'This just means more time in the garage.' COVID inspires one San Diego inventor

Here's how Sheldon Levinson's mind works. When the coronavirus pandemic arrived in San Diego, he thought about birthday candles.

"Using your breath to blow them out — that seems like a bad idea in COVID times," he said.

Levinson is an amateur inventor, a 72-year-old gadget guy who's been tinkering in the garage off and on for most of his life.

The retired San Carlos RV salesman has come up with devices to capture rainwater from gutter downspouts, pick fruit, close gates, clean bird baths — some 40 inventions in all.

And now the "Birthday Candle Blower Outer."

It's a re-purposed swimming pool toy, a hand-pump that squirts air instead of water. On a short video that accompanies the product's Amazon page, Levinson blows out 35 candles with one blast.

"That's pretty good, for a COVID-free birthday celebration," he says into the camera.

The pandemic is providing plenty of stay-at-home time for inventors, not just in San Diego County but around the world. They've responded with a string of devices large and small.

In the early days of the outbreak, when hospital ventilators were in short supply, the make-do MacGyvers came up with substitutes fashioned out of vacuum cleaners, hoses and buckets.

Legions of people took to their sewing machines to stitch together face masks, a need that became so widespread it's morphed into sub-categories. Face masks that are clear so deaf people can read lips. Face masks with built-in wireless earphones.

Shopping malls now have vending machines that dispense personal protection equipment. Grocery stores have custom-made plexiglass germ-barriers separating the clerks from the customers. People carry brass hooks on their key chains to use instead of fingers in opening doors and pushing elevator buttons.

All this activity follows a familiar pattern. Tumultuous times have often led to innovations; the phrase "necessity is the mother of invention" dates to Plato. The fact that it's now a cliché doesn't mean it isn't true.

During World War II, for example, a scientist making clear plastic for gun sights discovered the active ingredient in what we now know as super glue. Duct tape came from engineers trying to keep moisture out of ammo boxes. Jeeps, the atom bomb, Silly Putty — all have their roots in the global conflict, according to the National World War II Museum.

An early startLevinson was 7 the first time he made something.

It was Halloween in the Philadelphia area, where his family lived. There was a pumpkin contest. Levinson carved one and added lights, green hair from a mop, and googly eyes he got at his father's toy store. His pumpkin won.

When he was a teenager, friends asked him to do up a skating rink as a disco. He made a tunnel with flashing lights.

All fun and games, but soon enough the real world intruded. "I knew I could go down the creative path but I would probably be poor," he said. "I didn't want to be poor."

He went to college, first at Penn State and then at United States International University (now Alliant) in Scripps Ranch, where he got a master's degree in human behavior. And then he had another "now what?" moment.

"I had to make a living," he said.

He worked in lighting supplies with his brother, then sold recreational vehicles in La Mesa for 20 years. But all along, on the side, he tinkered.

There were fun inventions (huge Mylar balloons, dog toys) and practical inventions (a battery-powered pet-hair collector, a pole for grabbing cob webs). He was never short of ideas, he said. He kept a pad of paper and a pen by his bed to jot down the notions that came to him as he slept.

In 2007, the producers of a reality TV show called "Everyday Edisons" scheduled auditions in San Diego. The program, which aired on PBS for four seasons and is now on the streaming site Crackle, features amateur inventors, taking them step-by-step through the process: patents, product designs, branding, marketing and finally arrival on a store shelf or website.

"This show is about the American spirit, about having a dream and seeing that dream come true," the show's executive producer, Louis Foreman, said back then.

Encouraged by his friends, Levinson was among about 400 hopefuls who showed up for the casting call. He brought a bubble-making machine. The producers liked it and put him on the second season as one of 12 featured inventors.

His machine emerged from the product-development makeover as a bubble lamp, a novelty item for Spencer's, the online and catalog retailer.

"They sold a few," Levinson said. He thinks he got about $600 in royalties.

Chasing ideas, not moneyLevinson has never cared much for the business side of inventing, which is time consuming and costly, with no guarantee that what you create will make it to market.

About 620,000 patents were applied for in 2019, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and about 350,000 were granted.

"I just like coming up with the ideas," Levinson said. "I'm not trying to sell millions. I'm not trying to set the world on fire."

He has a limited-liability corporation for his inventions, but he doesn't usually patent them. "If someone wants to steal it, have at it," he said. "Go on and make the world a better place."

Which is not to say he's above selling what he makes. A couple of his creations — the rainwater device, the gate latch — are on the shelves at a local hardware store. Others are on Amazon and eBay.

He said he's sold a handful of the "Birthday Candle Blower Outer" through Amazon, which has it listed under "Toys & Games." Cost: $19.95.

COVID-19 gave Levinson the idea for the device, and he's found the pandemic useful in other ways, too. It's isolated people in their homes, which he doesn't mind, although he misses his wife of 45 years, Joan, who was his biggest cheerleader until she died from leukemia a year ago.

"You're by yourself a lot anyway, when you're an inventor," he said. "This just means more time in the garage. I've got a half-dozen things I'm working on."

This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.

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