Category: Possible inventions

Anyone who has ever tried to hang wallpaper or to cut fabric knows that it can be hard to achieve any kind of long, straight edge. If you are working with expensive materials, the cost of having snipped a section which is slightly too short, because of irregularity in the cut edge, can be very high. So you might try using a long ruler and marking the line to follow…but that requires potentially defacing the very item which is soon to be on show.

Today’s invention is a pair of scissors equipped with a small laser beam projector (adapted from those which are commonly used in eg portable CD players).

The laser beam is mounted on the outer face of one of the halves of the shears and, driven by a small pendulum, this ocillates so as to describe a fine, coloured straight line along the surface of the material being sectioned, directly in front of and in line with the scissors.

A more advanced version might take the form of a stationary projector which would form an entire cutting pattern image, showing eg a tailor or a vehicle upholster where the blade should go.

This being summer, it’s the season for being rained on at barbecues. Since I like my meat actually cooked, rather than ‘rare’, I have to spend a lot of time watching whatever is being made on my behalf. Food in preparation always gets shuffled about on a grill a fair bit, making tracking one’s forthcoming steak much more difficult.

Today’s invention is a dogtag for barbecue items which helps ensure they are cooked to your taste.

On arrival at the cookfest, you would be handed several tags made of a heavier than usual aluminium foil. Each tag has an alphabet pressed into it which allows you to punch holes where your initial letters appear (using eg a wooden skewer, or at a pinch, a pencil).

Having done this, the selected pieces can have a normal bulldog clip attached to their edges and a tag twisted around the ring on each bulldog clip, gripping it securely and allowing it to be identified irrespective of orientation.

Similar punched holes in the tags can be made to express your sauce preferences and to allow the chef to easily determine whether bleu or bien cuit (cindered) is required. The clips can be dishwashed clean afterwards and the tags discarded.

Military helicopters sometimes have to make a forced landing: an event which often results in a sickening impact with the ground and multiple casualties.

Today’s invention is an adaptation of the Russian approach to space vehicle landings, using retro rockets, which attempts to lessen the injuries caused in such helicopters.

In the event of an imminent crash landing, the underwing munitions on board a military helicopter could be swivelled to point vertically upwards (but with the release catches still locked). All such rockets still on board would be automatically and symmetrically fired, when the vehicle was within a few feet of the ground, significantly cushioning its impact.

Ever since carbonated drinks were invented, people have had to accept whatever level of fizziness was supplied by the factory. Today’s invention attempts to allow consumers to control this according to their personal taste.

Each bottle would be full to the top -with no air gap. The contents of each bottle would be injected with the same quantity of carbon dioxide. A consumer could reduce the amount of fizz in the bottle, from the maximum, factory-gate level, by unscrewing the cap a small amount -as indicated by the relative movement of marks on the cap edge and the bottle neck.

This would be arranged to occur without breaking the seal, so that a fraction of the gas would come out of solution, in response to the low pressure region and in proportion to the amount of initial unscrewing. A region of carbon dioxide would quickly form above the liquid surface and in equilibrium with it.

Opening the bottle would then allow the excess gas to escape at once and enable drinking the custom-fizzy liquid in the usual way.

Leafcutter ants (Atta) are adept at managing the division of labour between the 8M or so individuals undertaking different functions within a nest.

Garbage collection is done by several specialist types who identify anything foreign within a nest and transport it to an external garbage heap. No-one coordinates this work but the ants behave according to simple rules which govern their interactions with each other and their environment.

Today’s invention is to exploit this behaviour by applying it to the separation of mixtures of leaf-like cellulose and inorganic particles (eg glass fibres). This would allow vehicles, and other engineered systems, to be largely constructed from fibre-reinforced cellulose. Parking a scrap vehicle on a nest would result in it being gradually broken into two separate sets of material particles, allowing a new car to be formed from these recycled elements.

The popular press carries a story almost every week about how some parent has been arrested for taking pictures of his own children at a school sportsday. The accusation is always that even an innocent photographer might unwittingly publish images of other people’s children on a public website. The thought of paedophiles downloading those images for their own purposes naturally fills parents with a range of emotions from distaste through horror to outrage.

Today’s invention is therefore a camera which can only take pics of the faces of one’s own children.

Certain digital cameras (’familycams’?) would be available only eg in fluorescent green, so that only this type could be used to photograph children at events without someone objecting. A photographer would first need to take a fixed number of photos of each member of his/her family. These would be stored as exemplars in the camera.

When taking photographs later, the camera would automatically detect all faces in the shot and obscure any that were not within the family set.

I’ve spent some time thinking about ways to deal with rats. There are numerous approaches, from gassing to poisoning but still rats remain a problem for two main reasons: they eat huge amounts of food and they are also vectors for some pretty nasty diseases.

Any extermination device really needs to attract a rat, kill it and clear the trap for the next victim. All of this to be achieved at minimal expense, of course.

Today’s invention is a delayed-action trap based on the action of wild barley or foxtails. These grasses shed seeds which are barbed and work their way through the fur and skin of a huge range of mammals -eventually killing them if left untreated. I suggest creating a trap in the form of a narrow tunnel into which protrude the seed-barbs of living grasses. A rat squeezing through the box to reach some bait would embed many such barbs in its fur…eventually leading to its death.

The grasses would grow in a tray surrounding the tunnel and would naturally re-seed themselves several times a year. It might be possible to have separate trays for a number of species, with overlapping seeding seasons. A more advanced version would perhaps make use of grasses genetically engineered to have even more penetrative seed barbs.

There is a serious problem to do with people carrying knives and getting drawn into using them to ’settle’ conflicts. Some of these are sold as hunting or ’survival’ knives, whilst many others are just kitchen knives borrowed in an attempt to appear tough.

In order to cut the numbers of knives which are available for stabbings, today’s invention is a coloured plastic disc, containing adhesive, which, once applied to the point of a blade, is almost impossible to remove.

Each disc is about the size of a £1 coin and comes with a deep slot in its outer circumference (looking as if a partial attempt had been made to separate the two faces of a coin). Into this, the point of a knife can be inserted. When the disc is pierced by the point of a knife entering the slot, it exudes a small volume of one-part epoxy adhesive which permanently bonds the blunting device to the knife point.

The cutting edge of the knife is still available for legitimate uses, but the point can’t now be used to stab anyone.

It seems, from recent research, that in general, drivers are less likely to behave recklessly or inattentively if they have passengers in the car. This is believed to be due to the responsibility which a driver feels towards his or her charges.

So if we consider newly-qualified drivers, we could arrange a parent pooling scheme in which each driver was always accompanied by some combination of responsible, older relatives. This wouldn’t be very practical, but today’s invention suggests a way to curb road craziness by the use of simple technology.

Each newly qualified driver would have to carry a webcam the images from which would be wirelessly communicated to a website viewable only by a designated subset of their family members. The camera would automatically shut off when the car was parked. After a trip, the monitors could independently text or email their comments or suggestions in connection with manoeuvres which seemed less than safe. This resembles the ‘well-driven?’ stickers on some commerial vehicles, but based on a much bigger personal investment in providing useful feedback.

In this way, at the cost of some loss of privacy, the driver would be aware of the potential virtual presence of some guardians/scrutineers and thus be less inclined to misbehave at the wheel.

Many people who have to operate hand-held machines for protracted periods develop joint and nervous disorders (eg ‘white finger’). Now that robotic hands have reached a level of extreme strength and sensitivity, it’s possible to reduce this problem.

Each item of equipment (road drills, steering wheels, whatever) would have a pair of robot hands attached -using rigid mechanical clamps in the ‘wrist’ sections.

The robotic hands would then be free to grip the wrists or forearms of the tool user (as their own hands direct the tool in the usual way). This would greatly reduce the stresses experienced. The robotic hands would be sensitive enough to provide optimal support but without ever gripping the user too tightly. They would also be able to detect when the human was tiring and require them to take a safety-related tea break.