Max showed no hesitation in telling corporations how to better run their businesses. Below is just a smattering of the many letters Max wrote dispensing business advice.

Max the Inventor

Max Gass had a creative imagination and over the course of his lifetime invented a number of devices and games. One of these he took all the way to patent—a toothbrush, which included a gum massager, a sterilization compartment, and a hollow handle for holding pellets of tooth cleaning powder. This design was patented in 1949.  

Max’s patent for a combined toothbrush and dentifrice holder

Other inventions described in his papers included a can-opener cleaning kit, a Roll-It-On glue stick, and a tilted invoice box. This last Max described in a letter to a Mr. David James, from whom he sought funding for several of his inventions:

“Where I work we have a metal box of six compartments (open in front) wherein go invoices of the orders. Sometimes an invoice falls out, occasioning delay and problems due to it’s becoming lost. I have often thought that if the same metal box could have the slots tilted downward at an angle, the invoices could not fall out even if the fan were going full force in the summer on a hot day.”

Both glue sticks and tilted invoice boxes are now available in any office supply store, although Max Gass himself was not able to carry these ideas all the way to patent and manufacture.

The games Max Gass invented are unique in that through them Max sought to convey values and improve society. A game show designed for television called Make Sense involved sayings broken into their component words. Various clues were given to a panel of players to help them reconstruct the sayings, working against each other and against the clock. As Max described the game, its purpose was “for entertainment and to promote learning by restating some wisdom that these times are sorely in need of.”

Another game, Moving Basketball was a permutation of the game of basketball. Max thought it was unfair that tall guys could stand in front of the basket and score easily while little guys couldn’t win. To make the game more fair, he designed a moving basket. `This involved an electronic arm, which moved the basket slowly in a half-circle, right to left, and back again. According to Max:

“Shooting at a moving object should modernize the game in an age when take-offs from earth to the moon have become commonplace. It should bring basketball up-to-date with a Space Age of projectiles launched from a moving Earth trying for a landing on other moving bodies in the Solar System. With this innovation, the game should be more of a challenge for six and seven- footers, and give some of their shorter competition a more even chance to win.”

Max’s hope was, that if he could find a backer and this invention took off, “The new game would be 50% owned by the public. 50% of the profits, after expenses, would go to rebuilding slums in big cities, and provide scholarships for needy youths.”

It is characteristic of Max Gass that his dream was never just to enhance his personal fortune, but always to contribute to society and bring inspiration and higher values to humanity.

Max did not just sit on his ideas, but carried on a brisk correspondence with patent attorneys, television executives, financiers, and the research and development depart­ments of major corporations, trying to find support, funding and a possible market.

     
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