Archive for: July 2011

Some trains are constantly being delayed by having to wait for higher priority ones to pass.

Today’s invention is a way to democratise the interaction between such trains.

Just as with eg two crossing streams of formation motorcyclists, the idea is that these trains would space out before a crossing and then pass through it, one carriage from each train in turn.

To maintain control, the trains shown as red are mechanically linked by a high tensile rod running beside the track and passing through the small gaps in the points.

The blue carriages are linked by overhead mechanical rods.

In this way, it would be possible to arrange all trains to have (—overhead—tracklevel—overhead—) connections between carriages and thus any train could pass through any other without significant delay to either*.

The secret of reducing the peak force between objects during any collision is to arrange for the impact to be somehow smeared in time.

People who play American Football sustain frequent head-to-head collisions which may prove to have been bad for their brains.

Today’s invention is a modification to the football helmet. These already incorporate air dampers to prolong any contact force which the wearer’s head feels.

An additional measure would be to embed some neodymium magnets under the helmet surface -all with like poles pointing outwards.

When two helmets are about to collide, the enormous repulsive force between magnets would gradually reduce their relative speed so that the peak impact force would be greatly reduced….thus saving them from potential concussions.

(Helmets left by the side of the field would need special consideration, given that the poles inside one would attract those outside another, so that adjacent helmets would leap together).

When we have space colonies, in the distant future, on planets with low gravitational acceleration, there will surely still be traffic to keep under control.

Today’s invention is a set of low-g traffic lights which operate without electronic controls.

Two pendula swing side-by-side. One has a green lens as a bob, the other red.

The red lens is stationary in front of a sealed lamp unit and behind an aperture, as shown on the left of the diagram.

The green lens swings (slowly) inwards and gradually creates the appearance of an amber light. A bar on the green lens impacts the red lens and, just as in a Newton’s cradle, exchanges momentum with it elastically, so the green lens stays put and the red lens begins to move away.

Eventually, the amber is replaced entirely by the green so that any waiting skycars can proceed.

The absence of air resistance on the space highway of the future, allows this cyclic process to proceed -effectively forever.

Today’s invention is a torch which has the usual battery-powered bulb, but which also accommodates a number of disposable lighters (now that these are no longer needed for smoking purposes).

Each lighter is enclosed by a Davy-lamp mesh.

Tightening the battery slot hatch, makes the lamp’s battery circuit and also forces the lighter switch up against a wedge which ignites it.

The lighters provide a cheap additional source of illumination, which is potentially longer-lasting than regular battery duration.

Today’s invention is a way to encourage cars to move out of the way of an ambulance approaching from behind.

Everyone knows the Doppler effect causes the ambulance siren to appear to increase in frequency as it approaches.

It’s therefore a relatively simple matter to take a normal siren and electronically process it so as to raise all its frequency components in proportion to the distance between ambulance and car.

This would give the nearest car driver ahead the auditory impression that the emergency vehicle was approaching much faster than in reality -and thus cause him to pull out of the way more urgently.

Today’s invention is an attempt to boost the excitement of car racing for spectators. It consists of a rollercoaster track which runs above sections of a motorracing track.

People board carts on the rollercoaster and their descent is timed to allow them to ‘fly’ just above a car or a pack of competing cars.

The carts might need to be powered by motors, in addition to gravity, so that they are capable of matching the cars’ speeds (albeit for only short periods).

This would add to the drama of such an event, without significantly obscuring the TV cameras’ view of the race. Indeed, extra cameras could be mounted on the rollercoaster carts (which would, themselves, carry sponsors’ branding).

Today’s invention is for wearers of shoelaces.

Laces have a tendency to be made of material which forms good knots.

Their frictional surface is a disadvantage, however, when trying to feed aglets through eyelets.

It’s especially problematic when the laces bind against one another -either when opening the lacing to put the shoes on or when your feet swell and the laces lock locally against one another (causing circulation problems and pain).

The proposed solution is to create laces with a low-friction coating everywhere except for the end-sections involved in bows etc. This could be achieved by coating the central section of laces in a layer of ptfe-type material.

Long ago, storing stuff on optical media seemed like such a good idea.

But the disks are much more fragile than promised and the software for correcting the effects of surface damage is markedly less than perfect.

Today’s invention is an addition to the existing arm which carries the lens over the surface of a DVD or CD (remember CDs?)

Before accessing data on the disk, the lens would undertake a number of radial passes as the disk was rotated (with the lens covered). It would thus detect any areas of surface damage.

At these points, a replaceable buffing pad would be made to contact the disk and oscillated radially backwards and forwards, with the disk still, until the largest surface damage had been smoothed out.

No more random scrubbing with the corner of my old T shirt in the middle of a climactic scene.

I tend to save a lot of files on my desktop. That visual metaphor is very useful for me (in a way that some symbolic, hierarchical, file pathway, abstract structure thingy is just not).

The trouble is that when I save stuff, it ends up in some random location.

Today’s invention is therefore a program which, when you select ‘save’ fires up a small image of the desktop allowing you to click the desired location.

Optimising the layout of text for readability, still centres on the spacing of fixed-shape letters along a line (kerning)…a hangover from the days of lead typefaces.

Today’s invention is to ignore the fixed shapes of characters in a typeface.

After each space is typed, the letters in the preceding word undergo a ‘squirming’ process, like the self-organisation which soldiers on parade perform when they are ordered eg to ‘dress right.’ They look at their neighbours and attempt to form a locally straight line (so that a globally-straight rank emerges).

Each character would have its components slightly shifted (on-screen) so as to boost the contrast of the word it’s in.

There is no algorithm for guaranteeing optimality, but in practice, printed components would be alternately thickened and separated (in at least the vertical and horizontal directions).

Once squirming had produced an improvement in word contrast of say 20%, or a time limit was exceeded, the next word would be squirmed.