Did you know you can browse through the patents, by description, and see if there's stuff in there that you're interested in? Thanks to Google for scanning them, and putting them all in a database, with an image viewer!

Just an example at random, above, of the patents issued in August of 1916 https://www.google.com/patents/sitemap/en/Sitemap/Unknown_Category/1916_164.html

and the example of one I found interesting, a spring actuated wheel. 

Just looking through the descriptions I found a girdle, a pop-gun, a submarine whistle, a hog oiler, etc