I have emerged from four months of writing YA historical fiction, satisfied that I can do fiction, but not satisfied that I can do historical fiction. The problem is that I am an exacting task master, and if I don't watch out, the result will be too didactic, too preachy, too teachy. I'm going to leave it and come back to it later.

So I have turned to the next task on the slab, which happens to be about ingenuity and the trouble people get into. This has taken me to a nice new place to trawl, one which doesn't seem to have been announced anywhere: http://www.google.com/patents

This searches US patents (maybe there are others, but I have yet to see any) in a variety of ways, including just a search by number if you have it from another source.

Among other things, I have found 90298, "An improvement in privy-seats", in the form of a seat made of rollers to foil people standing on it.  Hmmmmm. If that fails to elicit a similar reaction in you, how about a tapeworm trap that you bait and lower down your throat on a piece of string . . . then haul up again, once you have a tapeworm wriggling on the line. That is 11942.

I am still trying to track down the device I mentioned, having lifted it from another book, used by "gentlemen" on railways in the late 19th century, consisting of a tube that strapped to the leg and delivered it to the floor.  I have found such a device that was for the incontinent, but it is of too late a date.  Still, I have a curiosity, located in patent 501372.

There are some truly strange patents out there, as well as simple curiosities like the first ever pocket protector, patented in 1903.  I think I'm going to enjoy this one.