Dripping umbrellas

The precursors of modern umbrellas first appeared in ancient times to protect mighty monarchs from the Middle Eastern Sun, while the first practical device, designed to protect against both the sun and the rain was invented in China during the Wei Dynasty, from 386 to 532 AD. Victorian hall stands usually incorporated little buckets to catch the drips, but these have gone out of fashion along with the hall stands themselves. Large buckets would be sensible but when required to hold umbrellas, would almost certainly not be in the right place, and would probably be found to be full of either waste paper or washing. In many houses, wet umbrellas are put to drip in the bath. To dry more quickly, they should be left open, but this traditionally risks bad luck for the householders. The Challenge Our challenge is to come up with a sensible solution to deal with wet umbrellas. There are a number of alternatives: the water can either be retained in a bag, which risks causing the fabric to rot if the bag is left on for long. Alternatively, the water might be collected in some way, or the umbrellas dried in hot air, preferably without having to open them, with its possible consequences of bad fortune for the superstitious, plus the problem of finding space to do this. The two solutions offered in the 'Coffee Time Challenge' area of our website, www.eurekamagazine.co.uk both come from the same company in Japan, where umbrella and other kinds of etiquette problems are obsessions with most of the population. Both solutions are viable, and have been turned into successful commercial products – one of them in the UK. Once you see them, you will probably consider them obvious, except that both have been found innovative enough to be protected by patent. For those without access to the web, the solutions will be described fully in our November issue. See if you can come up with anything better. Solution to Coffee-time Challenge Both solutions come from Sugatsune Kogyo in Japan, whose main business is handles, locks, hinges, slides, dampers, castors, brackets and sliding doors. The first machine allows one to pop in the umbrella from the top, where it enters a transparent plastic bag. You can then remove the umbrella from the front whereupon it comes out wrapped in the bag, after which another one pops into place for the next user. The only snag is that users often forget to remove the bags before rushing out into the rain, thus getting wet before they realise why the umbrella will not open. The other idea is to pop the umbrella into an umbrella dryer. The Sugatsune AU-RC101(HL) "Rain Care" Automatic Umbrella Drying Machine only takes a few seconds to do its job and features one of the company's UDH "Soft-Close" dampers fitted to the lid to reduce noise. The machines are apparently widely used in Japan and Sugatsune is not the only manufacturer. Wet umbrella bag machines can be found in one or two places in the UK, but no umbrella dryers. Japanese speakers can find more at www.sugatsune.co.jp, while everybody else should contact the Henley-on-Thames based agent Mike Rogers on miker@sugatsuneuk.com.