I doubt that any of Harry’s creations could be favorably compared to the Cotton Gin, the Telephone or the Light Bulb, but he did produce some outstanding devices, none of which ever reached the stage of mass distribution.
One of Harry’s most spectacular devices came about because of a birthday gift that his daughter, Louise gave him at about the time that short tailed sport shirts became popular. It was, of course, intended that those short tails were to be worn on the outside of the trousers. This concept violated Harry’s idea of proper masculine attire, and the fact that the tail was so short that it would not remain concealed, caused his mind to go to work on a corrective measure.
He bought enough elastic to reach from the top of his socks to the tail of the shirt, four times. On each end of all four of these pieces of elastic, he attached a spring clip. He then clipped one of these to the top of each sock, one in front and one in back, then attached the other end to the bottom of the shirt tail.
Harry should have spent more time and effort on research and development. He tried to enter the production stage before the product was fully operational. He had, apparently, not taken into consideration the fact that when a person takes a step they, automatically raise their foot. This effort, along with some excess tension that he had built into the elastic bands, would jerk his feet up, so that when he walked, he looked like a horse with the “spring halt”, in both hind legs.
Another one of Harry’s invention that never got into production was an arrangement that, if properly applied, would eliminate any further need for bed making. He always seemed to be interested in things that had to do with conservation of energy, particularly his energy. Harry was, at the time of this creation, living in a small Motel and I suppose the management changed the bedding once a week. In the interim, bed making was the tenant’s responsibility. This type of activity was something that Harry didn’t feel that he should be burdened with, so he, again, put his mind to work.
Once again, he fell back on the old standby system of clips and elastic webbing. This time he clipped the pieces of webbing from the sides of the sheets to the side of the bed so that the sheet was held tight and smooth, over the surface of the bed.
I must admit that I nor anyone that I have talked to, ever witnessed the getting into or the getting out of the bed, it must have been quite a sight. To my knowledge, Harry never told anyone whether he entered at the top and exited at the bottom or both entered and exited from the top or the bottom or used some combination of the above. The only comment that I ever heard about the device came from the manager of the Motel. He said “what the hell is that for?”