August '26

That is precisely the problem solved some eighty years ago by a regular at the Queen's Head inn in Dorset, in the south of England. Obviously, we cannot see into a boiling egg. Let us therefore set beside the pot a transparent vessel and fill it with something that changes quite visibly at roughly the moment the eggs are done. The choice fell upon wax in water. When cold, it lies solidified at the bottom. Heat, however, melts it, its density falls below that of the water, and a bubble of wax begins slowly to rise. When it reaches the surface, the eggs are ready.

The patent did not take the world by storm. Not, that is, until 1960, when that same public house — home to the only working specimen in the world — was visited by one Edward Craven Walker. Luckily, he also watched with keen interest as the wax at the top of the timer cooled again and began to sink back towards the bottom. At a certain temperature the wax bubbles thus travel slowly up and down. Now and again two of them merge hypnotically.

Walker, a former pilot and producer of naturist cinema, was a perceptive man. He grasped at once that the apparatus in question, above all, creates a relaxed atmosphere. And so was born what we today call the lava lamp.

Only a few inventions came into being as solutions to a practical problem and survived solely on account of their looks. Usually people invent something useful and refine its appearance only in time. The exceptions are not many, and socks are not among them. And so, lava lamp, we doff our hats to you!