Dr. NakaMats Is the World's Most Prolific Inventor

MMBK writes to share an interesting look at Dr. "NakaMats" Nakamatsu, mastermind behind a world-record 3,000 patents. The 81-year-old scientist has inventions like the "PyonPyon" spring shoes, the karaoke machine, and others. He's also at least partly to blame for things like the digital watch, the floppy disk, and CDs. "Dr. Nakamatsu harbors other ambitions too: in 2007, he took his penchant for political campaigning to a new level, becoming a candidate in the gubernatorial election in Tokyo, and the election for the Upper House. Although he failed to get a seat, Dr. NakaMats has other tricks up his sleeve. In 2005 he was awarded the Ig Nobel prize for Nutrition, for photographing and retrospectively analyzing every meal he has consumed during a period of 34 years (and counting). By the time he dies at the age of 144 (a goal he maintains with an elaborate daily ritual that rejuvenates his body and triggers his creative process), he intends to patent 6,000 inventions."

Bah

[derGoldstein]

I'm feeling vitriolic, so I'll start the trolling thread:
Having a sheer amount of parents simply means that he's a frequent flier at the the parent office. The real question is how much of an impact his inventions have made. The storage-related inventions (like the floppy) are mostly attributed to other inventors, where he solved part of the problem, but didn't invent the whole package. Personally I wouldn't put much weight on the spring shoes (no pun intended), and anyone who even participated in the popularization of karaoke should be tried by an international court.

*pouts and crosses arms*

Lack of Oxygen

[Prien715]

Now this is just weird:

How do you “trigger” an invention?
A lack of oxygen is very important.

A lack? Isn’t that dangerous?
It’s very dangerous. I get that Flash just 0.5 sec before death. I remain under the surface until this trigger comes up and I write it down with a special waterproof plexiglas writing pad I invented.

From This longer article [brainsturbator.com]

Re:More info about his lifestyle

[nido]

That's a very interesting article - thanks for sharing.

There were two parts that I think are very important. The first is about his inventive process:

Inventing is a Dangerous Business

What really sold me on Dr. Nakamats was when I came across the following passage from some German interview. The question was one the author has probably asked hundreds of times--"so, where do you get your ideas?"--and Nakamatsu has the last answer anyone but him would ever suspect:

(picture of person holding their breath underwater)
Is there a secret to becoming an inventor? How do you come up with new ideas?

        I am teaching philosophy at the University of Tokyo. The base for everything is a strong spirit, followed by a strong body, hard studies, experience and finally leads to a "trigger" experience. You "trigger" a bullet which contains spirit, body, study and experience - and finally that releases the actual invention.

How do you "trigger" an invention?

        A lack of oxygen is very important.

A lack? Isn't that dangerous?

        It's very dangerous. I get that Flash just 0.5 sec before death. I remain under the surface until this trigger comes up and I write it down with a special waterproof plexiglas writing pad I invented.

Do you do that a lot? Putting yourself in that kind of situation to come up with a new invention?

        Of course. This is the Dr. Nakamatsu method.

U.S. Creativity expert Win Wenger, PhD talks about the mammalian diving response [winwenger.com] as a way for anyone to increase blood flow to the brain, thereby increasing one's intelligence. When the Co2 concentration in a mammal's blood rises, arteries to the brain open up so that the brain doesn't starve to death. With repetition, the arteries become permanently enlarged.

I myself have spent some time holding my breath underwater at the pool. I haven't done the full 30-day protocol, but at one point I built up to over 2 minutes underwater. This is not a lot (the record for free diving is over 19 minutes [telegraph.co.uk]), but many people can only hold their breath for 15 seconds...

Furthermore, we had a pool in our backyard when I was a kid (before I turned 5), and I remember doing held-breath underwater swimming then. I'd dive down to pick stuff up off the bottom of the pool, and swim through underwater rings.

Furthermore, I had a VHS copy of Star Trek IV, and I repeatedly tried to hold my breath for the entire time that Captain Kirk (or was it Mr. Spock?) held his breath to release the whales, after the bird of prey crashed into San Francisco Bay... I was never able to do it, but I now think the effort was good for something.

I don't know that I'm a genius now, but I think I do pretty well.

According to Dr. NakaMats' research, the unhealthy body has a poor blood circulation to extremities resulting cold feet. This is the same state with the stressed body in which your sympathetic nervous system took over parasympathetic nervous system. Sympathetic nervous system anticipates your body for "fight-or-flight" situation.

My hands were cold as ice for a long time... Then I built a "radial appliance", which is said to balance the body's parasympathetic nervous system. My hands are now warm.

I think my website (above) links to the radial appliance stuff... This is kooky esoteric shit, so don't bother clicking if you just want to scoff...

Anyways, thanks again for the link!

Re:Unless he's invented

[TheKidWho]

insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Re:More info about his lifestyle

[Thing 1]

This is actually very interesting! I had friends in college who could smoke a prodigious amount of dope, holding the hits for super-long times, and they excelled in their classes. I wonder if part of it was training their vessels and capillaries to be wider, by increasing the CO2 concentration? That's ... pretty far out.