Fiction Useless Inventions
The Certificate Printer for Small Wins
A desk machine that prints a formal, gold-bordered certificate for achievements such as remembering to take the washing in before it rained.
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Fiction Useless Inventions
The Museum Rope for the Home
Two brass posts and a length of burgundy velvet rope, for cordoning off the one corner of your house that is currently tidy.
Fiction Useless Inventions
The Considerate Vacuum
A vacuum cleaner that stops the instant anybody in the room begins to speak, so that it never once interrupts, and therefore never once finishes.
Fiction Useless Inventions
The Weather Doormat
A handsome coir mat with a small display in the corner, which tells you, as you come in, exactly what the weather was doing an hour ago.
Fiction Useless Inventions
The Recital Toaster
A toaster that marks the completion of your toast with a short brass fanfare, played approximately three minutes after the toast is done.
Fiction Useless Inventions
The Loyal Trolley
A shopping trolley engineered, at considerable expense, to turn only left, on the grounds that a trolley which can go anywhere encourages a shopper who has thought about nothing.
Fiction Useless Inventions
The Doorbell That Knocks
A small brass fist mounted on the inside of your front door, which knocks politely whenever a visitor presses the button outside.
Fiction Useless Inventions
The Slow Torch
A handsome aluminium torch whose beam arrives about three seconds after you point it, so you are always shown where you were looking rather than where you are looking.
Fiction Useless Inventions
The Indoor Sundial
A properly engineered brass sundial for the living room, sold with its own small torch, because a sundial indoors has to get its sunlight from somewhere.
Fiction Useless Inventions
The Rewinding Bookmark
A silk bookmark that creeps three pages backwards every night, on the grounds that you were not really paying attention the first time.