There’s Paul Moller.
I hear we’ll have flying cars any time now!
Well, I think Jobs and Wozniak did their work in a garage. So I guess that doesn’t count.
Another “back yard” inventor is Trevor Baylis who invented the wind-up radio in his garden shed.
Although very useful, I’d hazard to say this device is more the result of finding a market for existing technology, rather than inventing new technology. Wind up, spring driven devices are not exactly a new concept. With the advent of electricity in homes, spring driven devices went to the wayside. The dry cell battery took over any remaining usefulness of these devices. The latest twist on this idea is using the crank to drive a dynamo which then stores the charge in a capacitor, which powers the device through a regulating circuit.
I was rather miffed to see (on a documentary about it) that Trevor didn’t actually design the radio or its clockwork mechanism. He basically did some simple experiments that convinced him that the idea would work, then found funding to have a professional engineer design the mechanism. The quite substantial design challenges in the clockwork generator were all solved by this professional, and not Trevor. What he does get kudos for, is the inspiration that a clockwork radio was something that was worth having. But he didn’t invent the design.
I’m sorry, but Rudy Heeman has him beat.
New Zealand inventor creates ‘flying hovercraft’ (telegraph.co.uk)
By Paul Chapman in Wellington, Published: 1:24AM GMT 03 Mar 2010’
Above-sea ride sends inventor over the moon (stuff.co.nz)
The Nelson Mail, 20/10/2007
Looking like a conventional hovercraft but with the addition of detachable wings, the vehicle cruises at 56mph when flying, has a range of more than 140 miles, and reaches a height of about 10 feet. (from the telegraph article)
How about Dean Kamen, inventor of The Segway? Would he be considered a backyard inventor?
Aren’t most direct marketed products (“not availble in stores”) examples of backyard inventors? What big corporation is going to sink R&D money into a device to scramble eggs in the shell? Small-time inventors will, because they have a somewhat irrational devotion to their ideas, and the moxie to promote them. Sometimes passion is all it takes.
Well, the portable MP3 player is most definitely something that a guy could have invented in his garage. I just wouldn’t have looked as cool nor been as small as the commercial product, but it’s just a laptop hard drive with some electronics to decode MP3s plus an interface. Notice the plethora of copycats on the market. Only the concept was novel (or was it? I don’t recall if the iPod was the first MP3 player).
I don’t think Dean Kamen counts as a backyard inventor unless Thomas Edison does.
FWIW,
Rob
Dean Karmen’s first invention - an injection pump - probably counts as backyard. Then he built a business on top of that success. So not unlike Edison.
The first portable iPod like device I saw was made by Compaq. I remember thinking it was pretty cool. And only about 4GB of disk from memory. It was quite some time before the iPod. Like much Apple gear, the iPod wasn’t about the hardware. The success of the iPod was based upon iTunes. People forget that it was a tiny niche product until they released iTunes for Windows. Anyone could have done what Apple did - and what they did was make it easy to use. But nobody did, and nobody has.
A Wired article from earlier in the year shows how small scale manufacturing is taking off:
I was only joking.
There are those who would say the last major ‘do-able’ invention was the hovercraft. They may be right - I really can’t think of anything after that is truly original and wasn’t the product of a research lab in a big corporation. Dyson borrowed his idea for a cyclone vacuum cleaner from long-extant big extractors in saw mills (I know the fluid dynamics engineer - not Dyson who developed the original DC1. The dual-cyclone feature was a hurried frig for a trade show deadline to stop hairs being shot out of the exhaust), and Bayliss’ notion of attaching ancient clockwork technology to a radio was done with the worthiest of ideals - improving communications in the Third World - but it’s nothing particularly new, just a variation on a theme. You could just as well power a radio with firewood, and indeed gas-powered radios that derived electricity from heating thermopiles were popular in the age of widespread gas supplies but minimal electric supply infrastructure.
The Segway appears unique only because it’s a bit shit and everyone else was too sensible to invent it beforehand. It’s a sideways scooter with automatic servo control to keep the rider from weebling over when acelerating and decelerating. If the Seqway predated the scooter, the latter would be seen as a fantastic invention as it’s much more stable and the fore-and-aft wheel arrangements eliminate the need for cumbersome servo control. Even Mr Garrison’s entity “IT” doesn’t look as humiliating a means of transport as the Segway, and even then the former is a very old invention (see this great page on monowheels). Another page on the same wonderful site shows the concept of 2-wheeled cars, usually kept from falling over when at rest by gyroscopes. Sound familiar?
The OP has got me thinking now - surely there must have been at least one significant and original invention since the hovercraft that could be prototyped by a competent person without huge financial backing. While I’m waiting for Zephrame Cochrane to invent the warp drive, I’ll keep thinking and watching the shopping channels.
OK, now we’re getting close to One True Scotsman territory. We’re gonna have to define “major” and “original” and “backyard” and “inventor” etc. etc.
It doesn’t get any more Edison than that.
Some FOSS is indeed written by people with a lot of spare time and for zero profit, but Linux is a terrible example of this considering that 75% of the code was written by people paid to do so.
Home 3-d “printing”/rapid prototyping. Just one example here. “The revolution will be carmelized!”
Well, according to Star Trek, the first FTL spaceship will be put together by some guy. In a forest.
Eat that NASA.
I think humanity has basically moved beyond the backyard inventor, which is mostly a good thing. Inventing has become more professional, iterative, collaborative.
I say “mostly” a good thing because in my view the ideal setup is to have professionals on one hand and “tinkerers” on the other.
If you only have professionals, groupthink is a danger, or simply everyone overlooking something.
But the tinkerers are unlikely to come up with fully-formed products.
Unfortunately, this all goes against human nature somewhat. We want heroes (and maybe villains). We want to point at that guy and say “(S)he invented the mobile phone / GPS / the internet / whatever”.
Nowadays, the vast majority of inventions are made by people who are “in the industry.” A person who invents a new soda bottle, for example, will most likely work in the packaging industry, attend trade shows, etc.
It’s rare to find an inventor who is an industry outsider.
Hereis a local landmark of sorts that shows the inventor spirit. I haven’t seen it used in years but it is a home built testing tower for wind vanes. The tower is mounted on a garage and pivots down with a winch so that new blades can be attached.
By “Major, original” inventions I’m thinking stuff that’s not merely taking two long-existing technologies and combining them without doing much else (like the clockwork radio- it’s a worthy invention but I don’t think it’s particularly “original” or “major”) yet ends up making a big impact or finding reasonably widespread use in the “real world”.
By “Backyard inventor” I was thinking of people who have actual jobs doing something else (generally unrelated to their hobby) but tinker around in their garages/sheds/hobby rooms in their spare time and come up with something important. To re-use the examples from the OP, the Wright Brothers ran a bike shop and designed the first proper aeroplane more or less in their spare time. The guy who invented the percussion cap (without which modern cartridge firearms would not exist) was a Reverend. Dunlop (the guy who invented the modern pneumatic tyre) was a Veterinarian.
I doubt many of them were at a Respectable University or in a Corporate R&D Centre in a white lab coat looking intently and bubbling beakers over a bunsen burner whilst other Serious And Earnest Men - also wearing white lab coats - took notes on a clip-board or timed things with a pocket-watch when they were doing their inventing work.
There’s a TV show here on ABC called The New Inventors that’s designed to showcase the inventions that otherwise “average” people have come up with. There’s some interesting stuff there (including one guy who developed a speedboat propeller that won’t injure you if you get caught in it or stick your hand through it), but I’ve yet to see any of the stuff on the show appear in real-world practical applications (That doesn’t mean it’s not happening, though).