Sick of signing her novels, Margaret Atwood invented a long-distance pen, says Wired. Thanks to her Unotchit, Atwood can sit in her livingroom manipulating one robotic pen, while across the Atlantic its spindly twin scrawls her signature onto somebody’s brand-new Oryx and Crake.
Take out the Atlantic Ocean, and this looks just like Thomas Jefferson’s double-pen setup for making quick copies. (Play with it in QuickTime.)
“The finest invention of the present age” — that’s what Jefferson called it.
In 1804.
As my mom would say, it seems great minds think alike.