The stuff Franklin invented–in addition to helping invent our country–is just wild. His most famous work with electricity and bifocals are obviously great. But you know when you go into a grocery store and you use that grabby thing to get stuff down from a tall shelf? That was Franklin. He called it the “Long Arm.” An excerpt about the gizmo from the “Description of an Instrument for Taking Down Books from Tall Shelves” section of The Autobiography of Ben Franklin:

“Old men find it inconvenient to mount a ladder or steps for that purpose, their heads sometimes being subject to giddiness, and their activities, with the steadiness of their joints, being abated by age; besides the trouble of removing the steps every time  a book is wanted from a different part of their library.

For the remedy, I have lately made the following simple machine, which I call Long Arm.

The Arm is a stick of pine, an inch square and eight feet long, the Thumb and Finger, are two pieces of ash lath, an inch and half wide, and a quarter of an inch thick…To use this instrument, put one hand into the loop, and draw the sinew straight down the side of the arm; then enter the end of the finger between the book and the book you would take down…All new tools require some practice before we can become expert in the use of them. This requires very little.”