Young 21st century inventors need marketing savvy and money. But they're still an eccentric bunch, writes Jacqueline Maley
John Logie Baird was a sickly Scot who failed to find a cure for hemorrhoids. He was also the first person to transmit images using machinery, so he is best remembered as one of the fathers of modern television. (Perhaps more importantly, Australian television's night of nights, the Logie Awards, is named after him.)
Baird was an inventor of the old school. He kept to himself, was constantly causing unplanned chemical explosions and, like all great inventor-children, he once tried to fly off the roof of his parents' house strapped to a home-made glider.
Few 20th century inventions have had the clout television has had but then few 20th century inventors have been of the crazy scientist mould, a la Doc from Back to the Future.
To be a successful inventor these days, you need more than creative genius. You need media savvy and strong marketing skills. Most importantly, you need a wad of capital to get your idea off the ground.
David Wood, 26, is a recent industrial design graduate and the inventor of the Sea Safe, a water-tight buoyant container that holds all the safety equipment necessary for any boat travelling more than two nautical miles offshore. (Most products on the market at the moment sink, Wood says.)
Wood's passion for invention began when he did a stint at a design and manufacturing firm when he was 19. Before that, he had been studying animation but he was seduced by the hands-on, practical nature of industrial design.
He believes the mark of creative success is market-driven demand. "If it does what it's designed to do, that's one thing but is it really needed, that's another [matter]," Wood says. "At the moment, I'd define success as making money."
Despite his pragmatism, Wood concedes he does have some of the marks of the mad inventor.
"I design on coasters in the pub, working through the night does hold true and I have mad hair I guess, from time to time."
Anita Jorgensen, the series producer of the ABC's New Inventors program, says that there are two types of inventors.
"On the one hand, you have the tinkerer who has had lots of bottom-of-the-drawer projects for an extended period," she says. "Then there's the group of inventors that are very media- and tech-savvy and apply their knowledge of technology to solutions."
But the romantic notion of the madcap inventor striking it lucky is unrealistic, Jorgensen says. "The majority of inventors really are far more educated and the commitment to develop an invention far outweighs any sort of hobbyist enthusiasm."
Jorgensen says a lot of the eccentric tinkerers are generalists and to be successful as an inventor, you have to identify a market niche and home in on it.
"A lot more so than in the past, being able to market products is the biggest problem to be overcome, even down to giving it a good name and a good colour," she says.
Christine Kininmonth is a panel judge on the New Inventors and is also the creator of the Belly Belt, an apparatus to help pregnant women hold up their trousers around their expanding girth. Kininmonth thinks the cliche of the mad inventor still holds true.
"I think people who invent are not risk-averse," she says. "They are willing to fail and they have failed and failed again and come out on the other side, in other aspects of their lives. They are a bit different to the rest of the crowd."
Kininmonth puts her own inventiveness down to her upbringing on a drought-ridden property in Victoria, where her parents tried and failed with various money-making endeavours. Her mother was an eccentric artist who was always "pushing the envelope".
As a child, Kininmonth was left to herself a lot. She got bored and was forced to dream up things to amuse herself.
Her wild, free childhood was formative but Kininmonth still believes money is the key to a successful invention.
"It takes a lot more of it than you'd imagine. It's expensive to make prototypes, to get moulds cast, to go and get things made."
It helps if the inventor has an idea for something that can be done better, faster or cheaper and if they have identified a market before they start, she says.
Gary Lewtschenko, 22, has invented the Anywhere-Tent, a tent-design which allows the camper to sleep on a level surface, regardless of the ground surface and conditions. He believes his grandfather, an avid but unsuccessful tinkerer, passed the invention gene to him.
"If there's a need for something, you can think of an idea to solve the problem," he says. "Sometimes they just hit me. I'll see something and I'll get an idea in my head and it's planned out for me."
It's just as well Lewtschenko loves inventing, because he's not in it for the money. He recently won $5000 in the Nestle Big Break competition but still had to take out a loan to develop his invention. He works as a vacuum cleaner salesman to pay it off. So far, he has about $50,000 sunk into developing his project.
He wishes he knew the secret to inventing success. "It's pretty difficult to come up with a new idea," he says. "I reckon just don't stop trying."
Whatever the marketing realities, sometimes the maddest and least practical inventions display a unique genius of their own.
"We've had some amazing ones," Jorgensen says of the New Inventors' entries. "Some of them we salute because of the sheer craziness."
Examples she lists include a cafe-owner who constructed a machine which made poached eggs in a roll, akin to a Swiss log, and a man who worked out a way of storing a boat in his caravan - so now he only has to tow the one giant vehicle.
Some of Kininmonth's favourites are the nutty ones, including a baby-jacket she saw in use in a Queensland hospital. It is a coat with scores of large pockets all over it. In the event of a fire, a nurse can don the jacket and run around stuffing babies into it, to get them out alive.
"It's mad but it makes sense as well," she says.
Invention elevated to art form
Australian inventors need commercial nous, but not so their Japanese counterparts, some of whom have embraced the useless and bizarre. Chindogu - which means "weird tool" - is a phenomenon created by Japanese comedian Kenji Kawakami that has spawned an international society (www.chindogu.com), books and innumerable crackpot inventions.
Some favourites include the "hayfever hat" (pictured), an all-day tissue dispenser "to cope with heavy blowing and incessant sneezing", and duster slippers for cats, so your pet moggy can pull its weight with the household chores.
There is a list of rules an aspiring chindogu inventor must observe, including the stipulation that the item cannot be for real use. (If it turns out to be genuinely handy, the inventor has failed.)
According to one website: "You have to be able to hold it in your hand and think, 'I can imagine someone using this. Almost.' " Perhaps most importantly, the chindogu must be "free from the chains of usefulness".