We frequently receive letters that contain queer suggestions ; the writers, being full of comic veins, let off their fund of humor on our editorial heads. As a sample, here are two inventions:—First, a Jersey gentleman thinks (at least he says his wife does, and that's the same thing) that some old bachelor must have invented the " diaper" we noticed a few weeks ago, and that as an improvement his wife has invented a novel piece of apparatus. She proposes to attach an india rubber bag to the feminine shanghai, in which it can deposit its eggs, and thus prevent them from being lost ; and as this is a fast age, she would also train them to come to the kitchen door, and announce when they had deposited an ovum. Secondly, a southern correspondent, much deploring the great waste of time and expense consumed in eating, has invented a chewing and stuffing machine, by which all the inconveniencies of the table will be removed, and all that need be done is to place a piece of food in the hopper, turn a handle arranged on the barrel-organ principle, and the food will be masticated, eaten, and digested in a few" minutes, to the tune of " Yankee Doodle." After this, who shall say there is no fun in science, and no comicality in invention
This article was originally published with the title "New Ideas" in Scientific American 13, 29, 226 (March 1858)
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican03281858-226c