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June 2012: Invent Your Own Anything
The 6th annual Invention Awards are here, from an inflatable tourniquet to a better lobster trap to spring-loaded hocket skates. This issue is all about the celebration of invention.
Plus: Making synthetic biology breakthroughs in a garage, building a constantly-moving ping-pong table, and a ridiculously overpowered barbecue.
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When you looked in the back of the Popular Science magazine in the nineteen-sixties and beyond, there were adds selling instructions for home built gyro-copters. They were supposed to be easy to fly and didn't require a pilot license. Some people actually built them and they did fly. But, it was a little more than an open frame with a pusher prop and a large, free wheeling rotor on top. They could fly very slowly and land almost straight down.
They could also fly into pieces and fall from the sky like a rock since they didn't have wings. The rotor had to tolerate quite a bit of strain.