A Left And Right Handed Cooking Pot

A cooking pot designed for both left and right-handed people. Simply by adding pouring lips to both sides of a cooking pot would make it easy to use for both right and left-handed people.

By Marjorie Hill, New York City.

May 1962

A cooking pot that could function with either right- or left-handed people.

This concept was invented by a woman named Karen Sussman who owns a product design firm in Massachusetts. Sussman came up with the idea when she became frustrated with a saucepan that she could use but not for the left side.

“The saucepan had an L-shape handle on it, and when I wanted to cook or heat food on my left side I had to set the pan aside and move the handle,” Sussman told ABC News. “I would like a two-piece saucepan that could operate equally well for me in either direction.”

The idea is simple but the engineering challenges are great. Sussman said the design started with three key elements — a two-piece handle, a tight lip to fit on the pot, and a hinge mechanism that would allow users to control the angle of the pot and release pressure on the pot.

“We need the ability to control the heat level of the food without having to remove the lid, or we’re not cooking properly,” she said.

The goal of the new handle is to allow people to control the heat without the need to put their whole hand on the handle. The handle is ergonomically shaped and features a flat surface near the bottom to rest flat against the counter and a raised area near the top to hold on to for controlling heat.

The lip on the handle would seal the pot when closed and allow users to use the handle as a heat diffuser. The hinge would attach the pot to the handle for easy transfer of heat.

In the testing, Sussman said the team found that their design actually worked better than their original design. The testing process involved the pot being heated to 400 degrees.

You can purchase a pot a double-handed pot from Amazon…