That’s the kind of thing my grandad did. In his case, he invented - among other things - the machines that cut your Mars bars, and your dolly mixture, or indeed roll your Swiss rolls.
When my parents were courting, my father was amazed to come into this house where there were slabs of dolly mixture waiting for grandad to solve the problem. And my grandmother made many a Swiss roll so grandad could sit there and watch how she started the rolling process so he could replicate that with a machine and not break the cake in the process.
He designed a fair number of machines that are still in use today, and as far as I’m aware they’re still sold with just minor adjustments by the company that eventually bought out his some years after his death. He was one of life’s problem solvers, but his genius was very much in not over-complicating things purely because the technology existed. I truly wish I could have met him, but he died a year before I was born.
His commissions often came from companies who wanted to resolve a problem, whether it was automating a repetitive task - cupcake cases used to be put on conveyor belts by hand, for example - or resolving the issues caused by humans being less accurate than machines, like cake mix being squirted onto the belt if the cupcake case wasn’t put in precisely the right place. I don’t know who invented the machine to wrap different shaped chocolates with foil, but it’s the kind of challenge I suspect he’d have enjoyed.
Would he have gone ahead and invented such a machine on spec? I don’t know. Perhaps if he already worked with the company and spotted an issue he thought he could help with. But sometimes we should perhaps also give some credit to the person who thought “there has to be a better way to do that, so I’m going to find someone who can help” because honestly, we need those people as well if we’re to progress.
Sorry. This ended up way longer than intended!