In Good Omens, the collaborative novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, the young witch Anathema Device explains that she did her Ph.D. on people who invented things so simple and universally useful that everyone forgot that they’d ever actually needed to be invented.

Starting with her direct ancestor, Joshua Device who “invented the little rocking thing that made it possible to build accurate clocks cheaply” (aka “the device”). He was from Lancaster and another Lancastrian inventor was Sir Humphrey Gadget who devised a “the gadget” that made it possible to pump out flooded mineshafts. Other such notorious people were Pietr Gizmo, presumably Russian, Cyrus T. Doodad, America’s foremost black inventor and Ella Reader Widget, also American. Unfortunately, it is not explained in more detail in the book what “the gizmo”, “the doodad”, and “the widget” are. I guess Anathema forgot to mention Arthur Alfred Dingsbums and Schanette Schnickschnack, both active in the German equivalent of the Edwardian era.

These dingsbumse are found in our household:

This gizmo is more than an Elvis look-alike. It is an egg timer for perfectly cooked eggs, being boiled with them every time.. It plays three different tunes (Love me tender, You’re the devil in disguise, Jailhouse rock). The setting for mostly runny eggs is one time “love me tender” and the hardest, quite obviously, “jailhouse rock” three times [each tune plays three times]. The egg adapts automatically to the amount of water and the amount and size of eggs in the water.

And on the subject of eggs, this fish is a gadget to separate egg yolks from egg whites by sucking up the egg yolk only.

We all know the fluff rollers that operate via sticky paper. This gadget works with elastomers and is reusable (just rinse with water). Henry, the cat, appreciates it too, since he is the one who leaves most of the fluff and lint and hair.

This is my favourite doodad: a moskito heat thingy. It plugs into smart phones with a USB-C plug. It heats up (controlled by an app which installs automatically) and then is pressed on a mosquito bite or other insect sting. Since insect saliva is protein based it disintegrates when exposed to heat. Applied early enough it will prevent the itching from stings and bites. Genius!

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Gadgets and Gizmos