Summer is back with a vengeance. Escaping the season's heat is a priority for millions of people around the world. It's a big opportunity for any enterprising inventor who creates the next innovation to take the market by storm.
Sony's Kenji Ito is a great example of that kind of thinking. The inventor of the company's Reon Pocket device came up with a novel take on how individuals can keep themselves cooler in the summer. And with Sony's roll out of its new wearable neck cooling unit as summer heat hits its seasonal maximums in the northern hemisphere underway, the IIE team couldn't help but note the device is only designed to cool one end of the human body. Surely there must be an equally cool wearable innovation for chilling the opposite end: your feet.
Sure enough, there is! In 1994, Israel Siegel's U.S. Patent 5,375,430 for air conditioned shoes. But unlike Ito's neck cooling system, Siegel's innovation is not powered by batteries. Instead, his innovation harvests the energy from walking. Here's how the patent describes the technology behind the foot-powered air conditioning system for cooling feet:
A compressor-expander type cooling, or heating system, is incorporated into a heel of a shoe, and is powered by reciprocal gravity pressures upon the shoe which occur naturally during walking. The cooling system functions through a bellows compressor chamber and a separate bellows expander chamber. The movable walls of the expander and the compressor are placed opposite each other, and transmit opposing vector forces to each other. A movable heel portion at the bottom of the shoe transmits movement to the movable walls of the compressor and the expander whenever the person wearing the shoes steps on the heel. This expands the expander and compresses the compressor. A network of heat exchange coils, containing a low boiling point liquid, communicates with the expander, and functions as heat absorbing evaporator. Another network of heat exchange coils communicates with the compressor chamber, and functions as a heat delivering condenser. Depending on the locations the evaporator and the condenser networks, the shoe can serve as a foot cooler or a foot warmer.
Here's the patent's illustration showing the spring-like bellows incorporated within Siegel's innovative vertical sliding moveable heel:
The downside we see with this design is that these air conditioned shoes were clearly make for walking. They will only work to cool the wearer's feet when the wearer is on the move. Also, the sliding heel mechanism would provide for an unusual walking experience as it compresses with every heel strike and expands with the next step.
Still, inventor Israel Siegel did recognize there is market potential for such a device because battery-powered air conditioned shoes have made it to the marketplace. But as you'll see, they have since disappeared from it....
After a long day at the office, the feeling of peeling off sweaty socks is both a relief and, let’s be honest, a little gross. Did you know the 250,000 sweat glands in your feet can produce up to half a pint of sweat every single day? All that moisture creates the perfect environment for odor-causing bacteria to thrive. For me, the scent was weirdly specific, like sour cream and onion chips. It was enough to make me give up that snack for good.
The Hydro-Tech Cool Breeze shoes aimed to solve this by actively circulating air. They used a patented filter and micro-fan system to pull hot, humid air out and push fresh, cool air in. The idea was to keep your feet feeling clean and dry no matter how long you wore them. Packing that kind of tech into a dress shoe was pretty ambitious.
[...]
Here’s the tough news for gadget lovers. The original Hydro-Tech Cool Breeze shoes seem to have been discontinued. They were once sold for around $42 but have long since vanished from online stores. While the Japanese company Chiyoda still makes other Hydro-Tech shoes, the fan-powered models are a thing of the past.
Will air conditioned shoes ever come back? We think it's possible because we can see a concept similar to Sony's Reon neck cooling technology being incorporated into a shoe. We wouldn't count the idea of cooling shoes out just yet.
Inventions in Everything: The Archives
Since it's summer, we searched through the archives and found two inventions whose aim is to provide a cool, refreshing experience to combat high temperatures. Perhaps not uncoincidentally, both involve beverages:
- Inventions in Everything: A Cold, Refreshing, CRISPR Beer
- Inventions in Everything: Geothermal Beer Coolers
What can we say? It's already been a long, hot summer!
Labels: technology
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