Patent Depending: A Collection; 2nd Edition

by Steven M. Johnson

This is the expanded, updated second edition of Patent A Collection. Paired with a companion book, Patent Vehicles, 2nd edition, it includes all of Steven M. Johnson's most recent invention and product whimsy work. Most of the artwork included in this book was published in 1984 and 1991, though many drawings were created in intervening years up to and including 2021. Johnson began to specialize in creating and illustrating plausible, futuristic or amusing products and scenarios around 1974 while he was working as an urban planner and later as a newspaper artist. He specialized in thinking up whimsical variations and humorous alternative versions of existing products. Most of the drawings in this large collection of nearly 600 panels were originally published in black-and-white. All art has been converted to color. The style of presentation emulates the appearance of book of comics, yet the drawings are not comics, having no narrative, plot development or recognizable characters. Johnson says he developed a habit of thinking up product ideas while still half asleep in the morning. Notes were made before the ideas had vanished from his mind. Thinking up variations intrigues An example is fifty-six shirt and tie combinations included in this book. Some readers are sure to think that the inventions have, as an online critic noted, "already been invented." This is because in many cases, his concepts anticipated and foretold future, actual products. His glasses with video or computer-generated images projected onto the inside glass surface were drawn in 1992, long before Google Glass was a product. A vacuum cleaner that is small enough to fit underneath furniture and that runs around on its own was drawn and published in 1991, a decade before the Roomba! A reader will discover that the tone of the book varies from silly to serious. The author is comfortable thinking in either mode, and the method he employs for coming up with silly concepts is the same that he uses for his pessimistic images.

192 pages, Paperback

Published February 21, 2021

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.