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This year U.S. corporations plan to spend 10.7% more for development of new products and processes, according to an American Management Association survey. The legendary starving inventor, trying in vain to get a hearing for his brainchild, is no more; he can hardly get any inventing done today for all the eager customers beating a pathway to his door, or corporations trying to hire him. Last week in Los Angeles, as in many another U.S. city, a task force set up by the Chamber of Commerce was out hunting down new inventions, forearmed with a list of manufacturers anxious for new products. This week You and Your Big Ideas, a television show that invites little-known inventors to demonstrate their wares and provides a panel of experts to evaluate them, begins its new season.
The Rich Harvest. Many a little invention has launched a big industry; one out of eight U.S. businesses is a company that got its start with a single new product. Color film, invented by two New York musicians and first sold by Kodak in 1935, has grown into a $500 million annual business in the U.S. alone. As simple an idea as the aerosol can, first used to spray insecticides during World War II, has puffed itself into a 600 million-can-a-year trade, spraying everything from athlete's-foot powder to instant starch. Even as insignificant an item as the ballpoint pen, which was written off as a national joke when it came out 15 years ago ("It will write under water, but that's the only place"), now sells at the rate of 657 million pens annually worth $142 million.
For the U.S. consumer in 1960, the outpouring of new products and processes is a rich harvest that would have seemed incredible only a few years ago. Among the newest:
¶ "Dial-an-appliance" household equipment. Developed by Westinghouse, it enables a housewife who is downtown shopping to start dinner before she starts home: she simply telephones her home, then by dialing additional digits turns on the oven, sets it to cooking the roast. Vacationers heading home after a two-week absence can telephone their air conditioners en route, find the house cool when they arrive.
¶ Can opener-less cans. Now being test-marketed by Alcoa, the new aluminum orange juice cans have tabbed tops that peel away with a twist of the thumb.
¶ A matchless cigarette. To be marketed in December by Continental Tobacco Co., it has a tasteless, odorless "flame tip," which ignites when scratched against the side of a pack.
¶ Paper clothes. High-style paper clothes that can be thrown away after a few wearings are being developed by American Cyanamid, which is also experimenting with high-fashion paper hats. Paper pup tents and sleeping bags are now on sale.
¶ A pocket-size portable record player. Put on sale by Emerson, the Wondergram plays all sizes of LP records without turntable, is powered by four flashlight batteries, weighs less than 2 Ibs. Price: $68.
¶A hand-size shortwave transistor radio. Produced by Bulova Watch Co., it can pick up shortwave stations round the world. Price: $59.95.
¶ A transistor radio the size of a sugar cube. Developed for the Army by RCA. it will make possible a wristwatch radio.