New book shares how everyday items like toothbrushes or ice lollies were created
From the simple toothbrush to the complicated microwave, they’re helpful everyday objects most of us take for granted.
Except for Adam Kay that is. Because the former NHS doctor turned comic and TV writer has been on a mission to track down the inventors. After writing BBC hit This Is Going To Hurt, now he’s focusing on unlikely brainboxes who thought, “This Is Going To Be Good”. And he’s turned their stories into a wonderful children’s book that grown-ups will love too.
Inventors he’s uncovered range from kids to convicts and Prime Ministers, and their creations include everything from onesies to trampolines and bubble wrap to ice lollies. Adam, 43, hopes the books will not only entertain but also “trick kids into getting smarter”. Dad to Ruby and Ziggy, both under one, he says: “A lot of inventions just come down to one brilliant little idea, and it fascinates me that this can possibly change the world. "Hopefully kids will like it as it’s funny and silly and daft and disgusting – but they’ll learn too because there’s an awful lot of science knowledge in there.” Here Adam takes us through his Top 9 weird and wonderful inventions…
Adam Kay
Book is out in NovemberBubble wrap - 1957
Bubble wrap was originally designed by engineers Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes in 1957 for a completely different purpose – as 3D wallpaper. Adam says: “They were looking at tonnes of this stuff they’d made and no one wanted it because, realistically, who would want their home covered in bubble wrap? Then one thought: ‘Actually, that might be handy for wrapping up the picture frame I’ve got to send my aunt’.”
Ice lollies - 1905
“One winter’s day an 11-year-old called Frank Epperson in San Francisco had made himself a glass of lemonade using water and lemonade powder,” says Adam. “He was mixing it up with a little wooden stick in the garden when he got distracted and went inside. Next morning he found the whole thing had frozen and the stick was still poking out. And so Frank discovered he’d invented ice lollies. “They’re one of the most important inventions in the book. Where would we be without ice lollies?”
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Microwave - 1940s
Microwave was invented by accident (Getty Images)A scientist called Percy Spencer created the microwave oven by accident while working in a lab looking at a new type of radar wave to spot submarines – radar being a way of firing energy to get signals back and find out where your enemy is. “Clearly, he had his waves set to the wrong frequency because he noticed that for no good reason the chocolate bar in his pocket, that he’d brought in for lunch, had been melted to liquid. ” And so an idea went “ping” in his head.
Newspaper press - 1843
Adam says there are a surprising number of people whose inventions killed them – such as American William Bullock, who dreamed up the printing press in 1843. “He pioneered the invention of the fastest way to print newspapers, using these enormous machines and huge rolls of paper, printed on both sides and folded up,” say Adam. “But he got too close to them one day and rather than the big rolls of paper, it was him who got sucked in and squished.”
Toothbrush - 1780
Prisoner invented the toothbrush (Getty Images/Westend61)“The first toothbrush you’d recognise today was made by an English bloke called William Addis,” Adam says. “He’d been jailed over a riot in London, and one night he sneaked a bone from his dinner into his cell and stuck some bristles from a pig into one end of it, using it to clean his teeth. When he got out, he opened a toothbrush factory and his firm, called Wisdom, is still producing millions of toothbrushes more than 200 years later.”
Siren suit - 1930s
Famous wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill was quite the inventor himself - and even came up with the onesie, says Adam. “Anytime you went out as Prime Minister, you’d be in your three piece suits all done up nicely. But Churchill thought, ‘I’m not wasting an hour a day doing that, I’m gonna make myself a onesie.’ So fair play to him. We don’t know if he went to the sewing machine and made it himself, but there were loads of notebooks of his drawings, so we knew he designed the shape. It’s called the siren suit because that’s what you chuck on when you hear an air-raid siren.”
Baby cages - 1930s
“We all know it’s good for your kids to get fresh air,” says Adam. “But 100 years ago there was no need to take them out… You could just put your baby in a metal cage and hang it out of the window. These were designed for people who didn’t have gardens and were living on the 38th floor of some New York skyscrapers. It was a bit of a faff going down the lift with the buggy and walking to the park. So someone designed an attachment for windowsills for outside. Once again, health and safety was not front and centre.”
Toilet roll - 1935
Toilet roll came after painful realisation (Getty Images)There was a time when loo paper could give you splinters in your bum. Adam says: “They were big squares of paper made from wood like you chuck in the photocopier, so there was an issue with papercuts. It was a question of getting the paper smooth enough and fine enough and the ply right. This change in the 1930s was such a revelation they announced it as ‘splinter-free toilet roll’. Really exciting for them but, looking back at it now, slightly horrifying!"
Trampoline - 1930
“Trampolines are so much fun – it makes sense they weren’t invented by a boring boffin in a lab,” says Adam. “A 16-year-old kid called George Nissen always enjoyed going to the circus when it came to town – but he wasn’t interested at all in the flying, daredevil stuff. All he wanted to see was them plummet onto the safety net because that looked like amazing fun. One day he went home and strung some net over a hoop, raised it up off the ground and that was the first trampoline. Millions of trampolines and thousands of broken arms later, here we are.”
* Kay’s Incredible Inventions, by Adam Kay and illustrated by Henry Paker, will be published by Puffin on November 2.
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