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Public and workplace washrooms often have far fewer hand dryers than they have sinks to wash hands in, leaving people queuing for a dryer with dripping hands.
OK, perhaps it’s not one of the world’s biggest problems. But it is annoying enough to be addressed by vacuum cleaner and Airblade hand dryer maker Dyson of Malmesbury, UK, in a US patent filing: it has invented a water tap that can also dry your hands.
Some fast food joints already have a hole-in-the-wall hand washing system that you poke your hands into, allow them to be squirted with warm water and then dried by a separate air blast from somewhere within the bizarre orifice. Dyson’s claimed novelty appears to be that both the water and the blast of drying air come from one elegant mechanism that can be used at every single sink. No more queues.
In US patent application 2012/0291195, filed last week, Dyson explains how it will work. The unit is operated hands-free, with sensors releasing water from the underside of a spout, numbered 10 in the image below. When you’re done, another sensor recognises when you place each hand, palm open, beneath a pair of left hand (11a/b) and right hand (11c/d) ducts. Your hands are then zapped dry by warm air passed through air-blasting nozzles in the base of each duct (14 and 16). “So a user can conveniently dry their hands at the sink without having to move,” the patent says. Handy.
Of course, the fact that Dyson has filed a patent for an invention does not mean it will turn it into a real product. For instance, the range of space-saving cubic kitchen appliances it patented in 2009 has not surfaced at all.
But this patent could be different. Why? Because (a) it is an innovative variation on one of the firm’s current, successful product themes and (b) the patent has been given the notably boring title of “Fixture for a sink” – possibly in a bid to make rivals not look twice at it and develop a similar idea that works around the patent. It’s a standard trick.
Top image by Beyond Fotomedia/Getty; Schematic images from USPTO
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I’ll stick to not washing my hands thanx.
I agree, if you don’t piss on them then there is no need to wash them.
Always fun to point that out to the people waiting to get to the sink….
*Tap
People tend to rub their hands together to dry …
Palm up, what about the back of the hands?
So Dyson combined a tap & a dryer into one … big deal.
For safety reason, water & electricity need to keep separated.
Add a tap for boiling water which is what some taps already have and we’ll have something worthy of putting in my kitchen.
I seriously never got the obsession with drying your hands after washing. Am I the only one who enjoys the feeling of coolness on their hands as the water evaporates on its own – in about 5 seconds?
Or is there something unhygienic about leaving your hands wet that I should know about?
Well, I think bacteria thrive better in moist conditions.
I found this ehow article after flipping past waaaaay too many falkey dry skin questions.
Drying your hands after washing gets rid of germs that are clinging to the water particles. The Mayo Clinic states that “wet hands have been known to transfer pathogens much more readily than dry hands or hands not washed at all.”
Read more: Is it Necessay to Dry Your Hands After Washing? | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/facts_5867977_necessay-dry-hands-after-washing_.html#ixzz2E1vrMH00
I have a lot of respect for James Dyson, he’s doing a lot to promote Engineering and Sciences in the UK which is exactly what we need! I do love the Dyson Air Blades, makes my skin ripple
now i know it was filed as a US patent but we (and likely mr dyson as he is from the UK) tend to call it a tap
Now they just need to invent a toilet that washes and dries your bum.
Oh wait….
Nice idea.
Far more innovative and out side the box than a rectangle with rounded corners.