Sometimes The Tool You Need Hasn’t Been Invented Yet
In North Dakota, where I grew up, the flatness of the prairie impacted moisture preservation. For instance, a farmer will depend upon the snow in the winter to provide moisture in the spring during the melting time. However, when you have vast expanses of flat prairie, and lots of wind to go with it, containing the snow on the desired field is difficult. Most of it will blow off of the fields and into a ditch. In the spring the snow melt will water the weeds along the road instead of the crop in the field.
My father showed me where the snow had piled up the winter before by pointing to the greener vegetation during the summer.
One farmer of our acquaintance invented a machine that we referred to as a “tumbling bug” in order to capture more snow melt on his fields. The farmer would use the tumbling bug by towing it behind the tractor in the fall. The machine would leave depressions in the ground about six inches deep and about a foot apart. These man-made dimples would allow the snow to stay in the field despite wind, and the next spring the moisture was where the farmer wanted it.
As a farmer’s son, I tended to invent tools that I needed to make a job simpler or easier to do. (One of my grandson’s has apparently inherited this attribute. He is consistently inventing things to do various jobs.)
One of the tools I invented was to facilitate wire pulling when you are working alone. The problem is that wire insulation can catch on the edge of conduit unless it is properly guided. There are times that several wires feeding into one conduit may become crossed over, thus using more of the conduit fill space than needed, and possibly causing a problem with a tougher pull.
The tool I invented allowed me to protect, feed and guide wire into a conduit while I was actually working from the other end. Someone must have appreciated my invention a great deal because later a major tool manufacturer came up with the same type of tool. I think mine was better.
I also intended to create a tool to tighten locknuts on conduit connectors, but never got around to it. I’m sure it would work better than an “electrician hammer” and a dull screw driver. I imagine tool manufacturers will come up with it sometime.
One electrician and his father of my acquaintance invented a screwdriver that would grip a screw while the driver spun it around. (The definition of “spun” being a high speed turn, as opposed to a quarter turn per hand revolution.) The screwdriver was constructed to spin like a wheel or a crank at a high speed.
The screwdriver was fast and efficient. The two people who invented the tool were smart enough to patent it. However they told me most of the profit went to pay the lawyers involved in protecting their interests.
And patents usually end in 20 years and you have to start all over again. Or so I am told.
Lately most of the new tools invented lean toward electronics. Those type of tools are out of my network.