This week Popular
Mechanics magazine issued a list of the 101 gadgets that changed the
world. The Sticky Bottle Team
investigated and we discovered that we use quite a few of these discoveries
each time we ride. According to Popular Mechanics, the 101st
gadget is duct tape and who hasn’t used the silvery magic around the house,
some of us even put it to work on our bikes to help us just get through one
more ride before we have a mechanic look at it (OK, so that one last ride turns
into 50 last rides). We went through the magazine's list and cherry-picked those necessary for bike riders. Here they are...
Gadget #93 is the bra and for our female rider friends, the
sports bra. Good support is necessary
when riding and bras are cool. That’s
all we’ll say about #93 although the imagination runs wild…
Gadget
#85 is sunglasses and any rider worth his salt dons a pair of shades when
riding. Not only do they protect the old
retina from UV rays, they can stop a hard charging bumblebee on a direct course
with your peeper. Credit for shades
goes to Sam Foster (of the Foster-Grant Company) who in 1919 thought the world
would benefit from sun blocking eye protecting.
He was right and he sold them by the bushels at a makeshift stand set up
inside a Woolworth’s on the Atlantic City boardwalk. As it turns out sales were outpacing
production so Foster gave the world a second invention: injection molding in
1934. This immediately ushered in a new
wave of plastic products. Today most of
the world’s plastics products are injection molded with the most common and
mass-produced being Lego.
#82 is the flashlight invented in 1896 and common on the
handlebars of most riders and especially commuter bikers.
#79
is the Swiss Army knife. It is common in
most seat bags for any number of reasons.
It was invented spitefully by Carl Elsener who was frustrated that Swiss
Army soldiers carried German-made knives.
#72 is the stopwatch.
This device was invented in 1916 by TAG Heuer. Known as the Mikrograph it allowed the
measurement of time with unprecedented accuracy. This
precision helped Roger Bannister break the four minute mile. The accuracy of the piece--to 1/100 of a second--allowed him to run the mile in 3:59.40 (May 6, 1954). Bannister made it under time
by just .6 seconds. Timed sports were forever changed.
#65 is the zipper, it seals in your car keys on your seat
bag and allows your jersey to close. The
zipper was perfected in 1920 by the Goodyear Company.
#37
is the wristwatch because we all need to know when to be home from rides. French jeweler and watchmaker Louis Cartier (pictured)
invented the wristwatch for his friend Alberto Santos Dumont, a zeppelin
pilot. In 1901 Santos Dumont was in
Paris and won world-wide acclaim for circling the Eiffel Tower in his blimp. He was a stickler for the accuracy of his
aerial maneuvers and asked Cartier to design a time piece that he could easily
read without taking his hands off the wheel and other controls while
airborne. In 1906 the “Santos”
wristwatch was made available to the public.
#26 is the ever-frustrating Crescent
wrench invented by Swedish immigrant Carl Peterson in upstate New York. The devise is common among bike mechanics and
maddeningly ineffective at times. It is usually the last resort when the correct socket cannot be found.
#17 is the GPS, invented for the US
military they are useful for getting us home.
#12 is the bicycle itself. Invented in 1884 it is given credit for the
paving of roadways around the globe.
Technology from the bicycle would go into some of the first automobiles.
#11 is the dry cell battery which is
charged electrolytes encased in a paste and a much better system than the dangerous
liquid cells. Since we can’t stay
plugged into the wall socket on rides we owe a debt of thanks to the dry cell
inventor, Carl Glassner.
#1
is the smartphone (Radio is #2, the television is #3). The smartphone for most bike riders is our
mapping device, our GPS, odometer, calorie counter and lifeline to safety. The world can thank the Japanese and the
Finns for the smartphone. To date over
two billion smartphones have been sold globally.
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