Why did this invention -- obvious and trivial to implement -- take 30 years? | Hacker News Reader

Why did this invention -- obvious and trivial to implement -- take 30 years?

7 pointscomputator12 comments

Hand dryers in public washrooms are absolutely notorious for taking forever to dry your hands. But I'm now seeing a new generation of hand dryers that blow the air really hard and dry your hands in just 15 seconds.

What I can't understand is why such an obvious innovation took 30 years to become available.

This is not like waiting for technology to catch up. Surely, sufficiently powerful motors were available 30 years ago.

Simply asserting that "strong motors are expensive" doesn't answer the question. If expense were the determining reason in the past, then no one would make/buy them today either.

I'm thinking that there must be a more complicated or subtle business or social reason for why an obvious improvement--taking the product from ridiculously awful to quite acceptable--should take so long. But what?

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Are you talking about the Dyson Airblade? I'm not actually convinced that they work significantly better than the old-skool ones.

Still, as I understand it, making those tiny powerful fans is non-trivial, and it was more a case of the invention driving the application instead of vice versa. It was a case where Dyson (no relation to Freeman, tragically) started building tiny powerful motors for their vacuum cleaners and then went looking for other applications.

Or perhaps it's just a case of a "no hair on fire" demand. People just haven't been spending the last thirty years thinking "Man, I wish this hand dryer worked better", let alone "I wish I could pay a lot more for the dryers in my public bathrooms so that my customers could dry their hands marginally faster".

What's the incentive for having a hand dryer at all? No towels to replace, either for cost or maintenance reasons, I guess. This isn't exactly something for the high paying clientele. So you have cheap, replaceable junk that every pop & son contracter in the country can install or fix. High end locations will have towels, maybe even with a real attendant handing them to you.

But in recent years, being environmentally friendly is a big deal. Having fresh towels might be as expensive, but it seems like a waste. So suddenly there's money available to companies who try to build a better dryer.

The Max Hamburger chain in Sweden uses the Dyson Airblade. Max is a very innovative fast food company. They put how much CO2 your burger costs on the main menu for example.

The Dyson Airblade fits right in with the image they are trying to present. Clean, modern, efficient and cool.

If you think optimal (in your perspective) hand dryers took this long, contrast this against the wheeled luggage, that took quite a long time to catch on (http://www.travelproluggageblog.com/2010/06/luggage/the-hist...) as late as 1989!

Perhaps, it's just as conceivable that regardless of how well the dryers worked, consumers could have just wanted the option for paper towels. And even if the dryers are fast, I am sure the line doesn't help. Of course, I am sure the ladies room would have even worse time with just one effective albeit expensive dryer because of the already nasty wait times on average.

Rough price I can find online for 'normal' hand dryers is ~$200 bucks. The Dyson Airblade you're referencing is $1,400. That price includes the cost of non-trival engineering (and a good bit of marketing). Sounds like the setup for a great pitch.

Hi, we're going to revolutionize hand-drying with an hand dryer. Oh yeah, and it's going to be super expensive because we need to use quality parts for it to work well. So, uh, you interested in funding us?

Took 30-years for someone to front the cash to do the development.

>Simply asserting that "strong motors are expensive" doesn't answer the question. If expense were the determining reason in the past, then no one would make/buy them today either.

This assumes that stronger motors aren't cheaper today than they were, relative to weaker ones. I think that there are also advances in robots and toys that it seems to me should have been possible decades ago (even with slower processors)

I hate those things because they are so noisy. I haven't tried the AirBlade yet, but I have tried the "Xcelerator". It's so loud that I'd cover my ears if I weren't busy drying my hands. Also, if I splash water on my face; how am I supposed to dry it?

I much prefer paper towel to the air driers.

> If expense were the determining reason in the past, then no one would make/buy them today either.

The relative cost of "much better" may have gone down.

Someone may be unwilling to pay 3x to move from mediocre to adequate yet be willing to pay 3x to move from mediocre to excellent.

Who goes to a restaurant or an airport to use the washrooms?

Put another way, how many manufacturers of coffins are there in the US? We'd rather not think of such things.

Mitsubishi introduced something very similar in 1993: http://www.mitsubishijettowel.com/

In hindsight most inventions are obvious.

Because the benefit to the owner of the building (the one paying for it) is almost zero.

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