An iron becomes dangerous if its owner is a forgetful person. You can leave the iron for a moment on your favorite shirt (a telephone call distracted your attention or you slid into a reverie) and an enormous beautiful hole is ready! It would be useful to have an iron that would not allow such a nuisance!

Such an iron has been invented by a Russian schoolboy, Dmitry Lukichev. He applied the Vanka-Vstanka toy (tilting doll) principle to the iron. The center of gravity of the iron is displaced towards the back part, and the back part itself is made spherical. Such an iron can take an upright position itself. It is in a horizontal position when the user holds the handle while ironing. If the user unhands the handle, the iron takes an upright position never allowing a contact between its hot sole and a cloth without the user's control.
Here the contradiction was solved in time: when the iron works, it heats the cloth, when it is not needed, heating is excluded.

Information source: the magazine “Technics for young people”.