A look back at the prize-winning anti-car-jacking flamethrower

Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong were awarded the 1999 Ig Nobel Peace Prize, for inventing an automobile burglar alarm consisting of a detection circuit and a flamethrower. (Patent WO/1999/032331, “A Security System for a Vehicle“)

Now, in 2023, The South African news organization takes a look back at one of South Africa’s most spectacular but least financially rewarding inventions. The historic video news report you see here was done by the Associated Press:

Also Looking Back: Tamagotchi

And, not directly related to that, the Spanish newspaper El Periodico looks at the fate of a different Ig Nobel Prize winner: “Yet another wave of popularity for [the 1997 Ig Nobel Economics Prize-winning] Tamagotchi. Why?”