Stumble It!
World’s Best Minor Inventions
We often forget to be grateful for the little things, I think. In the Sixties, remembering to do this was called “stop and smell the flowers.” We rarely do that nowadays. I’m not talking about praising locomotion or penicillin here — nothing that moves the masses or revolutionizes public health. Rather, the more trivial, ‘minor inventions’ that make life just a little bit better.
Here are my Top 10 at the moment, in no particular order:
1) Programmable Coffee Makers. How I love the rich aroma of strong 
imported coffee brewing downstairs as I push open my bedroom door most mornings.
2) Contact lenses – especially when I’m sweating bullets on my spin bike at the gym, wiping my brow profusely with a thick towel. Nobody enjoys working out with eye glasses on, do they?
3) The Maxi-Cosi. New mothers: you will appreciate the gift of not having to unstrap baby out of one seat and into another every time you need to go somewhere.
4) Pill cutters. I remember watching my German in-laws smashing their tablets with kitchen knives. How delighted they were with this ingenious little contraption!
5) The iPod – As comedian Patton Oswald has so eloquently said (ahem…), compared to vinyl and tapes, all those songs on that tiny little thing is a fr#&% miracle, and nobody cares!
6) the USB stick - another miracle that’s underrated. Remember when we used to drag floppy disks around, that only held about one-sixteenth as much data?
7) Lego – hours of creative fun, without the TV on. Enough said.
8 ) the Sports Bra. Batten down the hatches! No wonder women weren’t doing aerobics in the 1950’s.
9) Pen injectors – on the diabetes front: Man am I glad for these injection devices that look more like ball-point pens than scary medical instruments of puncture.
10) the OmniPod, and now I guess Medingo’s Solo patch as well – insulin pumps were already good; being able to use them without tubing hanging off your body is better.
So in the car on the way to school the other morning, I decided to put the question to my 10-year-old, who generally thinks pretty big.
“What do you think are some of the world’s greatest inventions, Honey?”
“Oh, cars I guess. If we didn’t have cars we’d all just be on horses all the time… and money — definitely money!”
I guess she gets it that without money, you’re limited in the number of conveniences you can enjoy. Touché.
Anybody care to share their personal take on the world’s best ‘minor inventions’?
My number one minor invention: the cardboard sleeves you put on paper cups of hot coffee.
Posted by: Seth | October 16th, 2009 at 6:31 amWhen my kids were little-er, velcro was very high on the list.
Posted by: anonlurkermom | October 16th, 2009 at 8:36 amTHE GLUCOSE MONITOR!….My first monitor was the size of War and Peace bound book. The meter reading thingy was like the thing on your gas tank Full? Empty? The needle sway from left to right. And the strips were about 2+” long. Oh ya, then you waited….then waited…. then waited for the reading that was probably a 50+ variance comparted to todays meters. For me that was a HUGE!!!! REVOLUTIONARY!!! LIFE SAVING!!!….INVENTION…Whoever invented it should receive the Nobel Medical Prize. Imagine how many lifes have been saved. Imagine what our lives would be without it. Would I have been able to survive 37 year as a PWD. Thank you Mr/Ms inventor for saving my life all other PWD’s.
Posted by: dargirl | October 16th, 2009 at 10:24 amtampons
Posted by: strawberry | October 16th, 2009 at 11:20 amand Patagonia synchilla fabric (which I believe spawned the whole world of “fleece”) – brilliant stuff
Tampons.
Posted by: Elizabeth Joy | October 16th, 2009 at 12:25 pmMy greatest time saver of the last decade – caller ID – now if the twits would stop calling 8-10 times without leaing a message before finally giving up!!
Posted by: mcityrk | October 16th, 2009 at 12:32 pmContact lens which will soon be available with eyedrops for allergies and glaucoma incorporated in them. My opthamologist has told me for two years contact lens will be available that will check the blood sugar in my life time. The glucose in tears correlates with the glucose in the bloodstream. Appparently the technology is available!
Posted by: Vicki | October 16th, 2009 at 2:37 pmLadies: right, tampons!
I understand that a woman in my husband’s family was responsible for inventing them, so I consider myself lucky that they’re not called “Tenderichs”
Posted by: AmyT | October 16th, 2009 at 3:32 pmI’m with dargirl re: the Blood Glucose Meter. I, too, was diagnosed 37 years ago. I still recall the first ten years of Type I diabetes (1972-1982) before I got my first meter. Life was HELL! I used to go for a once-monthly venous blood drawing to determine whether my insulin doses (non-human Regular and NPH) were properly set. The lab wasn’t open in the evening, so we alternated fasting BG’s with afternoon (around 4:00 p.m.) Life with diabetes will never be perfect, and I still wish I didn’t have it, but thank God for my blood glucose meter!
Posted by: June S. | October 16th, 2009 at 3:53 pmglucose meters yes but two of my favorites are duct tape and zip ties. With these two tools I can do almost anything where hubby needs a hammer and nails hahahahahahahah, BTW I have been called the duct tape queen. One more that I use so often is speed sew, a great product for those who cant thread a needle to save their lives.
Posted by: Sally smart | October 16th, 2009 at 6:22 pmIt looks a great points. Thanks!
Posted by: George | October 20th, 2009 at 1:58 amI’m going to take the coffee machine one step further–my home cappucino machine that has saved me thousands of dollars by keeping me out of expensive coffee houses!
Posted by: PookieMD | October 21st, 2009 at 5:34 am