I liked this Forbes article about new and improved screws. This won’t go down as engineering feat of the year (let alone the decade), yet the story is a concise illustration of innovation.
I liked this Forbes article about new and improved screws. This won’t go down as engineering feat of the year (let alone the decade), yet the story is a concise illustration of innovation.
Cool article. Actually I think such innovations are important to read about because it shows that the mundane and taken for granted, to the tune of billions of screws a year for many years with no changes, can be greatly improved by a single mind focusing on the problem.
I saw that article and really enjoyed it. It’s a case of someone inventing a better mousetrap. Kind of like when the newest generation of hammers that came out a few years ago. If you think about a hammer it’s a piece of wood with a piece of metal on the end. I think it was Stanley that came out with the high impact plastic ones with tuning forks built in, redesigned claw and hammer face.
It was 10 times the cost of a normal hammer but they sold like hotcakes because it was an evolutionary leap in the design of a basic tool. I know I am cheap as all get out but after using one at Ace I forked over my Amex to get one.
Going back to mousetraps, the design is still old as heck and it’s really funny when you think that nobody has built a better one. There are many variations on the basic design but there still isn’t one that is a truly evolutionary leap over the others that took the industry by storm like the new hammers.