The idea of taxi drivers eating cold boxed lunches provided three Taiwanese high-school students with the inspiration to devise an invention that recently struck gold in Moscow.
Feeling sympathy for taxi drivers who are often too busy to eat a hot meal during the day, Chang Chao-chun (張昭鈞), Huang Hsing-pi (黃星弼) and Huang Ching-hung (黃靖弘) invented an environmentally friendly boxed lunch heater powered only by hot water that has been used to cool a car’s engine.
The “car steamer” was presented at the recently concluded 15th Moscow International Salon of Industrial Property “Archimedes” and won one of the 41 gold medals earned by Taiwan’s delegation at the show.
Photo: Chang Tsun-wei, Taipei Times
Chang, who along with his two fellow inventors attends Kungtung Technical Senior High School in Taitung County, dedicated the award to his late father, a former air force officer who died in the line of duty.
He said that when he called his mother from Moscow to tell her he had won an award, she was so moved that she was left speechless.
Students from the Taitung school won one gold, two silver and two bronze medals at the show, which featured more than 1,000 inventions from 17 countries.
The silver medal winners were an “automatic dredging machine” by Chen Kuo-yu (陳國瑜), Lin Jin-yu (林晉宇) and Lin Tse-hsun (林則勳) and an “electric handheld shovel device” by Wei Shao-ting (魏韶廷), Kao Chun-hao (高君豪) and Tsai Cheng-feng (蔡承峰).
An invention called “glasses suction” by Gao Wei-ru (高維汝) and Chiang Ssu-ting (江偲婷) and one called a “multi-function hairdressing tool set” by Chang Yun-tzu (張芸慈) won bronze medals.
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