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Laptop messenger, 1920

Mintox longed for a mechanical alternative to face-to-face conversations and dull cocktail parties. After one particularly arduous wine and cheese social function (where too much of both was consumed), he woke from a futuristic dream and immediately set about building his laptop messenger. Mintox explained that the user could send an instant MSM (mechanicallysent message) by bleating onto a magnetic cylinder through a chatter account. Longer messages could be sent by m-mail through a vast cable network, the inter-web, catalogued by huge finding engines that let you oggle at stored web-sights. Friends and family feared for his sanity during protracted lectures on the subject. There is no question that Mintox was, on this very rare occasion, well ahead of his time. Ironically, his most visionary invention was also the one in which he saw the least potential, as we can see in his comments about the smiley face on the last key of the device: an attempt to compensate for my dry wit, which in the past has caused terrible misunderstandings. This is but one reason that text-only communications will, unfortunately, never replace ordinary chitchat. Evidently, his teenage daughter Sandra did not agree. Having been given two prototypes for a test trial, she gave the other to her best friend. The two girls clocked up an electricity bill so large that it could only be repaid by mortgaging the family home. How this was achieved in a single evening is a mystery, Mintox lamented, it only confirms that such a device has no conceivable future.

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Tea-timer, 1927
Henry loved automation almost as much as his own family, who nevertheless had to deal with the constant threat of robot counterparts. He envisaged a world in which almost every aspect of life was mechanically streamlined, from the changing of nappies to the delivery of bedtime prayers, saving precious minutes that could then be devoted to oiling and polishing each device. One of his earliest efforts was the Automatic Teapot, essentially an augmented alarm clock designed to produce tea at precise intervals throughout the day. At the stroke of a pre-set timer, a stuck match lit a small oil burner, heating water in a kettle. This would pour into a cup at boiling temperate upon completion of its cycle, signaled by a small bell, some two hours later. Resetting the machine took another hour, which generally discouraged potential investors. A steam explosion during a public demonstration did little to sell the concept. Other alarm clock based devices, such as the dog walker, which let out a kilometre of cord tied to a dogs collar, allowing the animal to roam freely before winching it all the way back in thirty minutes later, did not fare any better. Why Mintox chose to invest so much time and money in these two projects, while discarding plans for other mechanically-timed devices such as a dish-cleansing machine, a rotating clothes drying chamber and a reticulated lawn hydration system remains a mystery.

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Handshake gauge, 1951

You can know the mettle of any man by his handshake alone, wrote Henry Mintox, who claimed he had never needed to sign a formal contract in his life (which goes some way to explaining his lack of commercial success). In order to assist employers conducting job interviews, Mintox spent many years perfecting and calibrating the handshake gauge, a device designed to take all the guesswork out of character judgment. An employer, wearing a small sleeve extension, positioned the rubber hand in place of his or her own before delivering an introductory handshake to the hopeful job applicant. A pressure dial connected to the hand via a hidden tube could then be checked, as if consulting an ordinary pocket-watch. According to the firmness of the handshake, a tiny arrow pointed to labels such as steadfast and trustworthy, as well as moronic, sycophantic, job stealing and corporate psychopath. Mintox claimed there would be no need to even proceed with the interview once the verdict was established by such exacting scientific means. The device suffered the same failure as the aforementioned truth trumpet: it revealed far more about the person delivering the test than the one receiving it. After touching the creepy rubber hand at the end of an unnaturally long arm, even the most successful job applicant failed to show up for work the next day.

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