Wacky Patent: Electrified Table Cloth

Cookouts and picnics are the perfect way of enjoying the summer vacations with friends and family, especially this year when we are being encouraged to socialize outdoors. One of the only problems of the great outdoors is that some bugs may want to crash into our events uninvited.

For this reason, Richard Mahan invented an electrified table cloth for preventing crawling insects from reaching and climbing the food and drinks brought for these activities. This patent, #US 5,107,620 A, was filed in May of 1990.

The table cloth has electrically conductive strips secured to the borders of the cloth and are connected to a low voltage DC battery. The inventor reassures the user that a consumer who may come in contact with the strips would not feel the current at all, and if the user was wet, a tingling sensation would be the only indication that there’s a live current on the table cloth.

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