Customer Reviews

Patents: Ingenious Inventions, How they work and How they came to be

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I bought this book thinking it would be a good book for casual reading when just a few minutes were available since the book is divided into individual patented items and then grouped into sections.
Each patent is listed with the number, the title, patent date, followed by the description often followed by an illustration, then a paragraph of the inventor's own words. The structure, while formulaic, lends itself to fast, easy to break-up reading sessions. Good waiting room book was my thought.

The book is disappointing in the inclusion of unnecessary margin comments. The margin comments early in the book tended toward interesting trivia relating to the invention/patent, but some miss the mark entirely. In the Kitty Litter patent the margin comment included a benefit of keeping your cat in the house to keep it safe from the local delinquent torturing it. Another example in the patent about the Goat Traction Footwear essentially showcasing the Nike sports shoes the author manages to suggest that Nike should use a similar sticky material to make gloves that mimics the dexterity of children's hands, since Nike had been using child labor to produce footwear.

There were also editing problems in the book. In at least one patent description the numerated list is repeated creating a list that is longer, but has the exact same lines repeated. Whether this was an author or editor problem it should have been caught prior to publication.

The choice of patents to highlight is a bit curious on a number of the entries. A more current patent is listed yet the background and history cover someone's work decades before. It would be more honest to show the original patent or to give a better explanation why the later patent is described not the one used in the history of the entry.

This book isn't really appropriate for too young of readers either, whether it be the "fact" that 20% of kids before 8th grade are inhaling from aerosol cans (included as a margin comment in the Aerosol Can patent entry), or the patent information for viagra, or the patent information for the tampon. This type of book should appeal to the natural curiosity of children, but the editorial margin comments and the more mature patents make it impossible to recommend for that purpose.

The book is disappointing, it could have been so much better without the author editorializing and otherwise cheapening the celebration of innovation that many patents represent.

While much of the information can easily be obtained online for free, this book puts the most interesting of that information in a form that anyone with a pulse (not in unity with the computer) can understand and learn from. Inaccuracies contained within are allowed because this isn't a book to use as a reference on a graduate thesis. The explanations of each invention are so quick and concise (about a page) and filled with humor and annicodtes and small selections from the inventor's actual patent language that it would be impossible to rely on any of it for real accuracy. The descriptions are just enough to wet one's interest. Then again, so are the descriptions in my UNCLE JOHN'S BATHROOM reader, which devotes a few pages to the same information. Why then do I love this book? The cover is cool, the page design and layout are very clean and easy to understand. Choice of graphics (patent drawings) are good (although the pictures attached to the ATM machine could use some work). Choice of inventions are interesting and so are each of their stories (from Velcro to the nuclear reactor). Even the very few pages of "resources" at the end of the book are informative and well layed out - quick description of the three types of patents, how one obtains a patent, and website links if one wanted to learn more. Perfect addition to any library, but first it goes on my coffee table because that's really where a book like this belongs (and not next the toilet). The bubble wrap cover makes up for its un-coffeetable-book size.

The book is entertaining and the choice of inventors and inventions is excellent but I found errors. For example, the bio for Linus Yale, Jr., who is credited with the invention of the pin tumbler lock, appears under a different lock patent that was filed years earlier by his father, Linus Yale, Sr.

This book does highlight some interesting or important patents, but just upon skimming it, I noted several inaccuracies. One statement implied that the civil war and reconstruction was part of the reason for the patent act of 1836 (a good score and a half before the civil war), and another part of the book stated that the formula for coca-cola, the most famous trade secret in the world, was patented. These inaccuracies made me question the accuracy of the entire work. In addition, much of the information is available on the PTO's web site for free.

The first thing that attracts you to this book is its cover, which is half ensconced in a thin layer of a laminated cushioning material (also known as bubble wrap, Patent Number 3,142,599; July 28, 1964 granted to M. A. Chavannes of Brooklyn, for a method of making bubble wrap). This book celebrates a few of the 6.5 million patents that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted since Thomas Jefferson issued the first one in 1790. For each patent, Mr. Ikenson provides that patent name, number, date, the person granted the patent (not always the inventor) and the assignee of the patent, if necessary. These are followed by explanations and drawings about what the item does, how it works, and then a statement in the inventor's own words.

Included in this book are dynamite, the artificial heart, the airplane (wright), camera (wolcott), helicopter (sikorsky), cotton gin (whitney, 1794), gas motor engine (otto), light bulb (edison, glowing filament in a glass globe), neutronic/nuclear reactor (fermi and szilard), penicillin production method (moyer), transistor (shockley), rocket (goddard), skyscraper steel (bessemer), and most importantly, the Lava Lamp (walker, 1971).

Along the way, you will notice how some of the corporate names now popular are based on companies that were created around the inventor and patent, such as rubber vulcanization (goodyear), frozen food (birdseye), door lock (yale, 1844)and corn flakes process (kellogg, 1919). Additional patents include ones for the chia pet (1994), traffic signal (1923), bra, astro turf, kitty litter, adhesive bandage (bandaid, assigned to johnson and johnson in 1958), zipper (1893), velsro (155), prozac, viagra, kevlar, pez dispenser (and how it works), slinky, roller skates , bar codes, and barbed wire, to name just a few.

I received my copy of "Patents: Ingenious Inventions" last week and have already flown through it cover to cover. It is just the right mix of intelligent information and humor to keep just about anyone interested. Another great asset is the numerous topics the book covers. My personal favorite was the chapter on genetic engineering, but there are so many I am sure others will have different favorites. I really recommend this book to anyone with an inquisitive mind and a funny bone. Enjoy!