Category: Whimsical inventions

Today’s invention provides a way for carrier based jets to avoid the need for folding wings (which add complexity and weight to already complicated systems).

Instead, jets’ undercarriages would be arranged so that they could all adopt the same angle of tilt and thus crowd closely together on the deck.

These machines could even be equipped with parking sensors that cars commonly have, in order to minimise contact between closely parked planes.

If you’re an impatient type like me, you’ll be frustrated by the slowness of almost all laser printers.

Today’s invention offers a way to speed things up.

Small areas of the image to be printed would each be written onto a flat, charged plate by dedicated, local lasers.

A bank of such plates would allow both sides of many pages to be printed at the same time.

This would parallelise the process so that the overall print time for a multipage document could be reduced to milliseconds (at the expense of hugely duplicated hardware).

I’ve had some thoughts before about ways in which (dangerous) level crossings might be eliminated.

Today’s invention is in the same mould.

It consists of a train the carriages of which are joined by a hinge which can be moved from the base to the roof (pink dots).

The hinges are powered so that carriages can exert torque on each other.

As the train approaches a level crossing where a conventional vehicle is crossing (grey), so the train arches up and over the crossing as a bridge-shaped wave passes backwards through the train.

High heels aren’t really made for walking in. They also have a tendency to cause ankle and leg injuries.

Today’s invention is a high-heel shoe which has a slight platform sole and in which a gyroscope with a vertical axis is located.

Every time the shoe is placed on the ground, the gyroscope fires up in order to maintain the sole parallel to the floor. This stabilises the wearer’s ankle, making it much less likely that she will fall over.

Once the shoe is lifted off the floor, the gyroscope is braked, so that normal leg movements are again possible.

This might also keep the wearer’s feet warm, whilst traversing eg a red carpet.

For geeks who are keen on the physics of wine, today’s invention is a possible gift.

A base unit can accommodate any wine bottle, once opened.

A semicircular cam moves laterally backwards and forwards along the base, changing the angle of the bottle from moment to moment.

This it does in order to maximise the surface area of liquid, so as to let it ‘breathe’ effectively, but without spilling any wine.

This is a complex optimisation problem, given the internal geometry of bottles, which is probably best solved by iteration.

Each time wine is drunk from the bottle and it is replaced on the base, the bottle would find a new angle, but stilll not splash any on the table.

If you want to stop someone copying your electromechanical product -and selling it as their own, you could try obtaining a patent in that someone’s country. If you don’t have the cash, consider today’s invention.

Sensors within the machine’s casing would detect any attempt to open internal enclosures that weren’t required for normal maintenance/access. These could be wired to a hidden mobile phone which would alert you as manufacturer.

Rather than generating a ‘cease and desist’ letter, however, these sensors would automatically release a fast-curing epoxy cement within the enclosures.

One component of the resin would be impregnated with metal fibres, so that the device would short itself out before being encased like a fly in amber.

This tactic is reasonably cheap, poses no danger to anyone, but results in a collection of nonfunctioning bricks which is no longer cost effective to reverse-engineer.

Personally, in advance of any of this, I like the idea of having the phone say “This device will self destruct in five seconds…”

I read an article about ‘whimsical’ texting icons which are now available on the iPhone to help express a greater range of emotions than the normal smileys.

I think these emoji are graphically ghastly. I can’t imagine Jobs letting Apple use them.

Today’s invention is therefore an emoticon upgrade.

Messages of up to 140 characters would have an emotional tone specified (the one in the image is ‘surprised’). This might be automatically extracted from the text itself.

This emotion is used to select an appropriate layout for the words themselves (so that ‘surprise’ will cause some of the words to be arranged in such a way as to indicate raised eyebrows.

Corporations place great emphasis on having iconic buildings.

Today’s invention is a tower which, when built beside a body of water, looks like a rippled reflection in a pool.

This effect would be extended to other buildings and street furniture, so that the actual reflections would mirror those simulated by the buildings themselves.

Geeks only ever wear a T shirt, but when some ‘suit’ arrives at their garage or lab, offering vast amounts of investment, they still may want to look briefly businesslike.

Today’s invention therefore is a clip-on collar-and-tie unit which disguises a plain-colour T as a short-sleeved business shirt (using a press-stud to join the collar halves at the back of the neck.

(This might easily be adopted by ironic boffins eager to mock any newly MBA’d managers).

Today’s invention is a novel beard trimmer.

A wristwatch has hands which have sharp edges. The watch glass has radial slots cut through it.

If you want to trim your beard, press the hair up against the glass, so that some hair pokes through.

Now, activate the separate watch motor, so that the hands race around at 100 times normal speed. The hands thus cut off protruding hair, which can be shaken back out through the gaps.

After use, the watch remembers what the time was and resets itself.