The tchotchke
Things aren’t always as useless as they seem (and are claimed by others) to be. All it takes is a bit of engineering imagination.
There was a Candid Camera episode many years ago where Alan Funt showed what was said to be a useless machine. It was a Bud box with nine NE-2 neon lamps mounted three-by-three in rubber grommets, and with each lamp blinking on and off at its own individual rate.
Each lamp was part of a relaxation oscillator. Since the oscillators were not synchronized to each other, the blinking pattern of the nine lamps looked random.
You remember what a relaxation oscillator is/was, right? Typically, it was a 90 volt battery, a 0.1 µF capacitor in parallel with an NE-2, and a multi-mega-ohm resistor feeding them (Figure 1).
Figure 1 The circuit for a relaxation oscillator is simplicity exemplified.
Alan Funt and Durwood Kirby explained to viewers that this box was utterly and absolutely useless, and that it served no purpose of any kind. So they took it out to the street and asked passersby what it might be good for.
The big joke was that as useless as this thing supposedly was, people still tried very hard (but without success) to envision a purpose for it. That was the big joke. Ha ha ha. Let’s laugh at all these silly people with their silly ideas.
What nobody came up with was the possibility that this thing might serve, say, as a children’s night light, for example, or a blinky little friend sitting on a night table near the crib or bed. I don’t know for sure, but just maybe this thing wasn’t really the useless tchotchke it was cracked up to be.
Seen any truly useless things lately? And got any other ideas for this particular supposedly useless one? Reader thoughts are as-always welcomed in the comments!
John Dunn is an electronics consultant and a graduate of The Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (BSEE) and of New York University (MSEE).
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