Category: Feasible inventions

Today’s invention is a way for police to retain some kind of human appearance, even when they are wearing protective equipment in expectation of a riot.

Each officer would wear a safety helmet with a lifesize image of his own face affixed to the outside of his face shield.

He or she would still be able to see through eyeholes corresponding to those in the face image itself.

In this way, officers could remain fully protected but still display their identities -and thus be encouraged to behave in a responsible way.

This lack of anonymity would also enable members of a crowd to identify later in videos anyone in uniform who had been misbehaving.

For survivalists and explorers whose lives depend on their equipment, having a knife with a broad tang is important.

This makes it hard to break, but it adds weight and still provides only a single, large blade.

Today’s invention is a knife which has a large tang in which a slot is cut (so that it doesn’t lessen the strength of the unit significantly).

Into the slot is inserted from the far side a multi-tool penknife, one grip of which is expanded to provide the handle for the overall system.

If you need access to a wider range of smaller tools, simply undo the two knurled nuts holding the small tool and grip (blue) in place and detach the main metal work from the penknife/multitool.

I hate folders on my computer desktop. Once you put stuff in there you have to think up a name for all the contents and they suddenly become invisible.

Rather than create a virtual paperclip (Microsoft already messed that one up), today’s invention is a transparent envelope.

Clicking once on the envelope would visually shuffle the contents enough to remind me what was in there. This would allow me to hold together documents of every file type on my desktop in such a way that I can still identify where things are at a glance.

I might later choose to file the results of my work in an old-fashioned folder, but for work in progress a clear envelope would be a useful tool.

Today’s invention is to create a paint tool for Gimp or Photoshop which contains information about paint drying behaviour.

One could specify the properties of the paint so that a realistic drying time would be simulated. This would allow ‘wet’ paint to be manipulated for a while on screen.

It would also be possible to have such virtual paint exhibit smart features, such as a tendency to mix more with some than other colours or to flow depending upon the simulated canvas’ local absorption properties.

Paint colour might even be allowed to change on subsequent viewings, so that a digital picture could bleach realistically when viewed years later.

It seems that if you want to swirl your wine in the glass before sniffing it, there is an optimal combination of depth, glass diameter and rotation rate.

Depending on these factors, you can generate dynamic wave patterns with either single or multiple crests so that the amount of mixing between air and wine can be controlled.

Today’s invention is therefore a wineglass turntable for viniculturists.

Pour the wine in to the marked level and then run the turntable at the correct speed. After the appropriate interval, smell the wine.

Oh, and if it smells ok, drink it.

The TV remote control in a typical hotel room is considered dirtier than the toilet, sink handles, door handles, and even the bedspread.

Today’s invention removes the bacterial infection problem by offering a remote which is operated by one’s feet.

This would take the form of a footstool with a number of big buttons in the surface, modeled after a simplified remote and operable with shoes still on.

The stool would allow the actual remote to be inserted into a slot and there would be direct mechanical links between pressing the pedals and the buttons on the embedded remote.

If I had only a year to break the man-powered land speed record I wouldn’t develop a whole new machine.

I’d take the best cyclist I could get and seat him on the fastest racing cycle I could find, as comfortably as possible.

Then I’d assemble a shell around him using oasis plant watering bricks. This would be very crude to start with but it’s sufficiently soft stuff to allow a really streamlined shape to be sculpted that weighs almost nothing. The critical element in reaching top speeds is the form drag -given a tight timescale I’d minimise wind resistance and forget the other details.

I’d also supply a leaning pad for the rider’s chest so that he could relax as much as possible (no need to steer in this record attempt).

The other critical aspect is to allow the ‘engine’ to breathe effectively. I’d run the record attempt somewhere at low altitude with lots of trees around for oxygenation.

I’d also cut a few discreet slots in top side of the oasis shell to ensure no buildup of carbon dioxide.

In former times, troops rode horses -making it possible for them to get from A to B as a dispersed group. Attacking them therefore had to be done largely one at a time.

Now that warfare (or ‘peacekeeping’) is mechanised, soldiers get into increasingly large vehicles which need massive amounts of armour to resist eg landmines and rockets.

Today’s invention is a way to protect soldiers from roadside bombs and other weapons directed at large vehicles.

It is the armoured ATV (or four-wheeled motorcycle).

Militaries around the world already use these vehicles and the cost of buying one per soldier on patrol is certainly less than buying the equivalent capacity in armoured Humvees.

By adding a steel shell around the driver of each ATV, it becomes much harder to kill numbers of soldiers, since they are dispersed, still quite fast moving and with some significant individual protection.

Everyone knows about the invention of Velcro being based on observation of the burrs on Burdock seeds by Georges de Mestral.

Today’s invention is to take a step back from that and apply such burrs in a viral marketing campaign.

Natural burrs would be attached to a number of fabric patches applied in critical locations within eg an airport.

People passing would brush by these and attract some onto their clothing. In the train or elsewhere, later, these would transfer from person to person.

Each burr would have a small label attched, bearing a web address for the product or service being advertised.

The burrs themselves would be biodegradable and cause no damage to anyone’s outfit.

Today’s invention is a way to better represent the relative merits of athletes or other sportspeople.

Instead of the usual podium, there would be long ramp. At the top of this, the gold medal winner would stand to receive his/her medal.

A display on the side of the ramp would indicate the relative positions of all competitors in the final -or even the whole event. This would allow athletes to take their places on the ramp, even if they weren’t medal winners.

The audience could thus get a better overall view of the competition result, as well as being more inclusive of everyone who took part.