SciShow Tangents - Bonus Backlog Bonanza - Ep. 20

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

This bonus episode was originally posted on Patreon on October 29, 2022 titled "What the heck?"Original Patreon description: This bonus pod is Ceri's special game: Pattently Obvious. Watch along and see if you can guess what the patent is for!SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! And go to https://complexly.store/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on socials:Ceri: @ceriley.bsky.social@rhinoceri on InstagramSam: @im-sam-schultz.bsky.social@im_sam_schultz on InstagramHank: @hankgreen on X

Hello and welcome to the SciShow Tan- a- a- the a SciShow Tangents Patreon bonus episode for all of our lovely Patreon patrons. Thank you for supporting what we do. And this week on the SciShow Tangents Patreon bonus podcast, Beep beep boop boop beep. Bonus podcast We've got something that's Aries planning on doing and I don't know what it is Sam doesn't know either I was like I can write a game. Yeah, I got it. I did get a document in my email That's a don't open this you're allowed to open it now. Okay. Yeah, you can open it. I think this is involved This game is called

Patently obviousvious. Okay. And here's how it works. I will give you an image from a US patent along with the name of an inventor and the year it was patented. And that's what's in the secret doc. And because this is an audio medium, I will also give an image description. Also because I can always be practicing my alt text skills. Yep.

Then you two discuss based on logic or wild speculation, what you think this invention was for. Whoever gets closest gets the point and whoever gets the most points wins. All right. There are five of them. That sounds great. Patent one is by Virgil A. Gates in 1876.

And the image you're seeing, the image labeled Figure 2, is a sketch of a narrow curved and concave shield that was intended to be made of a material like vulcanized rubber or metal. There is an elastic cord attached to each of the two ends and a loop at the end of each elastic cord. What is this invention for? It's got to be for people that got that got over under bites. You yank the bites. It goes around your ears. That goes around your chin. The curved vulcanized rubber goes

around your little chinny chin chin. Oh, and then that elastic yanks yanks your drawback into place. It's not is it going to work? No, that's not how jaws work. But that's that's what it was. Your ears would totally not be strong enough to handle that or Is it for keeping people quiet? Just the yanking their mouths shut no you can't talk you're not allowed to talk anymore or for biters To stop that stop the biting children from doing all of the biting that seems like the most logical explanation to me I don't offer protecting your teeth from something. Maybe it's an early mouth guard for sports activities. Maybe it's an early mouth guard and that I don't know why they thought

Yeah, we got around your ears. Yeah, it like goes between your teeth and you can chew Oh, or maybe you that's for like anesthetic when they're like chopping your leg off They wrap it around your ears and that way the stick doesn't come out of your mouth and you chew on the rubber Ah, I feel like I feel like the around your ears part is really tripping me up a lot. It seems like you can just put some rubber in somebody's mouth. But now this guy's amputated a lot of legs and sometimes it falls out. And then you're like, I can't go pick up his rubber right now. I'm busy sawing. I'm halfway through a leg.

OK, I'm going to go with my sports mouth guard theory, though. That I'm going to go sports guard. OK, OK, I'm going to go with my sports mouth guard theory, though. You got to go with sports guard. OK, yeah. I'm going to stick with underbite. It's an underbite corrector. I'm going to give that point to Sam. Dang it. Because this invention is called improvement in mustache guards.

And it's for in the in the text of the patent, it says, quote, every gentleman who wears a mustache must have experienced the great inconvenience it causes in eating and drinking, especially in eating soups and other kinds of food of similar consistency. So this much like we wear masks to prevent, uh, air flow particles from going in and out of our mouths. This goes over your mustache and top lip to prevent food and liquid from spilling into your mustache after you've carefully groomed it. Can you make these for pizza miss next year? Uh, no.

Oh, okay. Now, if you scroll down on the document, you'll find patent number two. I tried to separate the images so we get live reactions. So patent two is by Roswell W. Turner in 1882. And the image labeled figure one is a sketch of a human hand holding a small apparatus, a straw-sized stick with a spring-loaded button on top, and a claw made of two pointy jaws

at the bottom. The claw is clutching a wrinkly ovoid object. Figure 2 and figure 3 are showing two different perspectives of the stick, a vertical and horizontal view. When closed, the device looks kind of like a sphere. What is this invention? I really hope that's a pickle that is grabbing. It looks like a pickle. It looks like a pickle. It looks like a pickle grabber. But if it's not a pickle, the alternative is grim to what

it could be. I feel like it's a pickle or a turd. Those are the two things that could be a turd. I was thinking that it is a testicle that has been removed from a mammal. Oh no. So that's another alternative. It could be a turd. It could be a fig. Actually, I didn't get this until Sam told me that it was a pickle. You push the thing down and it opens the claws.

You let the thing go, it closes the claws and then you can pick things up with it. Yeah. You can grab specifically pickles out of the big pickle thing at the bar where it's like you dunk your hand and get the pickle. How are you going to get your hand in the pickle jar? Yeah, yeah, your hand stinks. This is for grabbing pickles. Just exclusively pick specifically a pickle grabber, which I'm going to let him have because

he like I thought it for a second It was a centrifuge, but this is making way more sense that it's some kind of grabber Just looking at how the mechanism functions because there is a cross-section of it down there Yep, and so I think that it is a Not Cracker or grab a good one. Maybe it's a nutcracker. Doesn't seem like it would have enough power to crack a nut, but that's where I'm at. Well, Sam is really representing every man great.

And I identified that pickle point blank. It is a pickle. It is a I didn't think it was a pickle either. It looks so weird. That's blue collar, guys. We know a pickle when we see it. It's so small and like- You knew this was a pickle, right Tuna? Yeah. But it is a fork for domestic and other uses. And specifically, they mention in the patent, it has jaws for grasping and removing various articles such

as fruit, pickles, etc. from bottles and jars, meat and other articles of food from the pot containing the boiling water in which they are cooked, and burning coals or cinders from a fire. Why don't we all have one of these? Why doesn't everyone in the world have one of these? We need this thing, right? I'm always grabbing my hot coals out with my hands. Ouch.

Ouchy ouchy. And it's small too, so you can sort of keep it around nearby. I can get your nose too. Oh, did you? Ooh, did you grab a pickle with that? Well, yeah, earlier. That's the answer after you grab my nose. So, Patent Three is by James C. Boyle in 1896, and the image labeled Figure 1 is a sketch

of a human head with a buzz cut and very pointy nose, wearing what looks like a cross between a bucket hat and a bowler. Housed within the dome of the hat is a five-pronged stand gripping the person's head with a mechanical device with gears on top, attaching the stand to the inside of the hat. What is this invention? You've got it down like nothing. That is exactly what's going on here. You did not mention his cravat. No, I... It's probably not very important. Or his bizarrely deep ear.

The ear is a little bit disturbing. It goes on forever. He didn't really study it. Look at a human. Yeah. Anatomy for nose, ear, his eyebrow, his brow either. Is this. And adjustable hat that makes sure it's always the right height above your head.

And so I don't know what all those gears are doing, but it feels like the goal is for the hat to sit correctly and always be quite high so that your head looks bigger than it is. There's so much space there in the top of the hat. A huge amount of space. And there's a lot of gears. There's so many gears. I think it's the thing that helps every hat fit you. So if you find a hat, you like it too big, get this thing, the hat fits you.

You don't think it's a head massaging device? I don't think so. Because it looks like a head massaging device. Were they thinking about head massages in 1869? I don't know.. Because it looks like a head massaging device. Were they thinking about head massages in 1869? I don't know. Maybe James Boyle was the first person to think of one. And it's just like a little secret and you're just walking down the street like, hmm. Yeah, nobody should know.

No one needs to know. How would they know? Godfrey is always so relaxed. What's his secret? Godfrey with his deep ears and pointy nose. Wink. He's an unsettling looking fellow, but he's got a great demeanor. He's super chill.

And he just like groans under his voice when he walks down the street. And he's got the loudest hat as well. It's always going, brrrr. Yeah, I don't know what would be powering it. But again, I don't know what would be powering it in 1896. Steam powered. Steam powered. Sari, tell us what this hat's for.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, so yeah, I think it's a what did you what was yours? Height adjustable. Yeah. Yours is height adjustable. mine is other size adjustable. With the circumference adjustable. Okay, I'm gonna give it to Hank. Okay. Because it is a saluting device.

And so when you need to greet people and you're wearing a hat, you wanna give them a little pleasant salutation. So you tip your hat to them. And so when this man, when Godfrey meets a lovely lady or gentlemen on the street and does a little bow, then the mechanism in the hat automatically tips it up without the use of the hands and gives you a little hat salute. That's not useful. Hello.

Well, is this specifically for somebody who carries things a lot or does not have hands? No, it's just for any improvement is that it's just any old person. James Boyle also wrote in the patent that there may be a sign or placard placed on the hat. So that in a crowded thoroughfare, if you were to bow and your hat was to pop up, then while everyone was looking at your magically popping up hat, you could advertise something and say, Hey, go get Joe's pizza. How far off your head would it go? I like, would it go forward like that?

Don't I think so, like tip. Yeah. You wouldn't be able to see the mechanism from, so it'll look like the hat is tilting by itself because it's gripping so tightly to your head and the gears are whirring. I don't think this would work, frankly. Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know what you need to do. I should have looked up what you need to do to patent something before this game. But I assume you can just say it'll work. Well, yeah, and nobody else has tried this one before. I'm not worried at the patent office. I'm not thinking oh god I'm gonna have to go through all these files to see if this one has been done before. I'm like no This is the first and last time I will see a self-tipping hat. Yeah.

Yeah. So scroll down, please, to patent number four. Oh, no. Which is by Frances Mignon Allen from 1972. 1972. Yeah, jumping ahead in time. Sari, explain to the world this sous vide machine for women. So this image is a sketch of a human with a shoulder length, poofy hair, and possibly lipstick,

sealed completely up to the neck within a large rectangle of material with rounded corners that was intended to be flexible and fluid tight. There is a long zipper running up the middle of the rectangle, which is presumably how the human got inside, and a tube running into the upper left corner and out of the lower left corner. The great thing is that it doesn't look like she got in it. It looks like that's her.

Because there's no bump. There's no bump to show that her body's inside. So it just looks like she just happens to be a whoopee cushion. Yeah, I almost used whoopee cushion for the description. And so there is. So so obviously, this is some way of submerging your body, but not your head. In. Okay.

It's just a way of taking like get, taking a shower without getting your hair wet. That was unfortunately exactly what I was going to say. You don't have to worry about your hair. You just zip yourself into the whoopee cushion and then it fills up with warm water and you do this, you just shake your body around a little cushion and then it fills up with warm water and you do this you just shake your body around a little bit and then you drain it out and then your husband comes and towels you off. That's exactly the same thing I was gonna say so I have to think of something else. It is for taking a shower but maybe like the point of it is to be able to take a shower anywhere

and not just in the shower, I guess. I don't know where the, you'd have to have a water supply, I suppose, but. I like that. You don't have to worry. You can just like, yeah. What about, how about you get shower? And I'm gonna say that the tubes are for pumping the air out

and that creates a low pressure chamber around the body, which was thought in the seventies to increase blood flow to the skin, which would decrease wrinkles or some bullshit. That sounds very possible as well. Great innovation, Hank. The simple man wins again. It is a portable bath capsule, which is... Which makes sense because you're submerged in the water, you're not sprinkling it over your body, but this is a capsule for administering bath and or massage. Uh, and so you stick a patient in and that their suggested use case was in

hospitals or nursing homes, which makes more sense than like, uh, uh, civilian use of this kind of thing, a casual couch bath. Um, but you, instead of giving someone a sponge bath or having them move into a shower, you zip them up into this little chamber, water tight around the neck, fill it up with water, and then kind of squish it around. Squish around the soap, squish around the water, give them a little massage. And there's some stuff with the layers of this capsule, much also, so a more complicated whoopee cushion

where there are air pockets to maintain an even temperature and even pressure so you don't squish someone or suction them in too much. And then after you're done bathing, the tube just sucks the water right back out. And then you zip yourself out. And then you zip yourself out. And then you zip yourself out. And that you can just keep that in your mobile home,

your, what do they call it? RV. Motor home? Yeah, your RV. Yeah. And then back, because now they got showers and those, but not all the time. So you just keep that in the trunk,

hook it up to any old hose, and then have a very unpleasant time. Yeah, or you're a traveling salesman, and you're like, I gotta make a good impression on this person, but I stink. Good thing I have my portable bath capsule in the trunk. I'm starting to get on board. I think it's all right.

Or you could even have them like at the mall. You could be like, oh, I'm feeling grimy. Stop at the mall. There's like a bunch of them sitting there. Like the massage chairs. Yeah. I don't like this. That does not.

That seems like a weird way to get a disease. You need to run like a sterilizing fluid in between every person. Sure. Oh, gosh. You ready for the last one? I love her. Okay. Yes. Okay. Sure. Oh my gosh. Are you ready for the last one? I love her. Okay, yes. Oh dear. Okay, last patent.

Oh no! What the? Patent number five is by Helene Adelaide Shelby from 1927. And this image labeled figure one is a doozy. Yes, it is. One human is standing and facing the wall of a chamber where there is a life-size skeleton illuminated by light and mounted as if it's standing. The head of the skeleton is connected to a recording device. Behind the wall that the skeleton is mounted on

sits another person in an office chair who is presumably controlling some aspects of the skeleton with a computer panel and can speak through a megaphone to project their voice another person in an office chair, who is presumably controlling some aspects of the skeleton with a computer panel, and can speak through a megaphone to project their voice through the skeleton's mouth. What is this invention for? Sarah, you left off the weird basket. Is that a light?

Is that just a light? Oh, I think it's a light. In the upper right-hand corner, there's a light behind the sitting person or something. There is a light hanging from the ceiling. I thought it was like, like a basket for weighing things. That's what it looks like. Here's why I think that maybe is important because that person needs to be able to see but maybe it's dark on the other side. I feel like this is for like a haunted house or something. And it's like, it's like you look in a mirror and then it's like,

and then it's a skeleton and then you're like, Whoa, Sam. And then the person at the computer is like, okay, he went, Whoa, I got to go, Whoa, really fast. I don't know why he'd have to record the voice, but, but it's some kind of, it's some kind of, uh, it's some kind of novelty for a spooky, a spooky carnival attraction of some sort. Ah, Sam. Of course you...

I think you're right and I would never have got there. But that's where you went. I got too excited. So I'm really confused by a couple of things. You two can see number 34 is baffling. It's just like 34 points to a small ball attached to the inside of one of the walls. And I'm like, what is that ball?

Now 11 also has something to do with the 11 is also the ball. Like the ball like like slides out 33 being a one way mirror. I like that. I'm a 14 and 27 or 227 are also very weird. I think that those are also lights or something. No, I think they're lights. They shine up to make it creepier.

And I and I guess that I guess that he controls it and makes the arms move around. And I don't know why the skeleton has a big one big bug eye. But I guess I'll say that the skeleton is and he talks to you. I don't have any like what's in his head. What is all that? It looks like film like a film. Yeah, like it's recording like film to record you because then it records your reaction and then you get to see. Okay, thank you, Sam. Here it is.

I think it's not a carnival attraction. I think that it is a way for scientists to capture the moment of terror and then compare that among different people so that they can do research on scared people. Oh, that makes sense. So it's these are both. Are they both? Are they both good? But not it? Because if there's something else- Yeah, there's a third thing. It's both very good. I think I will give this to Hank because you got the recording bit a little bit more.

It is an apparatus for obtaining criminal confessions and photographically recording them. By scary people? Or it's like a skeleton. It's like, you killed me. And then it's like, I did, I'm so sorry. Yep, you just, so the guy, the person sitting down is scaring someone who may be committed a crime,

a suspective of committing a crime, and the skeleton is designed to be as eerie as possible. So the eye sockets are so bulbous because they're provided with bulbs. I think they're red bulbs, but I can't find the exact section right now, gotta be, to illuminate and look scary. You're right about the lights at the bottom, there are lights below to help produce the appearance of an apparition to make it look ghostly and bring out the outlines as opposed to making it look like a plastic skeleton.

As the subject replies to questions while under examination, as their sound waves are being recorded, their voice, their confessions, then there's some mechanism to make the skeleton blink as there is sound in the room. What else were you? Oh, 34, that's a curtain. So it's the cross section. That's why it looks like a ball. So I think you, I think imagined, Sam, you were right

about the hidden surprise element. You bring your suspect into an interrogation room and then go, I'll leave you here for a second. And then go on the curtain. And it's like, Jeffrey, why did you kill me? Like, that doesn't sound like you at all, Steve. Why is there why is there a ghostly skeleton in this police station? I will chase you to the ends of the earth,

but only if you stay inside of this police room. but only if you stay inside of this police room. Yep. And that's it. Just to like really help with police interrogations. They're having trouble getting confessions to stick. And people saying, oh man, I was, I didn't say that. But now with the recording device, you totally do have the exact words coming out of their mouth. Why couldn't you just have a recording device without the skeleton? Oh, I don't. That's the innovation, Sam. That sets this apart from the rest of the market. Everyone has old cameras.

But Helene? This is where audio recording was first invented in this capacity. It does seem, I do feel like the court system might have some issues. Yeah. Yeah. The now giving a confession under duress is kind of frowned upon. Yeah. But is it duress when you're being visited by an apparition or is that just

sort of one of the miracles of human consciousness? How do we do? Do we, do we, do we, how did we do? How did we do? Did Sam win? I think Sam won. Sam won. I won? Three to two. Three to two?

Yeah. You gave me the shower one. You threw me a bone, Hank. Yeah, but your shower one was more right than mine. I thought it was just so she didn't have to get her head wet. I take it all back. Different places. Yeah, you still got the shower.

The shower is important. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You both did great. Thank you for playing this weird game with me where I got to show. I've been saving all these patents for something and I was like, it won't work for an audio medium.

And then I was like, it'll work for a Patreon audio medium because they'll expect a slightly lower bar. work for an audio medium. And then I was like, it'll work for a Patreon audio medium because they'll expect a slightly lower bar. Ceres pitched a patent so many times that I've had to say. But now I said, yes, yes, yes. You said, I don't know what you're doing, but we need a game. Thank you to everybody for supporting us on Patreon. And I hope that you like all the goofy things that we get up to here.

And we will see you on Tangents and on Twitter and everywhere else. Bye bye! Bye! Bye!