Impossible objects #2: Electric hammer
Here’s another in our Impossible Objects series, following on from the Simplified Calculator – the electric powered hammer.
It comes from the Catalogue of Impossible Objects by Jacques Carelman (a member of the College of ‘Pataphysics).
It includes such items as user unfriendly coffee pots, conflicting cycles and flat chairs. A home had to be found on the Made By Monkeys blog!
For example, on a hammer theme, here’s a tool any workman could blame…
8 Comments
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February 11, 2009
Homer Simpson invented an electric hammer -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_of_Evergreen_Terrace -
February 11, 2009
Does no-one remember Homer’s electric hammer? A design classic and apparently stolen from Edison (if I remember correctly)
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February 11, 2009
Good one. I haven’t seen that episode. (The reclining chair doesn’t seem too improbable…)
“Homer gets to work and develops several inventions, such as an alarm that beeps every three seconds when everything is OK, a shotgun which shoots make-up onto women’s faces, a very difficult to control electric hammer, and a reclining chair which has a built-in toilet. But none of these inventions are well received.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_of_Evergreen_Terrace -
February 11, 2009
I came across this one in a engineering journal a while back and actually makes a reasonable case for an electric hammer. It is based on the kinetics of a woodpecker and they even went as far as to produce a design for a cordless hammer. Though I don’t know if they have managed to sell it to Bosch yet…
http://staff.bath.ac.uk/ensmns/Publications/pj033.pdf -
February 11, 2009
I have seen a serious technical hammer with a lead, it included a piezo transducer for measuring impulse. I can imagine a useful powered hammer, like the rotary tools used in space – without gravity to hold the user in place, it is much more effective to have a powered tool which gives a rapid series of short shocks.
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February 11, 2009
I’ve known an alarm that beeped every few seconds when everything was OK. At a certain nuclear facility there is (or used to be – I’m going back nearly 20 years) one such across the site. You got used to the beep every few seconds, but noticed if it stopped. The lack of the beep is itself a sign that there could be a problem. That way you get warning of a problem even if it occurs alongside (or because of) a power failure that stops the alarm system working. Not so silly in that sort of facility – and after all, Homer ‘works’ in a nuclear power plant….
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February 12, 2009
I have an electric hammer. It came in very handy when renovating my house. You can also get pneumatic and steam hammers.
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April 08, 2009
A “beep when OK” alarm was fitted to the units in Police Stations & similar places linked to the “Nuclear attack warning” system (1960s-70s).
It was quite remarkable how fast people reacted if someone turned it down too far….
And Jeremy Clarkson had a UK-TV program some years ago in which he demonstrated a variant of ‘Homer’s gun’ – “Party-poppers” filled with baby food to allow feeding from a distance.
