I was watching a huge trail of steam exiting an industrial chimney yesterday and it seemed to me that it was a wasted opportunity.
Today’s invention is a chimney system which uses the steam produced by some existing process as a kind of aerial tickertape; providing onlookers with messages ranging from a one-word weather forecast to short adverts (just like sky writing by an aeroplane but at a lower altitude).
A chimney would be equipped with a ring of anemometers each held at a radius of a couple of metres from the flue in question and placed at the main points of the compass.
A rotating manifold would be installed so that the exiting steam could be controlled, via some computer operated valves, based on the local windspeed and direction.
