Photos: Curiously creative mint tins

By Bill Detwiler November 30, 2005, 9:36 PM PST billdetwiler

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Altoids

The grand-prize winner in Altoids’ Tin Million Uses competition was Jon Lennon of Ithaca, N.Y., who turned a Ginger Altoids tin into a theremin, a device that uses light to generate rnsound.

Altoids

Burt van der Klute of Fayetteville, N.C., turned his Altoids tin into a Morse code reader.

Marcy Merill, a teacher from Tokeland, Wash., used several Altoids tins to make a pinhole camera.

Philip Haley impressed judges by turning an Altoids Ginger tin into a portable protective case for an MP3 player.

Earlier this year, in an invention not directly related to the Tin Million Uses contest, MIT grad Limor Fried decided to build an MP3 player using an Altoids tin as the case.

By Bill Detwiler

Bill Detwiler is the Editor for Technical Content and Ecosystem at Celonis. He is the former Editor in Chief of TechRepublic and previous host of TechRepublic's Dynamic Developer podcast and Cracking Open, CNET and TechRepublic's popular online show.

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