Joel Levy: Really Useful

By RICHARD WOLFE

Joel Levy invites us to view the home as an interactive museum, where appliances are artefacts.

As curator of social change he compiles histories of everyday objects, ranging from alarm clocks to zippers.

Many of these claim ancient origins, and were not always as we know them. The battery, for example, first appeared near Baghdad about 2000 years ago. Long before that, kettles were boiled in Mesopotamia, the Egyptians baked the first bread and Persians reclined on waterbeds.

But there is no Kiwi ingenuity here. The author overlooks two eligible New Zealand inventions, the stamp-vending machine and the self-sealing tin lid, and Richard Pearse would sympathise with the Italian who claims to have come up with the telephone long before Alexander Graham Bell answered the call.

Our only mention is Sir Edmund Hillary, one of several famous users of the Thermos - he took one to Everest - along with Count von Zeppelin, but we are not told whose flask went higher.

Levy's enthusiasm for his subjects recalls Richard Hamilton's 1956 montage - Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? - a pioneering piece of Pop art and homage to the modern appliance. Really Useful might have been even more so with additional images showing the evolution of these everyday objects.

It does stress the need for lateral thinking, as when 3M went looking for a use for its new glue in 1968. They dabbed some on a small piece of paper and the Post-it Note was born.

These product case histories include Dallas secretary Bette Nesmith Graham, mother of Liquid Paper - and also Michael of the Monkees. Another American, Henry Phillips, came up with the improved screw-head that bears his name, but Levy does not identify Brad who gave us the small nail. In 1945 a New Hampshire tree-surgeon introduced a range of handy plastic containers. Thanks to him, today a Tupperware party begins somewhere every two seconds.

This is an essential handbook for anyone who dreams of coming up with the best thing since sliced bread - which, incidentally, first appeared in 1912.

But there are traps for those who tinker. The ancient Roman who stumbled across unbreakable glass was put to death for his troubles, the emperor fearing this new wonder material would devalue his stocks of gold and silver. More recently, whoever crafted one of the most ingenious inventions of all, the lowly paper clip, forgot to patent it and now misses out on royalties from annual sales of $20 billion.

New Burlington Books $34.95