AbsolutelyNew Blog

Today in invention history

We’re always on the lookout for new tools that can help us with invention – be it to enable product development efforts, to inform market research analysis, or simply to motivate us even more about this space we love so much.

In that last area of motivating, we found and wanted to share a fun tool we discovered on the History Channel’s UK website: a “This Day in History” page. Enter a date (month and day) and it will recap all the monumental things that occurred in history on that date. Today, for example, simply within the world of invention and innovation:

April 14, 1970: The Apollo 13 explosion took place. We’re big fans of the movie, but even bigger fans of the “let’s work the problem” spirit demonstrated by the inventive scientists who rolled up their sleeves, brainstormed, bootstrapped, and ultimately did “invent a way to put a square peg in a round hole” to bring our boys safely back to earth.

April 14, 1927: The first Volvo automobile rolled off the assembly line in Sweden. Years in the making, it wasn’t nearly as safe as the Volvos we all know today, but it lay down a foundation for a new movement in crash-resistant cars. Many a lives have since been saved by Volvo’s boxy inventions.

April 14, 1912: The ill-fated Titanic hit that iceberg. Not the world’s finest hour in invention. Yet the legacy has been of great consequence: it led to extensive efforts to invent more secure vessels, parts and configurations. And it broadened the use of then-breakthrough wireless telegraphy devices for communications and the issuing of distress calls.

We’re already looking forward to looking up more stuff tomorrow. But more importantly, what are you doing to add to today’s inventive history? It’s not too late.

Reinvented 007 Needs New Inventions

Comcast is offering 21 James Bond movies “On Demand” in high definition.  Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, I must have seen the Comcast commercial for it about 50 times.

In watching the commercial’s montage of cool inventions that 007 has put to use over the years – inventions like the wristwatch that’s so much more than a wristwatch – what really struck me is how dull James Bonds’ new inventions are by comparison.

Did you see Quantum of Solace?  Cool car.  Cool computer.  But nothing I couldn’t kit out on my own given a little extra cash, the right tools and parts, and the help of my mechanically savvy best friend MJ.

What’s going on here?  Is Q, or MI-6, slacking off?  Or do you think, as some others are saying, that technologies are now so advanced that movies no longer need to make them up (which sounds a lot like saying everything good has already been invented)?  Or is this a matter of Hollywood finding that audiences want their Bond with less contrived gadgets and more real violence?

Whatever the case may be, I’m feeling like the reinvented Daniel Craig 007 is falling a tad short of Bond proportions... and needs a few new inventions to spark my interest.

BTW, on this topic, a really fun article on James Bond inventions, published in 1966, is circulating on the web. Click here to give it a read.