Category
Patents filed in a state of visible exasperation.
A real product or patent with a documented origin, where the invention is a response to a specific human grievance.
Files in this category discuss products. Any commercial relationship is disclosed on the file itself, before the link. Read the disclosures.
US 5,356,330 was granted in 1994 for a spring-loaded arm on a wall. Its background states the problem plainly: a high five "requires the mutual hand slapping of two participants", and a solitary fan does not have two.
US 6,293,874 was granted in 2001. Its cited prior art is a run of 1900–1916 patents for secret-society initiation paddles, and the improvement it claims is that this one does not stop between blows.
US 4,022,227 was granted in 1977. Claim 3 requires an object to be held over the hair partway through the fold, and claim 4 specifies that the object is a person's hand.
US 5,443,036 was granted in 1995. Its dependent claims are the reason to read it: the light pattern must be small relative to a cat's paw, and travel at five to twenty-five feet per second.
Franz Vester patented a coffin the prematurely buried could climb out of. The detail nobody repeats is in the specification: once death was confirmed, you withdrew the escape tube and used it on the next grave.
