Best Technology Of 2024
:date: 2024-11-02 18:08 :tags:
It is now the future and we have positronic brains and flying cars. Oh my! That's nice, but what cool tech gadgets caught my attention in 2024? What technology is actually useful to me? What are this year's technology marvels? What have those tech wizards in Silicon Valley cooked up that is really impressing me these days?
For 2024 the Chris X Edwards Award For Technological Excellence goes to the inventor of this rake.
I live in a giant beech-maple hardwood forest. When the leaves fell recently it was kind of like a ton of bricks but much heavier.
Since I was a kid I have hated raking leaves but it turns out I hate the sound of leaf blowers even more. So, I picked up this rake as kind of an impulse buy not realizing at the time what a profound leap the state of the art in leaf removal had made.
But wow, I am astonished! This rake is incredible.
Remember the good old days (before the incessant sound of 24/7 leaf blowers) when you raked with a rake? If you can then you'll remember that the majority of time was spent on this...
One of the more frustrating jobs associated with leaf or grass raking is the need to periodically bend down (or to reverse the orientation of the rake and bring up its head) and reach for the rake head in order to manually clean away material which adheres to the rake tines in the areas between the prongs. This has to be done very often — perhaps after only one or two strokes in the case of certain types of leaves or vegetable garden matter, or when the matter is wet. Repeated stooping is fatiguing and may even be harmful to the back, particularly in the case of elderly gardeners. Bringing the rake head up is also unsatisfactory as it disrupts the normal flow and repetition of the rake strokes.
That is text from the patent for this rake, US6009697A.
Sure enough this design is astonishingly good.
I raked at least a volume of leaves that could fill a bouncy castle and the number of times a leaf got hung up on the rake was zero. It never happens. Astonishingly, the efficacy of the raking action is not degraded at all. This makes raking so much more tolerable. It's now way down on the list of most dreaded chores — not far off of sweeping with a broom.
So who is the heroic inventor of this amazing technology? Well the rake itself had the patent number embossed on it. I kind of have to wonder why because when I searched for the patent I was expecting to see "True Temper" or The Ames Companies. But no — it was Harry S. Billardo of Portsmouth, New Hampshire (further specified: "Individual"). He had applied for the patent in 1997 and waited two and a half years for it to be granted. Then he got the customary 17 years of protection. I am speculating here, but I wouldn't be surprised if the manufacturer of the rake simply waited until the patent expired in 2017 to start manufacturing them. If so that's pretty awful to retard progress like that. Oh well, better late than never. If Harry's still alive, bravo and congratulations!
BONUS
The runner up for the 2024 Chris X Edwards Award For Technological Excellence is this double wheeled wheelbarrow.
I was vaguely aware that there is some debate about when wheelbarrows were invented, but I can believe that it was non-obvious for quite some time because putting two wheels on one was not obvious to me all of my life. And yet now that I've used one, I can tell you that it is infinitely better! It is so much more stable that you can put more of your energy into moving the load rather than balancing it. One of my favorite tricks to do with it (empty) is grab one handle and walk it somewhere with, say, a shovel in my other hand. As with the rake, I'm not sure if these things have been available for decades and I'm just now discovering them but they're new to me. And recommended!