Category: Whimsical inventions

Escaping from a skyscraper, if it’s on fire for example, is always going to pose problems.

Since you often can’t use the lifts in an emergency, today’s invention provides a rapid route to the bottom for everyone -whether disabled or able-bodied.

A helter-skelter is built into the corner of each skyscraper as shown. This has access doors in the corner of every floor, so that occupants are in no doubt about their exit route. The helix itself would be made of fireproof material and have sliding mats attached to the interior surfaces.

People would be able to grab these and descend at a safe terminal sliding velocity to the bottom.

The slide would be made of one standard component, based on the (uniform) inter-window dimensions.

A fancier version might even be made to corkscrew upwards into position, from beneath ground level, breaking through windows when the building needed evacuated.

Crisp packets are designed with a foil lining to ensure the product stays fresh.

Today’s invention is to add some novelty to a rather conservative market segment by making more use of the metallised bags.

Fill them with helium and sell them, like balloons, attached to a string.

Helium wouldn’t stay in the packets nearly as long as air is kept out, but, given the small weight of product per bag, imagine the advertising benefit to the company that tries this out first of having people walk back from the shops with their brand held aloft.

Drinking Pimm’s in a friend’s garden today it emerged that there are several versions in addition to Pimm’s No1.

Pimm’s No2 is based on Whisky, for example.

Today’s invention is to create non-integer mixes of the Pimm’s base variants eg a 30:70 mix of 1 and 2 would be Pimm’s No1.3

The twin-rotor Chinook helicopter is a remarkable design. If anyone suggested having two sets of counter-rotating interleaved rotor blades they might well be criticised for optimism bordering on naivete…my speciality, in fact.

Today’s invention is a Chinook upgrade in which each rotor blade engages its outer end with the distal rotor hub, driving that hub’s rotors around until it slows enough so that that end then becomes the inner end of the blade rotating about the distal hub.

This stresses each blade more evenly and lessens the overall sweep of the blades as shown in the diagram -in which the helicopter is flying up the page. The single blade shown swaps from hub to hub, providing drive for one rotor from the other without any need for a drive shaft (difficult, but not impossible to achieve).

I know that submariners are supposed to be made of stern stuff but today’s invention is a low-tech way to help improve their living conditions.

Interior designers aren’t supposed to be made of stern stuff, but they do know about how to make small spaces seem much bigger. One way is by using mirrors.

Today’s invention is to fit mirrors (plastic, impact-safe ones would be fine) to the inside surfaces of some bulkheads and cabinets on board submarines. Although the Captains Nemo wouldn’t necessarily want to view their stubble close-up, the occasional reflective patch would provide much better light distribution and an increased sense of space for people in cramped conditions.

(I imagine a windowless Mars-bound spaceship would benefit similarly).

Consider the remarkable inertia-reel seatbelt design.

Today’s invention is to apply that to the humble toilet roll dispenser.

A pair of arms inside the toilet roll would be flung outwards as the toilet roll was rotated when the end of the paper was pulled. These would cause the cardboard liner to stop and the paper to tear off.

With more certainty than is available by just pulling on the end of a conventional paper toilet roll; the more sharply one pulls the inertia reel paper, the shorter the length of paper dispensed.

Last week I was asked by someone about weightlessness and it sparked a curious train of thought. A body travelling around the Earth will be in orbit if its velocity is given by v^2 = rg. What if this occurred not in space, but at sea level? A velocity of sqrt(6.4E6 *9.81) = 8km per sec (Mach 24) would be hard to achieve due to air resistance.

Today’s invention is therefore a pipeline joining cities which are far apart. This is in the shape of a perfectly circular arc bolted to the ground and made of sections of pipe which are sealed so that the whole pipeline can be evacuated.

Airlocks allow a capsule to be inserted and a series of external railguns accelerates this to huge velocity (and brakes it again at the far end).

During transit, the capsule will experience microgravity (possibly useful for in-transit materials processing). This arrangement would allow a small payload of cargo to get from New York to Melbourne in 35 minutes.

(Suddenly opening the downstream end would provide a way to inject satellites into a higher, conventional orbit).

Today’s invention links two of my pet themes, motorcycles and organ donation.

It takes the form of fabric badges in the shape of icon-ified body organs which can be attached prominently to a Motorcyclist’s leathers.

You can only wear badges corresponding to organs you have signed up to donate, in the event of a fatal road accident (corneas on one’s helmet, a liver badge on the torso). This might give some small pause for thought, when cranked over in a 70 MPH corner.

These would appeal to the bravado instinct of bikers, having something of the quality of medals, as well as helping to integrate them into societies where they are seen as a threatening sub-culture (ie Surrey).

Today’s invention is a software tool which performs two services to people interested in tattoos. This is inspired by the classic, if nonsensical, war movie “We Dive at Dawn” starring the ever plucky John Mills. A character is tricked into having an existing tattoo modified to include a longer, and inaccurate’ girl’s name.

Before getting a tattoo of a chosen design, the software displays on a screen the kinds of (larger) shapes to which eg a ship’s anchor, Egyptian ankh or the Dallas Cowboys’ logo can be most easily modified, should the wearer want, or need, an upgrade later.

Using the area, time required and location of any planned tattoo as guides, the software can also provide an estimate of the pain involved in such body modifications.

Thinking about electric vehicles and mechanisms for swapping batteries, the idea took off in my head that existing methods of supplying fuels to vehicles are fairly primitive.

Instead of pumping petroleum-type fuel as a continuous stream, why not provide it in discrete units?

Today’s invention is a vending machine for standard-sized jerrycans of fuel. Users can find these located on the edge of town. They roll up, exchange a used can for a new one using their credit card inserted in a slot in the machine. (If their current can isn’t quite empty, they get a credit for the weighed remains, which are automatically pooled within in the machine to fill other cans. These amounts eventually amount to a whole ‘free’ unit of fuel).

The can is then stabbed into a connector on board their vehicle. The refuelling time could be under one minute. Once a week, say, a van arrives and replaces a whole machine with one full of new cans.

This has the added benefit that the fuel is kept sealed away from people. It’s also available in smaller, safer amounts, supported by many fewer staff, more locally and with less high-street queueing/disruption.