What was the wonderful work of Mark Scalliot? Probably the smallest lock and key ever made. He was a London blacksmith, and this piece of mechanism (1578) was of iron, steel, and brass, all of which, with a pipe-key to it, weighed but one grain of gold. He also made a chain of gold, consisting of forty-three links, and having fastened the chain to the lock and key, he put the chain around the neck of a flea. The flea could hop around with ease in spite of the weight. The lock, key, chain and animal, all in a lump, weighed only one grain and a half.

— Albert Plympton Southwick, Handy Helps, No. 1, 1886

In 1920, Gaitley Guise patented a rubber “tongue shield” to prevent “the unpleasantness accompanying the taking of medicine.”

“Medicine will flow over the shield and pass into the throat without affecting the sense of taste so that all unpleasantness of taking the medicine is obviated.”

Presumably it also works with broccoli.

In 1905 Kael Lange patented this “double bicycle for looping the loop.”

The idea was that you’d roll through the loop, sail across the gap, and land upside down on the other side.

It has no brakes.

William Lamb was pretty cynical about fish. This apparatus, patented in 1894, assumes that a fish that sees itself in a mirror “will be made bolder by the supposed companionship, and more eager to take the bait before his competitor seizes it.”

“He will lose his caution,” Lamb wrote, “and take the bait with a recklessness that greatly increases the chances of his being caught on the hook.”

Who knows? Maybe it even works.

A baby-patting machine patented by Thomas Zelenka in 1968.

Mark Twain wrote, “A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.”