Malaysia! Merdeka! Eureka!

By Joel Cheong

August is the month when proud Malaysians display their patriotic spirit by flying the Malaysian flag. As people who did not fail their History paper would know, the Malayan Federation achieved its independence on 31 August 1957, and on 16 September 1963, Malaya, Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore formed the Federation of Malaysia. Singapore became its own country in 1965, leaving Sabah, Sarawak and West Malaysia to be the Malaysia as we know it today.

Malaysia is home to many uniquely Malaysian things, such as the Musang King durian, the Rafflesia plant, the Petronas Twin Towers and great Malaysian inventors. While some may contest our claim to batik, the Spratly islands, the Rasa Sayang folk song, and being the originator of and home to the world’s best laksa, char kway teow and Hainanese chicken rice, like non-crispy rendang chicken, none can dispute that the unassuming everyday objects below were invented by Malaysian minds.

The Device Popularly Known as the Pen Drive (and many other names) (US 6,490,163 B1)

The pen/thumb/USB drive needs no introduction, being popularly known as the other thing that is usually prematurely withdrawn from and inserted into orifices without a second thought, a potential means for spreading viruses and home to personal stuff best not shared with the general public.

Popularly touted as the father of the pen drive is Datuk Pua Khein Seng who is credited with the invention of the world’s first single-chip USB storage device. Hailing from the land of Instagrammable grilled stingrays and rice paddies, Sekinchan, the future electrical engineering extraordinaire left for Taiwan to further his studies and it was in his third year of studies that he researched flash memory technology.

With four other partners, he then started his company named after the number of founding partners in the company. Phison (FIve perSONs get it?) Electronics Corporation developed their first flagship device and the rest is history. Not content with resting on their laurels, Phison Electronics is now developing technologies what can allow you to boot your operating system software from zero to clickable in a blink of an eye.

Mum’s Secret Weapon for Perfect Soft-Boiled Eggs (EP 0418050 A1)

Question: How do you make soft-boiled eggs which are not rarer than steak tartare but not so cooked that you’d be forced to change the definition to vulcanized soft-boiled eggs?

If you’re anything like this author, you’d take your eggs out of the refrigerator, put them into a thick-bottomed pot, clip a thermometer to the side, fill the pot with enough water to cover the eggs, turn on the fire and slowly raise the temperature of the water until the needle points to about 67°C, kill the flame and wait for an hour as the raw eggs slowly turn into slurptastic perfection.

Most mothers, coffee shop owners and other normal people, on the other hand, would have no time for such tedious nonsense and would prefer the easier way of bringing the water to a boil, dropping the eggs into the water and letting them sit for a couple of minutes before taking them out. Which is all nice and well when your eggs come out perfectly soft-boiled, but chances are that most of the time, the eggs will either come out under- or over-cooked.

Faced with a similar issue, inventor Datuk Hew Ah Kow fashioned a boiler out of an empty can with a perforation at the bottom so that he could put eggs and hot water into the can, leave it, go about his duties and come back to a can of perfectly soft-boiled eggs. He literally had to crack countless number of eggs over a period of one year in order to arrive at the ideal ratio of water to eggs.

It was only when a direct-selling stockist bought his prototype and mass-produced it did his eyes open to a world of egg-citing possibilities. Datuk Hew eventually invented an improved version of his egg boiling apparatus which allows more control over the doneness of the egg, and has since come up with many other inventions, such as a clothes hanger with clips for high-rise buildings, a toxic-free insect repellent and an electrical safety socket that does not turn on when no plug is attached to it.

So if you ever wondered how mum or that kopitiam uncle always managed to come up with consistently perfect soft-boiled eggs with the perfect consistency, well maybe they had one of these on the kitchen counter.

Another (hexagonal) Brick in the (retaining) Wall (AU 674268 B2)

Anyone who has taken a trip on an expressway or underpass may have noticed that the walls which are a part of the structures are built using hexagonal concrete panels. If so, you would have seen the next invention at work – unless you are a bald man who places strong emphasis on the notion of family, lives life 400 meters at a time, and happens to be named Dominic Toretto. In that case, everything’s probably a blur other than the line that demarcates every 400 meters and the sight of nitrous oxide being combusted in the engine.

Retaining walls are used to stabilize soil after slope cutting operations which are done to allow said expressways or underpasses to be built. Anyone who has tried digging a pit in the sand would know that if the angle of the pit wall is too steep, the sand above the pit will fall in, which may elicit laughter when you’re playing a treasure hunt game at the beach, but when public infrastructures are involved, a collapsing slope can have very severe consequences.

While the construction of retaining wall using reinforced soil technology has been around for some time, inventors Ir. Dr Nehemiah Lee and Eugene Oh took the technology further by adding modifications that would make the system less costly to construct and more resistant against corrosion and slip. Each wall panel also has a recognizable hexagonal shape that stands out from wall panels of other types of reinforced soil systems.

With over a million square meters of wall constructed and various completed projects in Malaysia, Singapore, Bangladesh and India, Ir. Dr Lee has shown that walls that unite are better than walls that divide. If, in the unlikely event that you ever find yourself on an expressway doing 55 in the 54 in your 10 second car trying to avoid the po-po catching you riding dirty, take comfort at least in knowing you are driving along walls which are built with integrity.

So the next time you look at a toothbrush holder or a water dispenser and think that there’s probably a story behind their conception, you’re definitely right. At the end of the day, a good invention does not need to be some fancy product that promises to diagnose your health condition using just a single drop of your blood or an app that allows you to book a celebrity performer with just the tap of your finger. All you need is just a useful product that solves an everyday problem in a new, practical, and non-obvious manner.

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KASS

Communications at KASS International Sdn Bhd

KASS International is an established Intellectual Property Firm which offers a one-stop solution for IP matters in Malaysia, South East Asia, and worldwide.