The Coolest Industrial Designer Ever’s Origin Story

Industrial designer and professor Chris Ebbert is a funny guy. Answering the question “Do you sometimes like to be involved in arguments?” he wrote “I never argue. Probably caused me to ultimately fail to be German.” (Ebbert now resides in Sweden.)

Ebbert has the coolest ID’er origin story I’ve ever heard. Here are his words, taken from his Quora:

“My first patent was a device that could draw straight lines on any surface. I was 13 when I got it and 12 when I applied. European patent at the time.

“It would do straight lines on things like model train landscapes, car bodies, boat hulls, etc. But also fluffy, wet, rough or textured surfaces. Some of the journalists who have written about me have describes the device as a three legged compass, which matches quite well.

“It is part of the German patent register to this day. Issued February 28, 1985.

“It never made me rich, at least not directly. What it did was convince my school that I deserved some respite from my colossal failures in the natural sciences, and that I could probably be let go. on society in spite of themselves.

“And that taught me early on how innovation validation works. My invention warranted a patent because no one in recorded history had ever built a thing like me, and it had a reasonable purpose and could be manufactured to specification.It put me on the professional path for life.I became an industrial designer and innovation consultant, and now teach industrial design at the university level.

“It’s a bit strange that a 13-year-old needs to get a patent to be allowed to go to high school, but those were times when ADD and ‘dyscalculatory learning difficulties’ didn’t exist. I was just a hopeless mathematician studying with inexplicably high marks in arts and languages ​​until I got a patent.

“Maybe I owe my career to my patent.”

If it’s not obvious how the device works, fellow Quora user and NASA mechanical engineer Kim Aaron provided the following explanation:

“The points at the bottom of the legs form an axis of rotation (the dotted red line). You grab the top of the device and rotate it along the arc. The top of the pen part is then also forced to swing along a circular arc, which causes the tip to glide over the surface (solid red arrow) The pen is free to spin around the link between the two side tabs.

“If the surface over which the pen is moving is irregular (not flat), then the tip of the pen remains in one plane and will follow the ups and downs while remaining perpendicular to the axis of rotation. That is, say that the pen will draw a line where this plane intersects the object. The line is a straight line seen from within this plane. It’s kind of like shooting a laser sheet at the object.

In German, the tool is called Linier and Schneidegerät (“liner and cutter”).

Ebbert is currently a lecturer in industrial design at Mid Sweden University.