building.

From the Inventions in Everything Archives

The IIE team has previously covered the following wearable innovations:

• Inventions in Everything: A Corking Good Life Jacket
• Inventions in Everything: The Table You Wear
• Inventions in Everything: Sled Pants
• Inventions in Everything: The Beerbrella
• Inventions in Everything: Bulletproof Underwear
• Inventions in Everything: Treadmills Inside Your Shoes
• The Bike That Rides You

What is it like to fly on Mars?

The Red Planet is a very different place than the Blue Marble. Gravity is about one-fourth of what it is on Earth, so it would see that getting and staying airborne would be easier. But since the Martian atmosphere is about 100 times thinner on its surface than what the Earth's air is at sea level, getting and staying airborne is much harder.

And yet, it's not impossible, as the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter that was packed onboard the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover has demonstrated.

In the following video Veritasium's Derek Muller presents a concise history of the challenges the designers and programmers of the Ingenuity helicopter had to overcome to fly on Mars. At least, until it crash-landed on its 72nd flight.

For our money, the most amazing part of the video comes from the lessons learned from the experience of flying on Mars that will be going into the next generations of machines that will fly on Mars. That there will be next generations is altogether amazing in itself.

Over the years, the Inventions in Everything team has featured many unusual innovations, but few that involve celebrity inventors. Even then, the "big names" we've featured aren't necessarily names many would associate with inventions. Names like Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jackson, and Charlie Sheen. All of whom became famous for their work in other fields.

The co-inventor of the innovation we're featuring today is also much better known for their work in other fields. But unlike the other celebrity inventors we've featured, they have been awarded patents for more than one invention. Those inventions include U.S. Patent 5,515,203 for an educational lens, a specially shaped plastic pouch that can be filled with water to be used like a magnifying glass, U.S. Patents 6,895,694 and 7,254,904 for improved toe shoes to be worn by ballet dancers, and finally, U.S. Patent 7,771,294 for a training device to teach athletes good form for throwing balls.

The inventor's name is William S. Nye, but the following video introduces him how you will almost certainly better know him:

Bill Nye's patented inventions reveal his interest in both education and physical activity, which overlaps today's featured innovation. Here's the backstory for this non-patented invention, which he helped create along with baseball instructor Steve Goucher, who he teamed up with to invent the throwing technique training device awarded U.S. Patent 7,771,294:

“Science Guy” Bill Nye, a well-documented M’s fan, was training for a Mariner Fantasy Camp when he observed one of his trainers’ ad hoc inventions, a bat with a piece of PVC pipe attached to the end for scooping up baseballs to hit during fielding practice. Steve Goucher, Nye’s trainer at the time and a Seattle baseball instructor for 15 years, explained that Nye took one look at it and started seeing ways to make it better.

“He took out his pocketknife on the spot, and started to cut grooves into it,” Goucher says. Nye, a former Boeing engineer who already holds patents for nifty inventions like a water-filled magnifying glass and modified ballet slippers, decided that a baseball grabber might be marketable and partnered with Goucher to develop a product around the idea.

Goucher, who operates baseballjazz.com, had grown tired of stooping all the time to pick up balls to hit to his players. His sore back convinced him to do something about it. So he visited McLendon Hardware in White Center for a piece of PVC pipe, which he attached to the end of his bat. It turned out to be reasonably effective at snatching up baseballs for hitting practice, but it wasn’t until Goucher met Nye that they had the idea to market it to the masses. The two shopped for manufacturers and settled on a rubber version of the grabber, produced by Auburn-based GlobalTech Plastics. They call it the Fango, after the colloquial fungo, a lightweight bat used by coaches for hitting practice.

We tried to find where to buy a "Fango", as Goucher and Nye originally named their innovation, but came up empty. Goucher also marketed the product as a "Quick Pick Fungo Bat", which was sold through Dove Tail Bats but who no longer sells them.

We did however find the invention was also marketed as "The Skipper Stick", which is also no longer sold, but still has an active link to the product. Here are photos of the product:

Here's the marketing pitch for the product:

Are you a parent or a coach that likes to help your kids by hitting them fly balls with a fungo? Does the constant bending over to pick up balls begin to hurt your back over time? Introducing the new revolution in training tools, The Skipper Stick! This slick fungo was designed with the help of Bill Nye "The Science Guy"! Together with D-BAT they developed this revolutionary new design to alleviate the stress put on the backs of parents and coaches by repetitive bending over. It's a great time saver too! For people that aren't familiar with the benefits of fungos, here is a brief overview. Fungos are specifically designed for coaches to easily hit ground balls and fly balls for infield or outfield practice. Coaches know that hitting ground balls and fly balls to their team can be tiring. The unique shape of fungo bats makes them light weight and extremely easy to swing without wearing your arms out. The fungo bat will make it feel like you are swinging a bat that is a fraction of the weight of a normal bat and will give you extra distance even when you swing easy. The end weight design helps build momentum so that it requires less effort to swing it hard enough to hit the ball to any part of the field. Fungos have become a favorite among coaches because of their lightweight, durability and ease of use.

Whether called the Skipper Stick, a Fango, or a Quick Pick Fungo Bat, Goucher and Nye's innovation of a baseball bat that can pick up baseballs off the ground is an example of an invention for a very niche market, one that likely was too thin to sustain sales for more than a short period of time, even though some of the customers were major league baseball teams.

Steve Goucher and Bill Nye stand in good company in that outcome. Neither Abraham Lincoln's patented invention nor Charlie Sheen's lip balm dispenser never made it to the marketplace, so they're already ahead of the pack. We think only Michael Jackson's special shoes for performing the gravity-defying "lean" maneuver may be the only celebrity invention that's still in use, although that seems to be limited to tribute performances of Smooth Criminal.

Inventions in Everything: The Archives

Ready to sample more of the most creative designs and patents the Inventions in Everything team has explored? Our archives celebrate inventions ranging from the whimsical to the inspired in reverse chronological order!

• Inventions in Everything: A Bat for Picking Up Baseballs
• Outside the Box Thinking: Micro Geiger Counter
• Outside the Box Thinking: The Tale of the Tape
• Outside the Box Thinking: A Compact Air Blower
• Outside the Box Thinking: Fully Controllable Xmas Tree Lights
• Inventions in Everything Beating Plowshares into Artillery
• Prediction Markets and the 2024 U.S. Elections
• Inventions in Everything: The Rowing Bicycle
• Outside the Box Thinking: The Ghost Chair
• Inventions in Everything: Glass-Encased Corpses
• Outside the Box Thinking: Navigating by Quantum Dead Reckoning
• Outside the Box Thinking: Anti-Fly Fans
• Inventions in Everything: The Urinal Headrest
• Inventions in Everything: The Greenhouse Helmet
• Inventions in Everything: A Corking Good Life Jacket
• Inventions in Everything: The Table You Wear
• Outside the Box Thinking: Horizontal Wind Turbines
• Inventions in Everything: A New and Useful Bandalore
• Outside the Box Thinking: The Flying Orb
• Inventions in Everything: Toilets for Dogs
• Outside the Box Thinking: Flying Robotic Firehoses
• Inventions in Everything: The Oreometer
• Outside the Box Thinking: Flying Umbrella Drones
• Inventions in Everything: A Patented Pre-Wright Brothers Flying Machine
• Inventions in Everything: A Better Lip-Balm Dispenser
• Outside the Box Thinking: Folding Coat Hangers
• Inventions in Everything: The Turkey Slapper
• Inventions in Everything: Belling the Rat
• Outside the Box Thinking: Solving an Inside the Box Problem
• Inventions in Everything: Life Support for Severed Heads
• Outside the Box Thinking: The Future of Automotive Manufacturing
• Inventions in Everything: The Levitationarium
• Outside the Box Thinking: The Lowest Lowrider
• Inventions in Everything: Water Talkies
• Inventions in Everything: Substance Dispensing Headgear
• Inventions in Everything: The Bug Zapping Tablecloth
• Inventions in Everything: Going to the Mat
• Inventions in Everything: The Snake Walker
• AI and the Twilight Saga
• Outside the Box Thinking: Fire Extinguishers - Part II
• Inventions in Everything: The Silliest Illustration Ever in a U.S. Patent?
• Outside the Box Thinking: Fire Extinguishers - Part I
• Inventions in Everything: The Stamp Licking Tongue Depressor
• Whales, Tails and How Far to Trust AI
• Inventions in Everything: The Snowball Shotgun
• Inventions in Everything: Santa's Ski Resort Holiday Ornament
• Solving Crimes with Turkey DNA Evidence
• Invention in Everything: The Truly Boneless Thanksgiving Turkey
• Inventions in Everything: The Most Rakish Trousers Ever Conceived
• Inventions in Everything: Tale of the Taco Tape
• A Tour of Art History (with Artificial Intelligence and Corgis!)
• Invention in Everything: Lighter-Than-Air Furniture
• Inventions in Everything: Mirrors for Reckless Fish
• Inventions in Everything: The Motorized Ice Cream Cone
• Inventions in Everything: The Imaginary Jump Rope
• Inventions in Everything: A Knockout Solution for Unruly Airline Passengers
• Inventions in Everything: A Pat on the Back
• Inventions in Everything: Counting Your Eggs Before They're Hatched
• Abraham Lincoln, Patented Inventor
• Inventions in Everything: A Five-in-One Kitchen Multitasker
• Inventions in Everything: The Bicycle Sleigh
• Inventions in Everything: The Santa Claus Detector
• Inventions in Everything: Sled Pants
• Inventions in Everything: Pure Nightmare Fuel
• Inventions in Everything: Carvable Artificial Pumpkin
• Inventions in Everything: Artificial Intelligence-Generated Patents
• Inventions in Everything: How to Comfortably Carry $1 Million in U.S. Banknotes
• Inventions in Everything: Lawnmowing Trikes for Tykes
• Inventions in Everything: A Third Eye for Smartphone Zombies
• Inventions in Everything: The Beerbrella
• Inventions in Everything: George Dempster's Innovation
• Inventions in Everything: Motorcyclist Airbag Suit
• Inventions in Everything: Patented Improvements in Cat Toys
• Inventions in Everything: Drinking on the Go for the Environmentally Conscious
• Inventions in Everything: The Hoverbrella
• Inventions in Everything: Inflatable Concrete Containers
• Inventions in Everything: Better 2D Maps of a 3D World
• Inventions in Everything: The Lost Patent of a Bold Man of Color
• Inventions in Everything: Bulletproof Underwear
• Inventions in Everything: A Blazing Trumpet Performance
• Inventions in Everything: Slanty Toilets
• Inventions in Everything: The COVID Candy Chute
• Inventions in Everything: Tomatoes on the Run
• Inventions in Everything: Serving Coffee By Drone
• Inventions in Everything: HM Flying Saucer
• Inventions in Everything: Airbags for Mobile Phones
• "Similar to Fireworks, But a Lot Cooler"
• Inventions in Everything: Dinosaur Jaw Pliers
• Inventions in Everything: Oddly Shaped Objects That Roll Smoothly
• Inventions in Everything: Has the Time of the Isolator Arrived?
• Beauty Within An Eight Millimeter Square
• Inventions in Everything: Opening Doors in a Virus Filled World
• Inventions in Everything: PAPR Made With Truck Parts
• Inventions in Everything: Coffee Cups for Astronauts
• Inventions in Everything: Mechanical Trees
• Inventions in Everything: Space Age Baby Delivery
• Rediscovering Nature: A Biomimetic Clock
• Chairs to Haunt Your Dreams This Hallow's Eve
• Ten Million Inventions In Everything!
• Inventions in Everything: Shoes for Defying the Laws of Physics
• Inventions in Everything: Treadmills Inside Your Shoes
• Inventions in Everything: Makeup Applicator for Cat Eyes
• Inventions in Everything: Optical Illusions to Enhance Safety
• Inventions in Everything: The Future of Ironing
• Inventions in Everything: The Sock Slider
• Inventions in Everything: A Cold, Refreshing, CRISPR Beer
• Inventions in Everything: World's Brightest Flashlight and Glow-in-the-Dark Paint
• Inventions in Everything: On Track for Ten Million Patents!
• Happy Holographic Halloween!
• Elevators that Go Up, Down, Left and Right....
• Inventions in Everything: Ice Cream Pint Lock
• Slow Dance
• Inventions in Everything: Training Device for Beer Pong
• Inventions in Everything: The Flask from the Future
• Inventions in Everything: The Music Playing Bag of Nacho Cheese Flavored Tortilla Chips
• Inventions in Everything: Floating Beer Pong Table
• Inventions in Everything: The Tree Transplanter
• Inventions in Everything: Stopping the Refrig-a-raider
• Inventions in Everything: Popping the Top on National Beer Day
• Inventions in Everything: Fishing for Boats
• Inventions in Everything: Suction Tube for Reverse Axial Withdrawal
• Inventions in Everything: The Unwelcome Mat
• Hubcaps to Replace Snow Chains
• Young AIs in Love
• Inventions in Everything: Rolling on the Vinyl Tracks
• Inventions in Everything: Drilling Square Holes
• The Singing Stones
• Inventions in Everything: The Future of Furniture
• Inventions in Everything: The WiFi Wig
• Inventions in Everything: Keeping Dog Time
• Drying Clothes With Ultrasound
• The Future of Fireworks
• Harvesting Water from the Air
• Inventions in Everything: Automated Window Blinds
• Inventions in Everything: Flying Snoopy!
• Inventions in Everything: Texting Your Dog a Treat
• Houseplants from Avatar
• The Kitchen Unitaskers You Cannot Live Without
• Inventions in Everything: The Baby Cage
• Self-Carving Pumpkins
• Inventions in Everything: The Alarm Clock of Damocles
• Death to Mosquitoes!
• Reinventing the Axe
• Automated Zen
• The Ultimate Swiss Army Knife You Can Buy Today
• Inventions in Everything: The Toilet Snorkel
• There Is No Great Snowplow Stagnation
• The Ultimate in Rust Proofing
• Billionaire Drinks Sewage: Video
• Inventions in Everything: Antiterrorism Barriers
• Wrapping Your Bike Around a Tree... On Purpose
• Inventions in Everything: Geothermal Beer Coolers
• Inventing a Better Snowshoe
• Inventions in Everything: The Salmon Cannon
• Powdered Wine: Just Add Water!
• Fail: The Newest Innovation in Ice Cream
• Unlimited Virtual Legos
• Inventions in Everything: The Ultimate Turkey Blind
• Inventions in Everything: Turning Cans Into Sippy Cups
• Inventions in Everything: Anatomical Lego Figures
• It's Not What You Think....
• Inventions in Everything: Soup Bowl Attraction
• Inventions in Everything: Making Life More Difficult
• Inventions in Everything: The Oreo Separator Machine
• Air Shark!
• Markets in Everything: Stormtrooper Motorcycle Suit
• The Bike That Rides You
• One Inventor's Stick-to-itiveness
• High Five!
• Inventions for Everything
• The Best Mousetrap Ever
• An Invention for the True Wine Connoisseur
• Three of Ten Things You Don't Need on St. Patrick's Day
• The Future Just Got a Lot Cooler Than It Used to Be
• The Worst Piece of Design Ever Done
• The Magic Marker of the Future
• Coming Soon, to a Gym Near You!