Inventor: Dwight L. Myers
Assignee: Water-Boggan, Inc.
Patent number: 3923301
Filing date: Sep 19, 1974
Issue date: Dec 2, 1975

Summer’s here kids and it’s time to dust off the board shorts and head to the local waterpark… These stunning illustrations from 1974 describe a method of using the natural contours and topography of hilly land bordering a body of water to carve a waterside trench. The slide zig-zags through the beautiful landscape past trees and rocks down to a  landing pool at the bottom of the slideway to provide safe deacceleration for successive riders…

The Golden Age of Summer where nature and man intertwine in a beautiful dance… Legend has it that my local waterpark ‘The Rainbow Rapids’ Dun Laoghaire were shut down after a kid wearing a ring lost a finger in the tube…

Inventor: Claudia Durham / Jeffrey E. Hopkins
Patent number: 4572501
Filing date:  Jul 1, 1983
Issue date: Feb 25, 1986

Such long legs… There’s many, many patents for wheelchair accessories such as this exercise device. Wheelchair exercise is very important for helping increase strength, flexibility, muscle-tone as well as self-esteem (see Joe Swanson). Exercise also prevents DVT (deep vein thrombosis) and other poor health outcomes.

Inventor: Ronald G. Chang
Patent number: 5063376
Filing date: May 5, 1989
Issue date: Nov 5, 1991

All this talk about the iPad has me scratching my head… There’s been a ton of nifty inventions that have {so far} failed to take off. Why am I using a keyboard when I could by typing on my mouse? As Apple strips the mouse back to a smooth curved Magic Mouse and replaces keyboards with multi-touch LCD’s… …aren’t we losing something? Clunky buttons, wires & 8-bit graphics…

Inventor: Otto Schuller
Patent number: 3139622
Filing date: Apr 17, 1961
Issue date: Jul 1964

The cost of space exploration is a complicated subject; with a 2010 budget of almost $18 billion many argue that money would be better spent right here on the big blue marble for medical research, social programs, finding solutions to poverty, hunger and homelessness. Meanwhile Professor Stephen Hawking is worried about contact with aliens leading to the raiding of planet earth for precious resources and moving on. “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.”  Hawking realizes the need to explore space for the future of humanity but envisages a long-term space exploration project starting with building an experimental base on the moon within 30 years, and devising a new propulsion system to take us on a planetary hunt outside our solar system in 200-500 years.

Inventor: James C. Asher
Patent number: 4349708
Filing date: Aug 22, 1979
Issue date: Sep 14, 1982

Back in the day it was fun but simple. The mighty Atari 2600, myself and my brother played ours so much we destroyed the joystick! After the stick snapped off we ripped out the chipboard, used it like a joypad and went right on playing; Centipede, Yars’ Revenge and Ms. Pacman. Yars’ Revenge, the most popular original-concept Atari game ever, was insane! A droning industrial soundtrack grates in the background while a swirling symbol is fired at you. One word comes to mind when I play it now; evil! Oddly enough the killer swirl looks not unlike a Nazi Swastika, so much so that eBay refuses to list the game fearing it contains Nazi Propaganda. Atari games had great playability but you needed a good imagination to fill in the graphics; In a distant galaxy the civilization known as the Yars were attacked by the fierce Qotiles. Though badly damaged, the Yars’ fought back using their mechanical ships that look like giant metal insects. Years later I managed to complete Centipede, game just starts again!