Saturday 10 January 2009

Two South African inventions

posted by Paul
South Africans are proud of their inventors. It's almost guaranteed that if you're a foreigner and find yourself talking with South African friends on a harbour pier, at some point someone from the group will mention that it was a South African who invented the dolos (the 20 ton pieces oddly-shaped pieces of concrete seen in the photo).

This bit of information will more often than not be followed up by the story of Ferdinand Chauvier's world-first automatic pool cleaning system, the Kreepy Krauly and how the American company, Zodiac, allegedly stole the South African design, with their Baracuda pool cleaner.

Ironically, I'm South African and I own a Baracuda... which, much to my dismay, sucked all the water from my swimming pool during the night because I left the pump on backwash by mistake! Perhaps it's the Gods of Invention that are trying to teach me a lesson about patriotism. :D

3 Comments:

Anonymous Beverley said...

The dolos - now this is something we learnt about on our last visit when we stayed at the Table Bay Hotel.

Very effective but not particularly 'attractive'

11 January 2009 9:29 PM  
Blogger Nancy said...

Invention is good - we need more of if. Sorry about the Baracuda...

11 January 2009 10:42 PM  
Blogger Pule said...

We definately need more invesntions Nancy. Check out some of South African investions on the following link http://www.southafrica.info/business/trends/innovations/inventions.htm

14 January 2009 1:00 PM  

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