Report: Majority Of Innovations Involve Hot-Gluing Something Onto Another Object

MINNEAPOLIS—Showing how the method provided the basis for developments as diverse as the light bulb and the quantum computer, a report released Tuesday by researchers at the University of Minnesota found that the majority of innovations involved hot-gluing one thing onto another thing. “A comprehensive analysis of more than a century’s worth of patent applications found that, by and large, inventions tended to be the result of taking an object and then using a hot-glue gun to fuse it to a different object,” said the report’s lead author, Professor Paul Hulsey, who cited examples such as a smartphone being invented when a cell phone was attached to a camera using a thermoplastic adhesive, and the camera itself being invented when a lens was hot-glued to a film cartridge. “Whether it was hot-gluing arrowheads to sticks or thrusters to an Apollo rocket, much of human achievement, big and small, can be attributed to the wonders of the hot-glue gun.” At press time, Hulsey noted that everything not invented by hot-gluing two things together was invented instead by smashing something with a hammer.