Parents around the world will agree; traditional baby gates are clunky, ugly, and can’t keep up with kids that grow like weeds. Portico puts those woes to bed with versatility and ease-of-use. The width of this aluminum gate can be adjusted to nearly twice the standard size and then secured with the fine adjustment knobs. For added safety, flip up Portico’s height extension bar to keep those little Houdini’s or rambunctious pets at bay. For adults, getting past Portico is no hurdle; simply release the sliding latch and the gate swings open. Whether you’ve got terriers or toddlers, you can always keep up your guard with Portico.

Paulette Jaques imagined an adjustable gate that would offer a diverse safety solution for pet owners and parents alike. The Quirky design staff knew they were up for a challenge, but thanks to over 1,700 influencers, they got it right. Portico debuts for your viewing pleasure right now in the Upcoming section.

Features:
– Adjusts horizontally from 26” to 48”
– Height extension bar adds an additional 7” vertically
– Hinged door opens via one-handed sliding latch
– Tough mesh screen is see-through for full visibility

Material:
– Aluminum frame
– Plastic touch points
– Durable woven mesh screen

Dimensions:

Narrowest
26” x 28” x 2.6”
with Height Extension
26” x 35” x 2.6”

Widest
48” x 28” x 2.6”
with Height Extension
48” x 35” x 2.6”

Price, qty and features subject to change during production process

Product 324: Block Cushion Furniture

Product 320: Auto-Cooling Pitcher

The full feed for the brainstorm can be viewed here:

Video streaming by Ustream

That’s the recap! We’ll be posting a preview for next week’s brainstorm on Monday, but until then we’d love to hear your feedback on this week’s brainstorm and broadcast, so share and share alike in the comments. Change, as they say, is good.

Although May 16th is an insignificant day for most of the world, those with an interest in music or radio may want to pay closer attention. On this day in 1831, David Edward Hughes was born in London, and from humble beginnings would go on to revolutionize the field of audio recording and transmission. Born into a family of musicians, Hughes was immersed in the world of sound from childhood, playing the concertina and harp as part of a traveling act. A musical prodigy, he was appointed as professor of music at St. Joseph’s College, KY at the age of 19, and began work on an automated system of writing music, using a piano keyboard linked to typeface characters by an electrical current. He soon realized that the technology could be used to send text over a wire, a dramatic improvement over existing systems, which were based on Morse Code. The concept quickly became a hit, and Hughes left the music field to spend the next two decades promoting and installing his telegraph printer around the world (it was universally accepted by 1961). This first device would be the predecessor to all future teleprinters, along with the computer keyboard, but Hughes’ most impactful work was amazingly still to come.

The first Hughes telegraph printer

After the completion of his world tour in 1877, Hughes returned to London to continue his research, taking a special interest in microphones. The concept of a microphone had first been developed 50 years earlier by inventor Charles Wheatstone, who experimented with the transmission of sound waves through metal. However, while the technology had been slightly improved by Alexander Graham Bell, it was still too ineffective to be implemented practically. Hughes achieved a breakthrough when he intentionally loosened a contact in the electrical circuit connecting the battery and transmitter, and found that the loosened contact improved audio quality dramatically. Building on this discovery, his prototype carbon microphone was found to work wonderfully, despite being constructed of odds and ends, including toy boxes and a mechanical clock. Just as Thomas Edison’s advancements in filament technology paved the way for wide-scale electric light, this development by Hughes is often lauded as the effective birth of modern telephony and audio recording.

A patent drawing for an early Hughes microphone

Having already achieved financial success as the inventor of the telegraph printer, Hughes refused to patent his microphone technology, instead choosing to make the information free to the general public. Despite a continuous stream of new innovations (including the initial discovery of radio waves and short-distance radio transmission), along with an unprecedented number of awards and accolades, Hughes remained humble to his death in 1900. He frequently called Wheatstone an inspiration, and credited contemporaries such as Hertz and Marconi with performing the grunt work involved in the development of radio transmission. While we at Quirky believe he sold himself short, his attitude is a testament to collaborative innovation, and a fitting example for inventors everywhere.

Sources:
Wikipedia
Angloconcertina.org
About.com

- Block Cushion Furniture

- Auto-Cooling Pitcher

If you’re new to brainstorms, allow us to explain. Every week, QDS blows a few product ideas wide open to kick off the design process. You can take part in that. Here’s how:

1. Topics are posted above. In your wildest dreams, what would be the perfect way to make that product? What should it do, and what problems should it prevent? It’s a brainstorm, so anything goes.

2. Visit the QuirkyLive Channel at 6pm ET on Wed. Log in on Ustream and throw ideas at us in the live chat.

3. Can’t join the live brainstorm? Be sure to add your comments here before the start time, and we’ll have them in mind.

This isn’t your typical door stopper. Anchor can be securely tethered to your door, keeping it out of the way when you don’t need it and right where it should be when you do. It uses no hardware, so no damage is done to your door and removal is easy. Its cleverly designed profile allows one end to be clipped to the bottom edge of the door, while a flexible neck enables the door stopper itself to be easily engaged or disengaged by foot. The friction fit clip makes it a perfect fit for typical residential and commercial door sizes.

Anchor inventor Gyro wanted a more efficient door stopper that would not separate from the door, and he proposed a secure, flexible design as the solution. With the help of QDS and 3,819 influencers, we’re launching Anchor to the Upcoming page today. Head on over to check it out for yourself.

Features:
– Mounting clip flexes to fit doors with a thickness of 35-45mm
– Simple locking mechanism holds wedge up when not engaged
– No more bending down – just use your foot

Material:
– Flexible rubber
– Mechanically trapped steel clip

Dimensions:
– 25mm x 154mm x 45mm

Price, qty and features subject to change during production process

Diego da Silva is a full-time student from the Bronx, who is studying to be a plastic surgeon.  In his spare time, he also tutors, works as an audio engineer and teaches mixed martial arts.  Several of his martial arts students have challenged him to invent a legal personal security device to defend themselves.  One night when he was watching Spider Man, it finally hit him; he needed to come up with a wearable device that can spray a legal solution to protect people when they are attacked.  He did not want to use any dangerous chemical, so he decided that it should hold a cayenne pepper and vinegar solution. Diego knows that fear prevents people from going out on their own, especially women (who are more at a risk of being victimized), so his idea will hopefully let people feel a little safer when they are walking or running on their own.  Quirky agreed that something needs to be done, but felt that we need to explore this idea first to make sure it is the right solution.

Eric Hyman, a Principal Engineer from Matawan, New Jersey, put up a new cork board in his office and was hanging up important documents on it. While using push pins, he kept stabbing himself when he needed to grab a certain color from the box. This annoying, uncomfortable, and familiar experience inspired Eric to create his concept for a push pin pen. This pen allows a user to dispense push pins without having to come in contact with any sharp ends. This spring loaded pen would house pins and quickly eject them when needed. Quirky is excited to research this ideation further, and we think it has the potential to change how pushpins are sold, packaged, and used by consumers.

Hunter McGillivray, a winemaker from Newcastle, California, found himself sometimes stepping into his truck with dirt and mud stuck to his shoes and would always end up tracking in sand when he would go surfing. There are tons of ways to clean up your car, but there isn’t a simple preventative device that addresses the issue. Hunter’s idea is a simple attachment to the door-step of trucks and SUVs, and includes a brush and/or scraping device to make sure you don’t track mud, sand, or dirt into your truck. This vehicle attachment shoe cleaner would mount to both trucks and cars for easy accessibility. Quirky will be moving forward with this ideation to create a way in which a large market of people including construction workers, surfers, and golfers could keep their vehicles clean without a hassle.

The quest to design an artificial human heart has been going on for the better part of a century. The first rudimentary heart pump was invented in 1949 by researchers at the Yale School of Medicine, and was constructed from an Erector set and convenience store trinkets (the prototype successfully bypassed a dog’s heart for over an hour, if you can believe it). From that starting point, a number of partial and complete artificial hearts were developed, including one unit designed by Domingo Liotta that kept a patient alive for 64 hours, but no model came close to serving as a long-term substitute for the organic original.

This landscape changed with Robert Jarvik, a medical researcher who is today celebrating his 66th birthday. Jarvik began his medical career in 1971 at the University of Utah Medical School, where he studied under the already-prominent Dr. Willem Johan Kollf, a Dutch-born pioneer in the field of artificial organs. Kolff’s program had developed a pneumatic heart that could sustain an animal in a lab for over a week, and Jarvik was assigned the task of refining it for use in humans. Under his mentor’s guidance, Jarvik began to make adjustments: the pump was given an ovoid shape to better fit the human body, a new polyurethane was incorporated that would be more compatible with a patient’s physiology, and a new fabrication method was introduced to make the interior smoother, reducing the risk of blood clots. However, Jarvik and his team were unable to develop an effective internal power source, and his first model, the Jarvik-7, was connected by pneumatic tubes to a control unit the size of a shopping cart, restricting the patient’s mobility. Nevertheless, the device represented the first replacement for a human heart that could be installed for any significant period.

Jarvik’s artificial heart shot into the limelight in 1982, when heart surgeon William DeVries received permission to implant the Jarvik-7 into Dr. Barney Bailey Clark, a retired dentist suffering from congestive heart failure. Clark stated prior to the surgery that he did not expect to live long, but that he was willing to participate for the purposes of advancing science. While most of the doctors involved could not argue with this prediction, Clark stabilized after his December 2nd surgery, and survived for another 112 days before succumbing to infection and other complications. While the second patient to undergo the procedure, William J. Schroeder, survived for 620 days, further research would focus on resolving the complications implicit in a transcutaneous device.

Since these first operations, Jarvik’s work has evolved into the CardioWest Total Artificial Heart, which has been implanted into nearly 800 patients waiting for a heart transplant. While the search for a fully-implantable artificial heart is still underway, Jarvik’s contribution to the development of artificial organs represented a huge leap forward, and a gateway to a whole new generation of implants.

Sources:
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wired

Product 325: Light Up Wall Decals

Product 323: Raspberry Pi Case

The full feed for the brainstorm can be viewed here:

Video streaming by Ustream

That’s the recap! We’ll be posting a preview for next week’s brainstorm on Monday, but until then we’d love to hear your feedback on this week’s brainstorm and broadcast, so share and share alike in the comments. Change, as they say, is good.

And the winner is…

Congratulations to Stephanie Burns! Her submission for an intelligent milk container that knows when your milk has actually gone sour caught the eyes and stomachs of the teams here at Quirky and at General Electric.

So, how did we make our decision? When sorting through all of the submissions, we noticed a trend of ideas around preventing food spoilage. Milk, in all its forms, has been a staple of the human diet for thousands of years, and even with all of our modern conveniences, spoiled milk is still a huge problem.

Unlike many foods, whose freshness can be determined on sight alone, the only way to determine if milk is bad (due in part to the containers that it’s sold in) is to smell it, or worse, taste it. Our design and engineering teams feel that solving this problem is a great challenge that can address both cost savings and provide health benefits on a large scale.

Additionally, milk cartons (and bottles) have long been a staple in people’s lives. The milk carton was first patented in 1915, and the “Pure Pak”, as inventor John Van Wormer called it, is still used today. This type of longevity is extremely appealing and gives us the opportunity to create something with the potential to become truly iconic.

We’re excited to get development of this product underway. Get involved in the next step of the process by signing up for a Quirky account (if you haven’t already) and participating in the Research Phase today!

Cool off this summer with Aria, our slim, sleek, and storable reinvention of the fan. While traditional fans are bulky and awkwardly shaped, Aria is more like a piece of modern furniture than an everyday appliance. Its slender profile makes storage and portability a breeze, while the ability to wrap the power cord around its body helps it stay neat and uncluttered. To help you keep Aria clean, we went with an open face design and soft removable blades, making it easy to wipe away those inevitable dust bunnies.

TeamLab’s challenge for us to reinvent the fan was an irresistible opportunity to breath new life into a classic household appliance. Apparently the Quirky community was just as excited about this prospect as QDS was, because 10,393 of them contributed to the development of Aria. Check out our latest socially developed product in the Upcoming section today.

Features:

–Open face and soft, easy to remove blades make cleaning simple
–Slim profile makes storage and portability easy peasy
–7 foot power cord wraps around the body to keep it out of the way when not in use
–Kick stand helps direct airflow
–Four settings: Off , Low, Medium, High

Materials:
–Plastic body and blades
–Metal kickstand

Dimensions:
–12” wide / 12 “ tall / 2.5″ thick

Price, qty and features subject to change during production process