House of Invention: The Secret Life of Everyday Products - Hardcover

In House of Invention, David Lindsay shares the most fascinating stories in the obsessive history of invention, all within the typical American home. He stops in each room to examine the most taken-for-granted objects, and finds eccentric inventors lurking within every delightfully bizarre story of invention.The bathroom, for example, is a hotbed of innovation. We meet Gillette of disposable razor fame, who had grandiose utopian plans; the inventor of Vaseline - he actually ate a spoonful of the stuff each day; and the first woman millionaire.A visit to the kitchen takes us to the frigid North, where Clarence Birdseye was inspired, and into the odd psyches of the Kellogg brothers. In the foyer, we find the magical history of the intercom, the piratical origins of paper money, and the Houdini-like ascension of the king of locks. The office yields the origins of pencils; the roots of Muzak technology; and the debt we owe to Nikola Tesia. The garage shows us the genius of the standard screw thread, the patent-stealing of intermittent windshield wipers, and the rags-to-riches-to-rags story of the woman who invented the flat-bottomed paper bag. In the family room, we learn of the race for television's patent, about the violent inventor of the Nautilus machine, and of the pacifism that inspired solitaire. The bedroom boasts more personal inventions as we unravel the histories of the brassiere and even the condom.There is intrigue, suspense, fraud, rebellion, and more. No house should be without House of Invention, and no one interested in stories of genius and ingenuity and the extraordinary creation of ordinary objects should miss it. (51/4 X 71/2, 196 pages, illustrations)

David Lindsay is the author of Madness in the Making: The Triumphant Rise and Untimely Fall of America's Show Inventors and The Patent Files: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Invention. He has contributed to publications such as The Wall Street Journal, American Heritage, The Village Voice, Biography, and New York Press.