I remember looking at this book in the mid 80s, so it was probably published around that time or before. It was a large book and, as I recall, every page was completely filled with a full-colour image of many inventions/contraptions, all set in context. I don’t recall there being any narrative.
one page showed a house with all the rooms in view. Each room had things going on all annotated with detailed little notes. I remember the bathroom had a special invention that allowed a cheeky child to lie in a bath without getting wet. Built into this contraption was a hidden computer game console which allowed them to secretly play games (to me this dates the book in the 80s). To emulate the sounds of him bathing, another contraption stood near by called the “bath-farter” or something.
Another page showed a huge wheel of mischief rolling down a street with arms extending from it. These arms could rattle windows or throw sot down chimneys. Again – the wheel was annotated with many notes
I’ve been looking for this one as well! Did you ever find it? As I recall, the kid who invented the bathfarter hated baths and went to great lengths to avoid having one. I’d love to show this book to my kids if I could only remember what it was called.
i think that’s ‘Rodney Rootle’s Grown-Up Grappler and other treasures from the Museum of Outlawed Inventions’ by Chris Winn and Jeremy Beadle, pub 1982