I had not heard of the dice game
”
Bunko
”
until I moved to San Benito County.
I had not heard of the dice game “Bunko” until I moved to San Benito County.
I thought maybe it was a local invention, but it turns out that it’s not. That means the only San Benito County invention that I know of is the figure-eight roping used on calves, and displayed every year at the horse show.
That doesn’t mean folks here aren’t inventive. There are probably lots of devices and methods that have been developed or refined here and I just don’t know about them.
Wouldn’t you love to be the person who invents the next Post-It note, for example?
You have probably heard the story of how the adhesive used on Post-Its was an attempt at a super-sticky glue that failed. The formula languished in a notebook (before computer use was widespread) at 3M until one of the chemists, a member of a church choir, thought of a possible use: holding in place the slips of paper he used to mark pages in his hymnal.
At each rehearsal, he found himself distracted from the music by the slips of paper falling down, falling out, or just disappearing.
Sure enough, the failed super-stickum was just sticky enough to hold the markers in place, but not so sticky that it tore or marred the pages. And thus an office staple was born.
They are now available in dozens of colors besides the original pale yellow, and sizes from about a square inch to flip-chart. Recently, the original formula has been joined by a “super-sticky” version.
I don’t know if the 3M employee got rich from his development, since he was working for a corporation at the time.
But one inventor who did profit from his invention was George de Mestral, who patented Velcro in 1955.
De Mestral was a Swiss engineer and outdoorsman who became fascinated with the burrs that clung to his trousers and to his dog’s coat after a walk in the woods.
He realized this kind of fastening would have many applications but it took him and associates eight years to come up with the right fiber (nylon) and the right process (weaving under infrared light), not to mention the right sizes of hooks and loops.
Once the product was perfected, he founded a company to manufacture and market it, and did become financially secure.
In fact, a friend of mine once met some descendants of de Mestral. According to my friend, they were friendly, relaxed and happy, and cheerfully admitted they didn’t know what to do with all the money.
With this incentive in mind, all you creative people may now get busy, because I am tired of losing socks.
I wear black socks as part of my work outfit, and out of my dozen or so pairs, I only have four or five that match after every laundry load.
There must be a way to combine the fastening power of Velcro, or even Post-It glue, with, say, microchip technology, to allow socks to separate at wearing time, then seek each other and re-attach during washing or drying.
Once in the water, the microchip in one sock would call out to a receiver in the other sock, and during the rinse cycle they would tumble together and adhere. If a sock made it into the laundry without its mate, it would emit cricket-like chirps for 15 seconds at half-daily intervals until the next laundry load.
This may seem like a lot of trouble when I could simply tie my socks together or just buy 12 pairs all the same, but if we could make this work, think of the possibilities. Single gloves, earrings and contact lenses would be things of the past.
