Inventions submitted to the U.K. Patent Office by Arthur Paul Pedrick, 1962-1976:

• “Reducing the Tendency of a Golf Ball to Slice or Hook by Electrostatic Forces”
• “Speed-of-Light-Regulated Clock”
• “Internally Explosive Nail”
• “Automobiles Driven From the Back Seat”
• “Using Warning Lights to Prevent Motorists Bashing Into and Killing Each Other, Particularly on High-Speed Motorways in Fog”
• “Improvements in the Irrigation of ‘Deserts’ by Snow Piped From Polar Regions for the Purpose of Minimising the Impending World Famine”

In all, Pedrick filed 162 patents in that period. The man himself is a bit of a mystery, but it appears that his principal colleague at “One Man Think Tank Nuclear Fusion Research Laboratories” was a cat. We know this because “Ginger” is credited in Pedrick’s crowning achievement, “Photon Push-Pull Radiation Detector for Use in Chromatically Selective Cat Flap Control and 1000-Megaton Earth-Orbital Peace-Keeping Bomb” (above), submitted shortly before his death in 1976. The sensor would distinguish Ginger from the black cat next door — and also detect a nuclear attack and launch a reprisal from orbit.

It’s not clear whether Pedrick actually built one. Let’s hope not.