More Kirby Air News

August 02, 2005
The Charleston Gazette
Another tinkerer smelling success
By Joe Morris
Business Editor

Robert Keffer wasn’t the only West Virginia inventor who wowed the geniuses at this year’s INPEX Invention Show in Pittsburgh.

Huntington’s David Kirby took home a silver medal for his Kirby Air Purification System, a toilet seat designed to eliminate bathroom odors.

The award earned Kirby an appearance in July on NBC’s “Tonight Show,” in a segment highlighting some of the contest’s kookier contraptions. The show’s host, Jay Leno, came up with a catchier name for Kirby’s device, the Crapper Zapper, and Kirby has adopted the phrase for his Web site, http://www.crapperzapper.net.

The invention is the result of two years of tinkering. Kirby hollowed out a regular toilet seat, adding holes on the bottom and a filtered hose on the side that’s connected to a small fan. The fan draws air in and around the toilet bowl through the filter to be cleansed.

A patent on the invention is pending.

A landlord and former auto-body repairman, Kirby has built 15 of the seats and plans to sell the first on eBay, “as soon as I can figure out how to get my digital photo posted.”

The starting bid will be about $280. But if the seats are ever mass produced, he wants to lower the price to about $50.

Already Kirby has landed his first big contract. Huntington restaurateur Ron Williams, owner of Chili Willi’s Mexican Cantina, is installing three of the seats in the bathrooms of his new location, now under construction in downtown Huntington.

“ I was a little doubtful at first,” Smith said. “But the more I talked to him, the more I realized he deserved a chance.”