In 2002 Ross Long came very near to patenting a stick:

An apparatus for use as a toy by an animal, for example a dog, to either fetch carry or chew includes a main section with at least one protrusion extending therefrom that resembles a branch in appearance. The toy is formed of any of a number of materials including rubber, plastic, or wood including wood composites and is solid. It is either rigid or flexible.

Presumably the Almighty would have stepped in if He’d considered this infringement.

Are we getting lazy, or are our business demands so urgent that great haste in our personal locomotion is absolutely necessary? I am prompted to ask this question because one enthusiast has suggested the peculiar sloping roadways illustrated in Fig. 3. The idea is that by constructing the roads in this rather tantalizing manner, pedestrians could, when they desired, leave the pavement, and after having applied roller-skates to their feet, just stand erect at the top of the slope, and allow themselves to travel down without further effort — unless it be to maintain their equilibrium or to avoid violent contact with fellow-skaters. Arrived at the bottom of a slope, steps would have to be climbed — a difficult matter, by the way, whilst one’s feet are encased in skates — before other slopes could be reached. Certainly, if a very long street were so formed, speed would be assured. But how about vehicles? Where would they be accommodated? I suppose that they would take to the pavements, crossing from one to another by means of the square levels at the street ends. As a pastime, perhaps, this means of progress might be amusing; but it is too ludicrous to commend itself as a serious invention, calculated to be popular in our busy centres of commerce, or, for the matter of that, anywhere within our realms.

— James Scott, “Eccentric Ideas,” Strand, March 1895

Robert Martin offered a novel addition to the automobile in 1919: a stove. His invention would direct hot gases from the engine to a cooking chamber in the passenger compartment, where they could warm food even while the car was in transit. The stove’s lid is fitted with compression springs to prevent your casserole dish from rattling on the way to grandmother’s house.

Martin promises that the heating coil is sealed, so there’s no danger of contaminating the food by “the poisonous and injurious constituents of the exhaust gases” or of “smutting or blackening the cooking vessels by the soot.” So don’t worry about that.

In 1881 Benjamin Atkins patented this “new and useful device for supporting and exercising the fingers of players on key-board instruments.” Essentially it’s a series of rings suspended from springs, “so as to compel the user to put forth unwonted strength” in depressing his fingers. In time this would foster “a superior decision of touch with greater flexibility and rapidity of motion.”

The Morning Post praised a similar device, noting that it could help a student acquire proper technique quickly, “without noise and without injury to the instrument.” “The testimonials to the value of the invention are extremely numerous and from persons most distinguished in the profession.”

Even in 1923, parking was a problem. Iowa’s Leander Pelton proposed this solution — a lightweight car that can be stood on end and wheeled about on casters.

“When it is in this position, it may be moved through an ordinary doorway, or a very large number of them could be stored or parked in a comparatively small road or floor area.”

Unfortunately it would also be a bonanza for car thieves.

From Gaston Tissandier’s Popular Scientific Recreations (1882). This is even worse than the dog treadmill, where at least the animal has the option to stand still — here he’s confined to a box on the side of a wheel, where, finding himself sliding downward, he’s perpetually forced to climb.

Tissandier says that the machine’s inventor, M. Richard of Paris, employed a large number of women working on sewing machines and conceived the idea of “quadrupedal motors” when he noticed the work was injuring their health. That was generous. “There is very little trouble or expense connected with the working, so a great saving is effected, as the dogs cost little, and are cheaply fed.” Perhaps he found a suitably ironic fate in the afterlife.

(Thanks, Richard.)

J. Carroll House patented this “alarm bedstead” in 1855. It’s driven by an alarm clock so that, at an arranged time, the bed drops into an inclined position, “and whatever is movable upon the same rolls out upon the floor. Thus we shall find ourselves ten minutes after the alarm is sounded deposited upon the carpet, permitted to arise and dress ourselves for the business of the day.”

“Every person will perceive that this alarm bed well deserved a patent,” opined Scientific American. “Any sinner sleeping beyond a certain hour deserves to be tumbled out of the blankets in the manner so successfully accomplished by Mr. House.”