Category: Feasible inventions

My parents told me stories of people in the Middle East doing their laundry in rivers by bashing their soaped clothes against flat rocks.

Perhaps they still do this dhobi work, since apparently it’s a cheap and very effective way to get even grimy shirts immaculate.

Today’s invention is related to dhobi laundry and was inspired by this punchbag used as a dirty clothes basket.

Imagine a heavy punchbag into which you put your laundry items and a squirt of detergent.

A hose is used to pour warm water in at the top and effluent runs into a drain or water butt on the ground below.

The user would punch the loaded bag, which would be a significant training exercise.

This would force water through the fabric, cleaning it effectively and with less electricity being used.

A Yale lock works by having a key drive pins radially outwards until they no longer stop an inner core (orange) from rotating inside its housing (yellow).

This design can be compromised by anyone with a wire (insert wire, drive one pin upwards out of the way, put circumferential pressure on the barrel to keep it there -and repeat until all pins are raised).

Today’s invention makes picking such a lock significantly harder.

Instead of one set of pins there would be say eight sets arrayed circumferentially.

The required key would be star-shaped in section and could not easily be substituted for by any collection of wires or skeleton keys, due to the limited space and level of dexterity required.

The key would carry a red dot at the 12 o’clock position, to enable correct insertion into the lock.

As an alternative to the gullwing-type doors beloved of supercar fans, today’s invention is a single roof panel, raised by a central hydraulic ram.

The ram would have an aerodynamic profile so that the roof could be lifted even at speed for some convertible motoring.

One advantage of this approach is that the opening of the vehicle can be done in a narrow parking space, without endangering anyone’s paintwork.

Secondly, the roof panel might have its angle of attack altered when open to act as an extra spoiler and generate drag-reducing turbulence or, in the case of true hooning behaviour, to provide extra downforce, when cornering.

Finally, once again the roof panel could be automatically triggered to limit the likelihood of a rollover accident.

Names and faces always get me confused. My problem is that I automatically assign each face a name I think is appropriate…even if that isn’t the individual’s actual name.

This becomes particularly difficult when trying to follow a story.

Game of Thrones is an example of a “sprawling ensemble cast“. Each episode contains a new stream of characters with names that are complex and don’t map onto faces very easily, at least for me.

It’s particularly bad when characters refer to others who aren’t present.

Today’s invention is therefore a bonus feature built in to DVDs (or which could be driven by a smartphone app).

Every time a name is used in dialogue, a small portrait of that character would flash up in say the bottom right hand corner of the screen. Ideally, I’d like this to be a zoomed window onto a family tree so that the relationships between people could be made clearer.

Those that don’t have my mental difficulties could have this feature switched off, of course.

I just noticed that the DVD packaging contains a number of family trees but no portraits -there is a real opportunity to add on-screen value here.

Today’s invention is a new form of labeling for bottled content.

Rather than print on the outside of a glass or plastic bottle, all of the branding and information about contents would be printed on a flexible plastic device as shown.

This would sit or float on the material in the bottle, with the curved surface against the bottle wall, so that the message would be visible from outside.

The advantage would be that the same medicine or food substance could be sold in different, plain bottles, only changing the internal label each time by pushing it in through the neck.

Bottles could therefore be much more easily reused, for different purposes, without the costs of melting them down.

In addition, some extra interest in the products might be generated purely as a result of the novelty involved (labels could take the form of little boats, etc).

Bookcases are so the-century-before-before-last.

Despite the fact that books themselves are heading the same way, today’s invention upgrades the idea of book storage.

Each book would have the side opposite from the spine gripped by some clips as shown. Each clip would have a magnet bonded onto it (grey) so that books could be attached to and easily detached from a steel wall plate.

This allows books to be placed where you like, aligned or misaligned as required.

Imagine a collection of intersecting regions drawn in pencil on the plate. This Venn diagram would allow each book to be categorised as say SF, by Clarke and 20th Century.

Each of the magnets might take the form of a small motorised cart which would allow the books to be moved around automatically to spell printed words or act as pixels in a book spine scene.

Next, you could use a remote device to say ‘Retrieve “I, Robot” please’.

Life imitating art.

Today’s invention is an aid to wash-day, when there is little wind.

A household might have a handful of special clothespegs.

Each of these would be used as usual to hold washing on the line but would also have a small motor and a floppy propeller (of the type employed in personal fans).

Some of these would be placed facing one way (orange) whilst the others would face in the opposite direction.

The pegs would make electrical contract with the metal washing line, so that current could be supplied from a battery in one of the posts.

A time switch would fire one set of propellers and then the other so that the line would swing with increasing amplitude and dry the clothes more effectively.

The future seems to hold both a worsening obesity epidemic and ubiquitous electric cars.

Today’s invention seeks to use an aspect of car design to help solve the problem of flab.

This is in the form of a car which, when parked for a set time (eg 30 min) after having made only a short journey from home (say 1km) refuses to restart for an hour or so.

This would encourage everyone who uses a vehicle for very short journeys to walk there instead (or to walk the short distance home).

It seems that the health benefits of only a very small decrease in car use are significant.

Over time, the 1km might automatically increase in order to reduce car use and improve exercise still further. At some distance, a bike rack might unlock, enabling even longer return journeys.