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PRESS RELEASE
Adapt-a-Lap, Inc.
Champaign, Illinois 61820FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Edward Blum, President
Adapt-a-Lap, Inc.
(800) 419 - 2354 Fax: (217) 356 - 0021
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Champaign man takes inventive approach to use his retirement
By GREG KLINE
Published Online October 30, 2000
Copyright 2000 The News-Gazette —CHAMPAIGN – For his milestone 70th birthday this year, Ed Blum decided to give himself a gift.
"It was either a trip around the world or a plastic mold," the retired clothing store owner and restaurateur from Champaign said.
He went with the mold.
Blum isn't spending his retirement traveling, playing golf or fishing. The friendly guy with the firm handshake and salesman's demeanor, who looks like the grandfather he is, has made a pastime out of inventing instead.
The mold he commissioned was for Adapt-A-Lap, a portable device Blum invented to help folks with limited use of their arms read easier. It also works for people whose low vision creates a need to have things positioned up close.Turns out the device is useful to readers without disabilities, too, and to typists in need of a copy holder, travelers using a laptop computer and a lot of other people in a lot of other situations.
Blum, who started out selling Adapt-A-Lap in medical supply catalogs, has bookstores offering it now, not to mention Marshall Field's. He's doing a surprising business on the Internet through his Web site, www.adaptalap.com.
Most people seem to find him on the Web when they type "book holder" into a search engine, he said.
Certainly, Adapt-A-Lap is good for holding books. That's the purpose Blum had in mind when he came up with the idea, which he has since patented.
Adapt-A-Lap consists of a light portable desk, 12 by 14 inches, with its own handle molded into it. Attached to the back is an aluminum leg that telescopes like camera tripod legs.
Blum has the legs made specially by a Chinese tripod company, with four sections instead of three to allow Adapt-A-Lap to be positioned in a greater variety of places.
The desktop is pressed from Blum's mold by Toddco Plastics Inc., a free-lance parts manufacturer in Watseka. It sports adjustable elastic straps for holding a book in place and see-through plastic straps for pinning down the pages.
The whole thing weighs just 22 ounces and folds into a package an inch and a half thick, ready to slip into a briefcase or backpack.
Paul Somers, a Champaign accountant and writer, liked it so much he's got two himself and has given others as gifts to his sister, daughter and girlfriend. He uses his to read sitting in a chair, lying down or propped up in bed, among other places. "It's really a very handy thing," Somers said. "You can read a fairly thick book. I wish I'd had it when I read 'Truman.' That must have weighed 15 pounds."
Urbana Free Library Executive Director Fred Schlipf tested Adapt-A-Lap to see if the library wanted to add the device to its array of equipment for disabled library users. Schlipf also found a use for it himself. It was great for holding a book open while he worked with his hands, he said. "A couple of our staff tried it and they thought it was really neat," Schlipf said. "We have one that we're going to put in circulation."
The idea came to Blum, former owner of Blum's clothing store and Coslow's restaurant, when he was disabled himself. Bursitis temporarily cost him the use of an arm and sent him on a search for the ideal book holder. He never found it and decided to design his own, but put off doing much with it until he retired from the restaurant business a few years ago. He started with a wooden model produced to his design by Amish craftsmen in Arthur before taking the plunge and going the high-tech route this year.
Blum's not done inventing either. Hawking Adapt-A-Lap at medical equipment shows, he noticed several models of easy chairs that could be raised mechanically to help older people and the disabled get up. Blum did some research and came up with a prototype for a portable seat. He's calling that one the "Tush-Push."
