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Ideas Will Come To Life At 30th Annual Invention Show This Summer

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- "Build a better mousetrap," and you know the rest.

A Pittsburgh firm will host its 30th annual Invention Show, the world's largest, this summer, again, in Monroeville.

Communications director Nicole Lininger says InventHelp helps inventors get the word out.

"You would buy our services, and then we have designers, we do research for you, we submit that ideas to companies on a confidential basis, who have actually agreed to look at an inventor's products," she said.

She admits the success rate for inventors is very small. But she spoke of one who did succeed

"It was actually a chiropractor who invented a pillow for people who sleep on their side," she said.

The downtown warehouse is distribution center for Internet customers around the world. One invention, the Halftime Drill, emerged from the company computer, to prototype and then to completion. The finished product can be used as a drill, or be transformed into a screwdriver. The machinist who brought it in had nothing more than a rough prototype. Now he's sold more than 600,000 of them.

Product development director Joe Diresta says their newest invention helps you hang a door by yourself. But then, the door is always open to ideas that just might work.

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