Part of a continuing series of inventor portraits.

Inventor: David Palmer
Invention: Massage Chair
Patent: No. 4,746,167

You’ve seen the offspring of David Palmer’s invention in shopping malls and convention centers around the world. In 1986, he debuted the first portable massage chair. It was heavy, and made of wood. It collapsed down to a “chair-in-a-box” for portability. The modern incarnation is much lighter, more comfortable, and even more portable.

Here’s David relaxing in an early version of the massage chair:

And in the modern version:

David explains why he’s in the massage field: “I’m focused on making touching a positive social value in our culture. It’s what I call the orphan sense. We’ve got five primary senses and of them the one that’s been ignored most — by academia in terms of research, by the media in general, by society in general — is definitely touch. Touch has the most negative associations attached to it and I’m out to change that because I think that touch is essential to our health and well-being, to our development as children, as infants, and it’s long overdue that we take the pathological aspects of touch and turn them into something positive. We’ve got a very pathological relationship as a culture to touch. And that’s mostly manifest in our relationship to sexuality in this culture. So I’m out to make touch something that is much more comfortable for people at large, and also something that people can utilize in their daily lives for their health and well-being. I think that massage is something that should be in every home, that family massage as it’s done in certain cultures, like the Japanese culture for example, is something that should be taught in every grade school as far as I’m concerned. That’s a basic life skill that people should have.”

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Categories: People, Inventors

I hate to make one of those blog posts that explains why it’s been a while since there have been any new posts. But rest assured I haven’t abandoned this blog. I had a busy start to the year, doing some shoots for a corporate client. Meanwhile, my inventor portrait project is still going strong. I’m up to 27 inventors so far, and I’ll be posting more of them soon. I’ve photographed several entrepreneurs who you’ve never heard of, and a few people whose inventions you’ve definitely used before (and may even be using right now). So keep an eye out for updates on that front.

In the meantime, I thought I’d say Happy Birthday to Adobe Photoshop, which turned 20 years old last week, by posting the first image I ever digitally altered. If I remember correctly, this was from back in 1994, with Photoshop version 2.5:

I used to walk past this statue nearly every day in college, and I was impressed by how lifelike its face was in every detail except for the eyes. So I brought my friend Nick with me one day while I photographed the statue, and then photographed Nick in the same light. I made prints in the darkroom and then scanned the prints. Using Photoshop 2.5, I digitally put Nick’s eyes in the statue. It almost makes the statue look like real a person wearing makeup.

Okay, so it’s pretty rudimentary. But I was young, and enjoyed playing with the new technology.

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Categories: Things

In conjunction with Time Magazine’s 50 Best Inventions of 2009 issue, they’ve featured a gallery of my inventor portraits on Time.com. This includes a couple of inventors I have not yet featured on this site.

Here is the gallery at Time.com: Inventors and their Inventions

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Categories: Inventors, People, Photo Essay

Part of a continuing series of inventor portraits.

Inventor: Tami Galt
Invention: Folding wagon
Patent: No. 6,491,318
Brand Name: Fold-it & Go

Tami Galt is a mom, and her invention is sold in toy stores, but it wasn’t inspired by her kids. She was looking for an easy way to carry groceries at the market, and thought a little red wagon would be cute. Unfortunately a little red wagon wouldn’t fit in her car. So she came up with a collapsible wagon that stows away in a bag, and can easily be transported.

And here’s a video I made about Tami and her invention:

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Categories: Inventors, People, Video

Part of a continuing series of inventor portraits.

Inventor: Joe Carolan
Invention: Guidance system for rescue personnel
Patent: No. 7,196,614
Brand Name: Quick-Finders

Joe Carolan is a volunteer firefighter who has a solution for a serious problem: In a smoke-filled burning home, firefighters can’t see very well, and a stranger’s home is unfamiliar territory. Half of all home fires occur while people are asleep, and 64% of children who die in fires die in their bedrooms. So Joe invented Quick-Finders, a two-part system that helps firefighters quickly identify bedrooms. The first part is a sticker that goes outside the front door. It lets the firefighters know that your home has Quick-FInders. The second part is a reflector you stick to the baseboard on the hinged side of a bedroom door. When firefighters shine their flashlights through the smoke, they will see the reflectors (which are designed to catch light from any angle) shining back and know where the bedrooms are.

The Quick-Finders website: www.quick-finders.com

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Categories: Inventors, People

I love the feel of this photo, with all the nondescript people in their nondescript clothes.

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Categories: People, Places

Part of a continuing series of inventor portraits.

Inventor: Tom Roering
Invention: Amphibious recreation vehicle
Patent: No. 7,329,161
Brand Name: Wilcraft

Tom Roering is an ice fisherman who invented a cool product: a lightweight amphibious vehicle that is also an ice fishing shelter. It’s called the Wilcraft (“Wil” stands for water, ice, and land). If it falls through the ice, it floats. It has room enough for two people to comfortably fish together. It can be adapted as an ice rescue vehicle. And it fits on the back of a pickup truck. Take a look:

Photos of Tom and the Wilcraft. Each image can be enlarged by clicking:

The Wilcraft website: www.thewilcraft.com

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Categories: Inventors, People, Video

I felt bad taking this photo digitally:

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Categories: Places

Part of a continuing series of inventor portraits.

Inventor: Art Fry
Invention: Repositionable stationery
Brand Name: Post-it Notes

As told on Post-it manufacturer 3M’s website, “The idea for repositionable notes struck Fry while singing in the church choir. His bookmark kept falling out of his hymnal, causing him to lose his page. So… Fry used a portion of his working hours to develop a solution to his problem. Now the world is singing the praises of his pet project: Post-it Notes.”

You can read the whole story of Post-it history at 3M.com.

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Categories: Inventors, People

Part of a continuing series of inventor portraits.

Inventor: Pam Turner
Invention: Easy-to-thread sewing needle
Patent: Pending
Brand Name: Spiral Eye Needle

About 10 seconds after Pam Turner showed me how to thread her Spiral Eye Needles, I was an expert. It usually takes me longer to thread a needle than it does to sew a button, but it really is impressively easy with Pam’s invention.

Pam says she remembers her mother having problems threading needles when she was young. Her mom used to say, “We went to the moon, why can’t somebody fix the needle?” Pam decided that if nobody else was going to do it, she had to.

Pam used to actually make the needles herself, using a grinder in her home. But now she has a manufacturer, and business is taking off.

The Spiral Eye Needle website: www.spiraleyeneedles.com

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Categories: Inventors, People