Hasta La Gadget!

The Gravity Ruler is a low-tech, lightweight solution to overweight luggage, a bungee-cord and weighing scale in one.

Recently, a one-two punch from the airlines has meant that the weight of your carry-on luggage is rather important. First, you need to pay for any checked bags. Second, if your hand-luggage weighs too much, you have to check it. It’s a great way for the budget carriers to scam a few extra bucks out of their already suffering customers.

So you need to keep the carry-on under the limit, but of course you don’t want to carry a scale which just adds more weight to your luggage. Enter the Gravity Ruler, an elastic bungee cord inside a plastic tube. The cord is marked with orange ribbon, and the tube is calibrated in kilos. You thread it through the handle of your suitcase and lift. As the bungee stretches, it lines up with the marks on the non-stretching tube, giving an instant readout of the weight. It weighs almost nothing and is small and bendy enough to slide into even the most overstuffed of bags.

The designer, Marcella Maltese, made a limited run of 35 Gravity Rulers and sold them all in an hour. Here’s hoping that she gets these to a proper manufacturer. Alternatively, you could travel on Europe’s Easyjet, whose in-cabin weight limit is described thus: If you can lift it into the overhead locker, you can bring it on.

Gravity Ruler [Marcella Maltese via Core77]