General context:

2020 was a difficult year for many people for a wide variety of reasons. I'm confident that generations from now we'll still be discovering new inspiring accounts of challenges overcome and insights gained during this pandemic. Tragically, I'm also confident that some number of accounts and inspiration will never be known, shared, or celebrated; lost to history amid the noise of "recovery" -whatever that means.

Our situation:

For our family, the covid-19 pandemic was paradoxically "just a contextual detail," albeit a global detail. While the world was still discovering the true scope and nature of the covid-19 virus and its impact to society, we were focused on the affliction and swift impact of cancer on the patriarch of our family in Austin. 

The screenplay:

If 2020 were a metaphorical movie about our family, the pivotal scene would be a grand ball at which all the guests were disoriented, frantically scrambling for an exit because someone had just screamed, "FIRE!!!" amid a soirée that moments earlier was the epitome of refined grace, elegance, and enjoyment. In true cinematic form, after a few adrenaline-pumping minutes of pure mayhem and panic, the roar of fear and destruction would slowly fall to the background. All but the main characters would decelerate into slow-motion and the ambient audio of extreme panic and destruction would attenuate, allowing the audience to focus on the at-once even more-intense and yet more-intimate interchange between the protagonist and the villain calmly facing off in the middle of the dance floor, as if oblivious to the chaos surrounding them. ...Perhaps more accurately, a clear cinematic articulation of the true threat at hand. 

By the end of the scene -lasting only a few short weeks during the month of May- our family had lost my father-in-law to cancer and had gained a wealth of pain and wounds, some of whose permanent scars hadn't even yet begun to form. 

The response:

In our sorrow and reverie, we huddled together. My wife's parents live four houses up the street from us and my wife's sister and her family only about three streets away. We all (now ten of us; five adults and five kids) spent most of every day together. When work or school separated us during the day we still all gathered for dinner, followed naturally by dessert, coffee, and games. 

The persistent routine was a natural and instinctive response -if not a desperate one- by our family. It's what we do. We gather. We hug. We eat. We play. We laugh. We pray. We love. 

These are the low-level fundamental functions that remain when tragedy shakes away all the details and dressing that we've casually accumulated over the years. Regular meals and family fellowship are the catalysts for coping with, understanding, and processing reality.

Some of our favorite games have traditionally been Catch Phrase, Uno, Spicy Uno, Skip-Bo, President, Cribbage, and Liar, just to name a few. However, since the holidays of 2019 my parents and sister (all back in Indiana) had been recommending a card game called either "Knock" or "Five Crowns" (depending upon what kind of card decks one uses). Upon the catalyst of our "default mode" of family huddle, we diverted our attention from sorrow to learning this new game. Indeed, we quickly integrated some of our long-standing jokes, vernacular, and silliness with the new rules, tactics, and process of Knock.

At the same time, some of us who tend toward the more neurotic or cerebral end of the spectrum also found portions of our minds seeking necessary therapeutic occupation. A turn-based game like Knock presented a convenient and persistent cadence of brief periods of time for my mind to explore and chew on ideas. 

Case-in-point: With as many as eight or nine of us sitting around a table playing a card game, there were inevitably a few who regularly found it necessary to lean way forward -if not stand up completely from his or her seat- in order to draw a card and subsequently discard during each turn. What's more, playing games after dinner often naturally involved accoutrements of coffee, water, wine, and perhaps dessert items. In summary... large number of people (7 or more) + wide age range (three generations represented) + large table + drinks and food + regular reaching and movement + sometimes excessive reaction to events of the game = high risk for disaster.

The welcome therapeutic diversion:

One night my oldest daughter observed the above-noted equation and shared as much along with a musing that it would be helpful if we had some sort of track that could easily relocate the draw/discard pile up and down the table so players would not need to reach or stand up to play. Like a spark to kindling -or perhaps more-accurately like a cool drink to a parched and desperately-dehydrated athlete- the spare cycles of my brain immediately found a purpose.

Over the next few nights, during many hours of "Knocking" and within hundreds of slices of turn-based time I slowly began to envision and refine an implementation that could serve our purpose. A couple years ago I read a fascinating biography of Nikola Tesla. In addition to learning that his mother was very dextrous and "could tie three knots in an eyelash," I also learned that from a very young age, Tesla developed the ability to conceive in his mind a sufficiently-accurate model of a mechanism and even manipulate its operation, juxtaposed with the laws of physics to the point of "observing" faults and design defects -and subsequently modifying the design in his head to mitigate the defects- before ever assembling an initial physical prototype! I wouldn't dare to compare myself to Tesla's genius and brilliance. Yet, I found myself pursuing (a relatively child-like variation of) this technique as I sat for hours staring at my cards, the table, and my family. 

Eventually, leveraging my still-somewhat-novice 3D modeling skills I designed, 3D printed, tested, and refined the design of "The Card Car." Each iteration was immediately subjected to plenty of user-acceptance testing by our family which yielded quick and convenient feedback and evaluation.

In retrospect this project and many others like it served as somewhat of an analog to Doctor Manette's cobbler bench in Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities." Amid the loss of a family member, a global pandemic, and extensive quarantine and isolation, I found rare catharsis in deep dives into projects. Some had been collecting dust in a remote vacant portion of my left- or right-brain for years. Others were born and developed in the course of only a few weeks, as was the case with The Card Car. Perhaps not the most healthy mode, but at least they kept me occupied and yielded something productive.

The potential:

Upon fabricating a design well beyond a minimum-viable-product which served our needs very well for a number of months, I actually fabricated a few more and gave them to some family members as Christmas gifts. Their favorable reception by family and friends prompted me to consider whether or not my little project may have market viability. I began researching related patents in parallel with drafting a formal utility patent application. Initial exploration suggested that perhaps I had a pretty novel idea. Considering my daughter's ideation and brainstorming contributions I began to devise a plan whereby I would secretly draft and submit a patent application in both of our names and then, if granted, I would present it to her as a gift to commemorate her creativity and to encourage her to keep thinking in innovative ways. Each day I got more and more excited at the prospect of being able to share this phase with my daughter. 

The rub:

Alas (I bet you saw this coming...), one day I discovered a rather subtle feature of the USTPO website that allowed me to drill just one level deeper in my parametric patent search. My mouth fell open and my heart sank significantly further when I came across US patent no. 10,363,478, filed on November 7th, 2016 and granted on July 30th, 2019. Sincere props to Philip E. Woodward and Betty Jo Woodward for conceiving a very similar concept ("Mobile Freewheeling Playing Card Cart") over three years before I did. 

The bottom line:

Well... I guess great minds think alike (though perhaps some more slowly than others).