Technology October 6, 2006, 8:21PM EST

Popular Mechanics Honors Innovation

From peanut shuckers to self-parking cars, the magazine gives out its annual awards for breakthrough tech products and their inventors

by Douglas MacMillan

Popular Mechanics set out to pinpoint the most innovative tech products of the year. Drawing on the expertise of its editorial staff, the monthly identified ten breakthrough items and handed out the awards in an Oct. 4 ceremony in New York.

"Popular Mechanics promotes the enlightened use of technology that has a positive impact on lives and solves problems," deputy editor Jerry Beilinson says. "We wanted to put together a forum for saluting innovations that would do just that."

This year's honorees range from everyday items like Cooper Hand Tools' (CBE) $17 Crescent RapidSlide wrench, which puts a new, faster spin on an already well-designed tool, to a high-end Lexus (TM) that can virtually park itself.

Against the backdrop of high oil prices and concerns over U.S. reliance on fossil fuels, the editors gave a nod to environmentally friendly products. Among them: Climate Energy's Micro-CHP system, a superefficient heat and power generator for the home, and DaimlerChrysler's (DCX) Bluetec, a diesel engine low on toxic emissions.

"Every one of these products has the aspect of changing the game," Beilinson says. "Everybody else in the category will have to respond [to them]." Witness recipients of the first annual Breakthrough Award, give last year. Those include Microsoft's (MSFT) Xbox 360, Apple's (AAPL) Mac OS X Tiger software, and Milwaukee's V28 power tools, the first line to use lithium-ion batteries instead of nickel cadmium.

This year Popular Mechanics also honored innovators in science, soliciting nominations from a board of editorial advisers that includes Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin and Dr. Amy Smith, a professor at MIT's Edgerton Center.

SPACE TRAVEL AND PEANUTS.

For its Breakthrough Leadership Award, the team chose aerospace engineer Burt Rutan, who partnered with Richard Branson this year to develop SpaceShipTwo, a vessel intended to take passengers on a suborbital voyage as high as 85 miles above Earth. Rutan expects five of these crafts to be operational beginning in 2008, when Virgin Galactic spaceline will begin to sell passenger tickets. The price has yet to be set, but is expected to be fairly affordable.

Others receiving a Breakthrough Award include MIT materials scientist Angela Belcher, who engineered a process called nanofabrication whereby viruses are conditioned to grab molecules from their surroundings and assemble them into a lithium-ion battery. "Toy boxes often say 'some assembly required.' These will be no-assembly required," Belcher told Popular Mechanics.

Another honoree, TV and movie engineer Jock Brandis, created a machine that shells peanuts 40 times faster than by hand. This isn't just a convenience for baseball fans, but an invaluable asset to the approximately 500 million people in developing nations who rely on peanuts as their primary source of protein.

"We look at a leaking faucet and the need to develop a replacement for the space shuttle in the same way," Popular Mechanics' Beilinson says. "We're interested in sensible, practical improvements to technology that can really have an impact." Popular Mechanics covers the awards in its November issue, which hits newsstands on Oct. 10.

Click here to see a slide show of this year's winning products.

MacMillan is a reporter at BusinessWeek.com in New York.