Corn, No Beans

By its very design, the table saw is one of the world’s most dangerous woodworking tools. Because the user holds the wood and pushes it into the blade instead of the other way around, a simple slip means fingers are sliced. Steve Gass – an amateur wood worker with a doctorate in physics – dreamed up a way to end table saw accidents for good. In 1999 he invented SawStop, a braking mechanism that senses when hands near the blade (fingers are conductive and wood isn’t) and stops it in milliseconds. Dr. Gass tested it on his own hand. The blade stopped as designed, and though it "hurt like the dickens and bled a lot," his finger remained intact. Since then he’s been trying unsuccessfully to get the Consumer Product Safety Commission to insist that finger detection technology be part of every table saw sold. Meanwhile, table saws are responsible for roughly 4,000 accidents every year.