Website

InventorsAtWork.com

Retailers and Ebooks

This book is a collection of interviews conducted with individuals who have distinguished themselves in the invention space. Some of the inventors interviewed here have their Aha! moments in government, institutional, or industrial labs; develop their inventions with multidisciplinary teams of experts; and leave the marketing of their inventions to other specialists in the organization. Some inventors in this book develop their inventions with small teams in academic labs and try to translate their research into product via licenses or startup companies. Other inventors I interviewed carry on the classic lone-inventor-in-his-garage tradition and take on the task of bringing their products to market themselves. And a few mix and match their strategies, bringing skills honed in big labs home to their garages and licensing their personal inventions to big corporations.

This is not a recipe book. It doesn’t aim to reduce invention to a series of foolproof steps: how to take an idea, go through the R&D process, develop prototypes, create intellectual property, build a brand, raise capital, and get product on store shelves. Rather, this book invites readers to touch their own creative impulses to the fires of real inventors speaking candidly about what possesses them every day of their lives: the passion to invent.

These privileged conversations have confirmed my belief that inventors are born to be inventors. Of the multitudes of clever people who get technical degrees in engineering and scientific fields, only a fraction contrive to add patents to their credentials. It is the rare individual who can combine curiosity, intellectual powers, mechanical knack, and focused awareness to see a novel solution to a problem and then convert that insight into a physical invention that works. (For the sake of coherence, I decided to interview only the inventors of physical products, and not the inventors of software products.)

This collection of interviews shows how a startling variety of inventors—selected for their widely divergent backgrounds, educations, fields, interests, personalities, age, gender, ethnicities, business circumstances, and invention types—share the ability and indeed the compulsion to create ideas and objects that are useful, exciting, and unprecedented. Some of the inventions described here by their creators have transformed the world; others simply made the world a more fun place to live. But all of these different inventions drew on an array of common traits in their inventors: perseverance, drive, motivation, a touch of obsession, and—most importantly—the welcoming of failure as a opportunity to learn and push their ideas forward.

The intent was to talk about the process they go through, not so much the product they invented. I was also struck by the fact that most of the inventors I interviewed expressed a similar set of preferences and work habits. They like to work on multiple projects simultaneously in multidisciplinary teams, freely sharing their ideas with others. They reach out to experts in other fields and ask lots of questions. They wake up in the middle of the night and sketch out their ideas on paper or visualize them vividly in their heads. They prototype ideas using materials that they are comfortable working with. They use physical exercise to relax their minds and jack up their concentration. They seek mental stimulation and different tempos of thought in areas outside their specialties. Most strikingly, they value slow time to ponder alternative opportunities. And finally, they said they would never retire from being an inventive person or stop working on a project that interests them.

COPYRIGHT 2012: Brett Stern – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

As you use and apply this information, you will soon realize the variants possible and come up with your own solutions. Let’s face it, all you’re doing is prying a round piece of metal off a round piece of glass. To accompany each example, I have instituted a skill-rating system. After the instructions, there is a beer bottle system for degrees of difficulty.

EASY	MEDIUM	HARD

Fire Hydrant 1. Follow arrow on top, “Open” 2. Place cap in recess between screw and nut 3. Press down 4. Drink

Police Car 1. Make sure nobody is in the car ?2. Place cap in trunk lid? 3. Press down 4. Drink ?5. Don’t get caught

Toilet 1. Place cap in between valve and pipe? 2. Press down? 3. Drink

Pool Bridge 1. Hold bridge near the end? 2. Place cap in opening? 3. Press down? 4. Don’t spill any on the table ?5. Drink

Newspaper Vending Machine 1. Pretend to read headlines ?2. Place cap in coin return ?3. Press down 4. Drink

Computer 1. Place cap in hard drive slot ?2. Pry off carefully? 3. Drink? 4. Play some more computer games note: this will probably scratch your computer, but it will open your beer

Roller Blades 1. Place cap in between shoe and blade? 2. Pry off? 3. Drink

Belt Buckle 1. Undo buckle (don’t let pants fall)? 2. Adjust buckle accordingly? 3. Pry off ?4. Drink? 5. Don’t forget to buckle up

Ski Binding 1. Ski all day? 2. Go to lodge? 3. Lean ski against wall? 4. Place beer in toe binding? 5. Press down ?6. Drink

Teeth 1. Must be totally desperate? 2. Place cap inside mouth ?3. Bite off (be careful*) ?4. Drink and enjoy *Remember kids, don’t try this at home!

I wish you luck and happy beer drinking. Always remember: NEVER DRINK FROM THE BOTTLE IF YOU BREAK THE GLASS!

Published by:

2010 – 41,000 + copies sold worldwide

* Crown Publishing (US)
* Eichborn AG (Germany)
* Bookman Press (Australia)

As you use and apply this information, you will soon realize the variants possible and come up with your own solutions. Let’s face it, all you’re doing is prying a round piece of metal off a round piece of glass. To accompany each example, I have instituted a skill-rating system. After the instructions, there is a beer bottle system for degrees of difficulty.

EASY MEDIUM HARD

I wish you luck and happy beer drinking. Always remember: NEVER DRINK FROM THE BOTTLE IF YOU BREAK THE GLASS!

Fire Hydrant

1. Follow arrow on top, “Open”
2. Place cap in recess between screw and nut
3. Press down
4. Drink

Back to List

Police Car

1. Make sure nobody is in the car
2. Place cap in trunk lid
3. Press down
4. Drink
5. Don’t get caught
Back to List

Toilet

1. Place cap in between valve and pipe
2. Press down
3. Drink
Back to List

Pool Bridge

1. Hold bridge near the end
2. Place cap in opening
3. Press down
4. Don’t spill any on the table
5. Drink
Back to List

Newspaper Vending Machine

1. Pretend to read headlines
2. Place cap in coin return
3. Press down
4. Drink
Back to List

Computer

1. Place cap in hard drive slot
2. Pry off carefully
3. Drink
4. Play some more computer games

note: this will probably
scratch your computer, but it will open your beer
Back to List

Roller Blades

1. Place cap in between shoe and blade
2. Pry off
3. Drink
Back to List

Belt Buckle

1. Undo buckle (don’t let pants fall)
2. Adjust buckle accordingly
3. Pry off
4. Drink
5. Don’t forget to buckle up
Back to List

Ski Binding

1. Ski all day
2. Go to lodge
3. Lean ski against wall
4. Place beer in toe binding
5. Press down
6. Drink
Back to List

Teeth

1. Must be totally desperate
2. Place cap inside mouth
3. Bite off (be careful*)
4. Drink and enjoy

*Remember kids, don’t try this at home!
Back to List

Got a better idea? Let me know.

brett@brettstern.com

Answer:
A method for recycling.

Created a proprietary concrete matrix material that applies the usage of fired ceramic product, such a toilet bowls, urinals and dishes and turns it into finished goods.

The domestic ceramic sanitaryware industry currently manufactures approximately 20.94 million individual units (toilet tanks and bowls, urinals, sinks, bidets) with the amount of secondary waste produced exceeding 35,869 tons per year. Project prposed to take these toilets and create an aggregate raw material out of them. The crushed material can then be designed into manufactured industrial and consumer products. The goal is to fabricate objects that use as their structured content the recycled clay, just as glass bottles, plastic containers and newspapers are recycled today back into products.

A typical concrete composite has as its weight content over 50% aggregate in its mixture. The concrete industry currently uses over 2 billion tons of gravel per year. Therefore, with just a 1% penetration into the aggregate industry, there would be a market demand for over 20 million tons of ceramic aggregate annually. If the penetration reached 1.79% the complete waste of the sanitaryware industry could be consumed.

This park bench is an example of this application. Imbedded into the cement mixture was once a complete toilet bowl and tank weighing 52 pounds.

← →

Wood fired kilns come in many assorted shapes, sizes and firing attributes, but all require a continuous tending and stoking of wood throughout the process, which lasts from several hours to several days. During this process the “fly ash” from the burning wood is drawn from the firebox into the chamber where the pots sit. This ash settles and eventually fluxes and melts to form a natural ash glaze on the surface of the pottery.

To create as much ash as possible a typical stoking occurs every 7-10 minutes. The kiln is typically fired in a reduction atmosphere, which starves the kiln fire of oxygen. The downside is that this causes a release of heavy black smoke (carbon monoxide), particulates, hydrocarbons and release of air contaminates into the atmosphere over the continuous firing process from the chimney flue.

Solution covers the method of placing a catalytic combustor (convertor) in the chimney flue to burn the fuel more efficiently and burn-off unwanted contaminate. Exhaust gases can be routed through a catalytic combustor: a ceramic or metallic matrix material that is coated with a metal such as platinum or palladium. Smoke, gases and particles pass through the combustors surfaces and ignite at a much lower temperature (250°C) than they would without the combustor (500°C). The result is that harmful substances are more completely burned. The process is passive, relatively maintenance free and of reasonable costs over an estimated 5-year lifecycle. Preliminary test results reduced particulates by 85-90% during the process and did not effect firing schedule or ash effect on ceramic work.

← →