Production Again

Yesterday I learnt that another electronic concept of mine is to go into production, in the United States. But this one has a complex history. It isn't all mine. My late father, once a professional conjurer, showed me an advertisement for an expensive conjuring trick -- a bank of lamps and a bank of switches. He asked me whether I could reverse engineer it. I think it was the original Wellington Enterprises' Magic Switchboard that he saw (pictured), now on sale for $450 (R7 000). I succeeded in reverse engineering it -- and added a whole new dimension. In the original, one could swap the lamps around. In my design, one could swap the switches around, too. My concept is still on the Internet today as the Combinational Conjuring Trick. The parts cost, at most, 5% of Wellington Enterprises' product. But companies are manufacturing it all over the place now, generally for around $300 (R5 000), likely off my published design. So the fact that my concept is now going into production in the United States is, in a way, hardly news.