A Modern Invention -- the Jarion Extremity Cradle

When I was a kid back in the 30's and 40's, the idea of invention was big time stuff. I have no clear memory or evidence to back this up. It is just a strong impression that I still have. Maybe this just seemed to be that way to me because it was something that seemed to be well worth doing, but there must've been several occasions or situations or something to bolster that feeling. Maybe some show on the radio. But as with so many great notions encountered at an early age, I never got around to following through on this.

I mean doing the whole invention bit, starting with seeing a need for some device and convincing one's self that nobody else has thougtt of it yet, though as early as the age of 10 I sensed the absolute folly of thinking that that could be possible with anything and anybody. With all these billions of people in the world, how could anything at all be conceived that hasn't already occurred to somebody somewhere, and often hundreds of years ago at that? And anyway, going on with the process of building a model, then making the device, testing it, becoming convinced that it's a winner, and then heading for the Patent Office.

The closest I got was, once in a great while I would make some device that would help with some project in which I was engaged. For instance I invented a certain kind of painting easel that cost very little money to make and that did the job, even on the big heavy masonite panels that I used back in the days when I didn't take seriously the idea of growing too old to want to handle those heavy monsters, a time that turned out to be right around the corner. I made two of them, but there was really nothing special about those easels, except to me, and except that they can be easily made out of left-over lumber. They definitely are for a studio and can't be carried around for a little session out in the woods and fields.

More than once I may have also invented things to help with beekeeping, especially in the honey extraction. I figured out a way to make a neat uncapping box out of a brood chamber, and another time I made a--

Well, it would help if I could remember what I had in mind there. I ran across it in my beekeeping gear not long after I stopped keeping bees, and I was shocked to discover that though I could remember making it, by modifying a super used to make chunk honey, I had completely forgotten in that short a time what the purpose of it was. And to this day I still haven't figured out that one.

But you should see what I've rigged up for my stained glass grinders and my ring saw, to keep the water and the ground-up glass away from my person.

I've said all this to work up to the good news that my great friend and neighbor right up the road, G. J., has realized one of my dreams of inventing something. He joined up with one of his co-workers in the radiology department at the big U.Va Hospital in Charlottesiville, and they saw an important need, and they worked out just how it should go, and G. contracted with another neighbor, T.W., who is in fact my next-door neighbor to the west, with about a quarter-mile of woods between, whom I haven't seen in years and who has a sheet metal shop. T.W.fabricated the device out of stainless steel so neatly that it looks like an artist's sculpture, and to look at it, you might have trouble figuring out that it has a very practical and useful medical purpose.

It's called the "Jarion Extremity Cradle," and you can see and read about it here. My mind balks badly when it comes to medical details, but as nearly as I can make out, it is used for elevating the limbs of patients when they are being x-rayed or undergoing a number of other medical procedures. The "Jarion" is an amalgam of the names of the two inventors. They won a big prize for making this device, given by the U.Va. Hospital, and now they are trying to sell it to other hospitals,

I definitely wish them well. I would buy one myself, for my tiny collection of art objects and because G. did it, but I'm guessing that owning the Jarion isn't covered by Medicare, so I'll just have to settle for saying I know the artist.

I was a little envious when I heard about this and actually saw the device. The picture in the web site doesn't do the cradle justice, encumbered as it is with somebody's leg on it. But as an art object standing alone it is the very model of simplicity and mystery. And I was also glad to see that the art of invention is alive and well and exists so close to me, geographically speaking, and I was grabbed with that ancient urge.

So let's all go out and invent something!