BOOKS OF THE TIMES; For Every Predicament, a Thingamajig to Solve It

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We can all rattle off a list of inventions that have altered the course of human history -- the wheel, the plow, the printing press, the steam engine, the telegraph, the airplane, the computer. But for every Gutenberg and Alexander Graham Bell, there are innumerable people like Ron Popeil (of Veg-O-Matic fame): inventors who don't really change the world, but just fill it up with gadgets, widgets, thingamabobs and doohickeys. They see electric light and dream of the Clapper sound-activated on-off switch. They wonder why the toaster oven has never been rotisserized. They hook a small umbrella to a can of beer, et voilą -- the Beerbrella, to keep the sun off your brewski.

In Japan, the designer Kenji Kawakami promotes wacky gadgetry as an art he calls ''chindogu'' -- literally ''weird tools,'' but more humorously translated as ''unuseless inventions.'' Mr. Kawakami and his followers create exquisitely goofy devices that are not entirely useless, but you would not call them necessary, either. ''The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions'' presents some 200 of these Rube Goldbergian contraptions (most of them collected previously in two of Mr. Kawakami's books from the mid-1990's), showing them in use in deadpan photographs that wryly mimic your average kitchen-bath-and-garden mail-order catalog.

Some chindogu solve problems you were not aware you had, like a full-body prophylactic allowing you to take a bath without getting wet. Other dinguses ingeniously spoof the modern world's hunger for labor- and time-saving widgets, like the Rotating Spaghetti Fork, the wicked-looking brace of clippers that can trim five toenails at once, and the infant jammies covered with mops so your child can dust the floor while crawling around down there.

Other unuseless inventions that take existing tools and give them an added twist that renders them ludicrous include the solar-powered flashlight, the self-lighting cigarette with built-in match, the full-body umbrella and Swiss Army Gloves (rubber gloves with a corkscrew, screwdriver, bottle-opener and so on attached to the fingertips).

While there is a working prototype of each device featured in the book, one of Mr. Kawakami's Ten Tenets of Chindogu stipulates that none of them may be patented or sold. Clearly Mr. Kawakami understands that there is no gadget so unuseless that somebody out there would not buy it if offered, and that the world is already cluttered with enough chindogu as it is.

Would that the United States Patent and Trademark Office followed this principle. The patent office seems to be a major clearinghouse for chindogu in this country, granting patents for unuseless inventions on a regular basis. Richard Ross, a photographer by trade, found more than enough chindogu in the office's files of successful patent applications to fill a 160-page illustrated book, ''Patently Ridiculous.'' (There are sequels in the offing.)

You say you want to take your dog with you on your next Caribbean holiday? No problem. In 2001, a patent was granted for a Canine Scuba Diving Apparatus. Want to take your pet snake for a walk? Don't leave home without your Collar Apparatus Enabling Secure Handling of Snake by Tether. Want to bathe with your goldfish? Check out the marvelous Aquarium Bath, patented in 1982.

Say, here's a handy item: the Combination Writing Utensil and Floss Dispenser. Bored with brushing your teeth? The Musical Toothbrush makes the chore fun. Want to spice up league nights at the bowling alley? Show up with a Luminous Bowling Ball.

It is peculiar how many patents have been given for inventions that merely animate inanimate objects with silly faces or animal shapes. The Animated Chicken Candy Pop Combination (a lollipop attached to a movable rubber chicken) may be the prizewinner among these, though the smiley-faced Children's User-Friendly Podium, the birdhouse shaped like a man's head and the golf putter shaped like a fish come close. An odder and more bemusing trend is clothing that more than one person can wear, like an expandable two-person raincoat and two variations on a two-person shirt.

It is perhaps less surprising that much unuseless creativity in this country is preoccupied with religious themes, mostly Christian. Mr. Ross includes designs for an Angel Action Figure, a praying-hands hood ornament, a Family Prayer Altar and an Easter Tomb Pendant.

A few of the inventions in ''Patently Ridiculous'' strike one as just plain wrong: the counterintuitive Vibrating Pacifier, the deadly-looking Human Free-Flight Catapult, the repulsive Novelty Tank Top designed from men's briefs, and the Condom in a Nut Novelty (a hollowed-out walnut shell with a condom stuffed inside). You wonder who reviews these things. By what criteria do they reject one application but approve, say, the Improved Combined Piano, Couch and Bureau? One also aches to know how many of these inventions, if any, actually made it to market. Mr. Ross does not say.

These books prompt speculation regarding what the world might be like if all this ingenuity were applied to less unuseless projects. So much chindogu and near-chindogu surrounds us every day. Flip through a Sharper Image or Hammacher Schlemmer catalog and find a gadget that is not unuseless. Think about the entire industry that has sprung up to provide ring tones that make cellphones even more annoying than they already are. Or portable entertainment devices that store more songs than their owners can listen to in their lifetimes. The gas-powered leaf blower. The car alarm.

The list is endless. It's a patently ridiculous world.

John Strausbaugh, author of ''Rock 'Til You Drop,'' is writing a history of blackface in popular culture.

Published: 03 - 21 - 2005 , Late Edition - Final , Section E , Column 3 , Page 6