Being an engineer by education I guess I tend to see the form and function of objects first, and nothing pleases me more than an invention that effectively accomplishes both. An invention that innovates and makes something better while retaining a form that is pleasing to the human eye.

At a recent expo, unrelated to engineering, I needed to use the facilities and found they had removed the old hot air hand driers and drag down towel dispensers with a Dyson Airblade. The name sounds pretentious and overly markety (Bill Hicks would have a field day), but it’s function more than makes up for this.

You simply place your hands in the unit and 2 opposing and angled down waves of cold air blow the water off your hands. I mean we’ve got so used to the only options being to dry off the water with paper towel of have the water dried off with heat that I’d never thought of the idea of room temperature air being used, not to dry the water, but to blow the water off your hands.

The Airblade works perfectly. You place your hands in it, the air starts, you pull them out and your hands are dry. Initially I thought my hands hadn’t been dried but upon inspection they where. I guess this is because human touch is pretty simple, it basically only detects pressure and temperature. There are large temperature and pressure changes with the old methods of drying your hands, but this one uses room temperature air to blow the water off your skin, so your skin experiences very low fluctuations of pressure and temperature.

I know its something simple and easily overlooked, but to me that is what makes the perfect invention. Something that effortlessly makes your life simpler, without causing any disruption to it. Also, it exists in a function where, upon using it, you wonder how you ever lived without it. On a plus, it’s also a lot more hygienic and energy efficient than the old hot air driers

Unfortunately, aside from that expo, I haven’t seen them installed anywhere else.

PS: I don’t work for Dyson AT ALL, I just like good design

Note: the picture at the beginning of this post is one I took of the actual, still working, hand dryer in the toilets at the base of the “Rock of Cashel”

Homepage: http://www.dysonairblade.ie/