Editor | On 13, Feb 2019

Darrell Mann

TRIZ research started after the Second World War. The ethos of the research originated around the reverse engineering of successful patents and inventive solutions. What’s less clear is whether there was any parallel inverse research to establish whether the use of inventive strategies was also correlated to unsuccessful solutions. One tends to think this was a significant omission in the research. Especially in light of some of these examples from earlier in the Century:

Principle 30, Thin & Flexible, and a 1925 German life jacket design, made of inner tubes:

Principle 8, Anti-Weight, and the French ‘Cyclomer’ amphibious bicycle from 1932:

Principle 28, Mechanics Substitution, and An American ‘Radio Hat’ from 1931 (extra bonus marks for the Principle 17 cigarette holder… although not in the same league as the cigarette holder on the right, but then I guess the first smoking bans didn’t appear til after the war and so the need for six-foot long devices was less acute):

Principle 15, Dynamics, was also well understood by the 1930s. First up a piano for the bedridden (UK, 1935), and, to its right, an extending caravan (France, 1934):

Or, how about this pair of copycats: a Dutch ‘folding bridge’ from 1926 and a ‘tool for catching dogs’, which just had to be British, from 1940:

Principle 17, Another Dimension, too, was at the forefront of the inventor’s mind by 1936. In the UK at least, with, on the left, a British ‘SUV’, ‘glasses for reading in bed’: and, on the right, from Canada, ‘snow-storm face protector’:

Finally, I think I like this one best. Principles 15, 17 and 30 all rolled up into the perfect solution to those pesky kids… enter the ‘outdoor toddler hanging barn’ from 1937. An enlightened year, parenting-wise…