Moustache protector, anyone? Weird inventions on show

A grenade that puts out fires, a self-pouring teapot, periscope spectacles, a peach peeler and a moustache protector are among oddball inventions on show at the British Library.

The Weird and Wonderful Inventions display, which opened Thursday and runs until November 10 at the national library in central London, is showing off a wealth of eccentric contraptions and ingenious gadgets.

The eye-catching devices are from the collection of Maurice Collins, a man with a passion for crazy inventions dating from 1851 to 1951.

"I've got more than 1,200 items and it's anything that I find a bit peculiar rather than something that would have been successful or other people would collect. I don't collect sewing machines or typewriters," he told AFP.

"It's things that perhaps nobody else would be bothered with, but in some way helped normal people with their lives, like the self-pouring teapot or the dynamo torch."

The collection includes a brandy bottle lock from around 1880, to stop the servants helping themselves to a swig, and a 1920s wristwatch with a scrolling maps on it -- an early equivalent of today's sat nav gadgets.

A memorandum clock with slot-in bone memos and bells sounding when time was up were useful for businessmen with meetings and prostitutes alike.

"A lot of the items could still be produced today. Even the self-pouring teapot," Collins said.

"The most bonkers invention here is the coffee cooler," he said of the circa 1920 metal cylinder which would be plunged into a piping hot cup.

"Why would you want to do that? Why not just blow on it? And it displaces half your coffee."

After merrily demonstrating the 1930 dynamo shaver, the self-pouring teapot and the 1920 automatic nose hair cutter, Collins said inventors nowadays needed to be good marketeers to be successful.

"Britain was a phenomenal nation of inventors but things have changed," he explained.

"Nowadays it's got to be manufactured abroad and the system of selling has become quite difficult. I think 1851 to 1951 was the golden age."

Garden shed inventing has seen a surge in popularity, thanks to television programmes like "Dragon's Den", a successful international format whereby would-be inventors pitch their proposals to wealthy entrepreneurs.

The British Library, which holds domestic patents, now has its own resident inventor in its Business and Intellectual Property Centre, designed to help people start up their own enterprises.

Mark Sheahan, whose Squeezeopen container lids earned him the 2003 Innovator of the Year award, gives advice to help up-and-coming inventors hone their products.

"Inventors are all quite vulnerable and naive at the beginning. We really need advice so it's great to have somewhere to go," he told AFP.

"You have to be pretty determined and it helps if you have some basic skills.

"I'm here to nurture inventors and point them in the right direction. You never know what's coming through the door."

He said the days of wild-haired crazy inventors locked in their garden sheds were all but over.

"We're a different breed from the Victorians; we have to be more commercially viable," Sheahan said.

"You've got to go through a process and its not always easy."

In learning from bad inventions, "there's always a positive on the back of a negative. You have to be optimistic to do what we do."