But I'm afraid the iPhone app development craze has seen a slump in the quality of inventor eccentricity. Hence the subject of this essay:
''Invention Has Gone to the Dogs - Discuss.''
Inventing's not what it used to be. Thomas Edison, the prince of inventors, said all he needed back then was a bright idea and a pile of junk.
His light bulb and phonograph came during a golden age that saw thousands of mechanically minded obsessives applying No8 wire thinking to the world's needs.
It's true that only one in 500 of the resulting devices were sane or relevant enough to make the market. But this output of uselessness was a needed part of progress.
It took two centuries for the US Patent Office to reach its 10 millionth invention, but Apple's iStore hit its first million apps mark in only five years. Nerds in jeans have usurped white-coated scientists and blue-overalled mechanics as the leaders of popular invention.
I have a pet theory that we understand history better by studying fruitcakery down the ages, to see how each generation is, in its own way, crackers.
A study of the patents of the madder inventors sheds light into dark corners, because each patent is about a problem someone once thought needed solving.
The last century's early inventions were strong on gizmos and contraptions - and there were some corkers.
Thomas V. Zelenka believed he'd become rich beyond his wildest dreams with a better way to put crying babies to sleep.
A chap of mechanical bent, he screwed together a 29-part gadget for the baby's crib. It had a power plug at one end, a padded glove at the other, and a robotic swinging device in the middle.
The sleepless parent could fasten the child in the pat position, turn on the switch, check the swinging glove, and leave the kid in the care of the Zelenka Baby Patting Machine.
The fear of being buried alive troubled other inventive minds. In 1887, Bert Hadden, an English civil engineer, developed a coffin with an air vent to the surface, and an alarm bell cord the undead could pull on waking.
George Willems thought this problem better left to caring relatives, so he created a casket with a tube, mirror, and torch system, which let its innards be inspected from above ground.
''Mummy, is Daddy still dead?''
''Yes darling, I check him every spring.''
World War 1 brought new inventive frenzy. Doyle and Neill had already patented the saluting hat but, really, new weaponry was the place to be.
Jones Wister put a periscope and a curved tube on the end of a rifle, which meant a soldier needn't poke his head above the parapet and could have his gun explode in the safety of his trench. But the maddest belonged to Albert Bacon Pratt, who designed a helmet with built-in gun.
This was to be a ''more natural'' sniping device to defeat the Kaiser. The soldier heard his target move, turned his head to see and point, then puffed down a trigger tube.
Bang, another Hun dispatched on sight. Pratt's helmet gun had 200 parts and seemed likely to break its shooter's neck, but he really over-egged his case when he also proposed it as the perfect field cooking pot.
The head space could hold the stew, the gun barrel doubled as pot handle, and the spike atop the helmet made a stick-in table leg.
We presume things went poorly for the Pratt gun at the first inspection.
''Dear God, Smith - this is the dirtiest weapon in the army,'' barked the sergeant.
''Explain yourself!''
''That's baked beans, sir.''
These daffy industrial-age patents carry a charm not matched when we inspect the weirder corridors of Apple's Apps Store.
This harbours iWonk inventions like - a phone draught to blow out birthday candles, a ghost detector, a cure for warts, a sexual performance measurer, and 60 different apps to make your phone break wind.
Inventing has gone to the dogs? I rest my case.
John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.
