Home Archive by category "Feasible inventions" (Page 37)

Category: Feasible inventions

#1914: Invisivac

I hate things that are made in the shape of other things for absolutely no reason.

Today’s invention is however a vacuum cleaner which can be disguised as a standard lamp.

Why? Well I live in a small house with a necessarily large vacuum cleaner. I have nowhere to store this other than in the living room where I have to look at its red and black ugliness all the time.

I propose a version in neutral matt colouring which would come with the additional components (indicated here in red). These would be a tall neck to hide the hose, a lampshade and a bulb unit, powered via the same cable as the cleaner.

The column of the lamp would be made of the vacuum cleaner tube, so that when you need to clean up, the extra parts are easily slipped off and set to one side.

#1913: CarCart

Today’s invention is a town car especially designed to enable shopping.

This would have a notch-shaped dock built in between the back seats to accommodate a shopping trolley of standard size (but perhaps better engineered to be lighter).

The trolley, which would be supplied with the vehicle, could be detached from the car, via the open tailgate, and used to collect one’s supermarket haul.

On returning, the tailgate would be unlocked and the cart rolled into the notch which would contain a shallow ramp. A motor would automatically drag the shopping up the ramp (so that the trolley wheels would be well clear of the road) and lock it in place within the vehicle.

At home, the trolley could be detached again and conveniently wheeled into a purpose-built cupboard in the kitchen.

#1909: GripGuard

Today’s invention is an addition to penknives.

It takes the form of another ‘blade’ in that this tool is mounted on the same axle as other implements, albeit the one at the far end from the main knife.

Shown in red, on the left, the tool acts as a cover for the other blades when the knife is closed. This keeps all the usual lint and grit out of the penknife mechanism.

On the right, the main blade has been opened and the grip tool snapped back into place at its base.

This allows the user’s hand to press on the guard and keep the main blade locked for extra safety

#1901: DYMOspine

Book spines get plastered with all sorts of colourful imagery and text -which then usually looks grotesque lined up on a bookshelf.

Today’s invention offers an alternative. A small printer, like a labelmaker, has a barcode reader to identify each book.

It is then used to print the Title and Author of each book onto the page edges (just as we used to scrawl our names in biro, at school -except this would be in a tasteful, uniform font).

This allows books to be placed with their spines facing inwards and the page edges forming a useful, attractive, array.

#1899: PageTurner

The operation of e-readers is profoundly unlike actually reading a book.

Today’s invention offers a way to enhance the experience a little -avoiding all that metaphor-breaking button pressing.

Placing the e-reader on a flat surface and opening the front cover (shown as blue), advances the page. Closing the cover and opening it again, repeats the process.

Turning the e-reader over and opening the back cover, attached to the device (red) allows the reader to move back one page.

This is somewhat like the forwards and backwards page flicking that can occur with a regular book.

#1896: BasketStack

After a brutal afternoon at the supermarket and just before I get shouted at by the stupid self-checkout, I tend to get a little frustrated by the shopping baskets.

I try to drop the empty basket on the stack provided but every time one or both handles of the preceding one are in the way, so I have to bend down and adjust them -or fling the basket in the aisle in despair.

Today’s invention is a new handle design for shopping baskets.

Each handle is prevented from falling forward from the carry position (bright blue) by a small stop on the lip of the basket.

When the basket is set on the stack and the handles released, both have no option but to rotate down into the end positions shown (pale blue), guaranteeing that they will be out of the way so that the next basket can nest without obstruction.

#1890: Explodrain

Blast-resistant bins have been developed which seem to me to be massively costly and probably not very effective.

Today’s invention is an alternative, inspired by a scene in the film Speed.

A solid steel box with a sprung lid is attached to a large cage.

The whole system is bolted to the surround of a manhole cover, once the cage has been inserted into this, as shown.

Any rubbish thrown in ends up in the cage in the drain or conduit. The bins are extracted and cleaned each night, when crowd density is zero.

This means that nothing deposited will ever be above ground level, so that if a bomb is dropped in, it will detonate below ground, sending blast waves along the pipe in both directions (as well as vertically), thus causing minimal injuries/damage within the street.

#1889: Coasteering

Today’s invention is a rollercoaster with points -like a railway track.

This would add a certain extra challenge to those trying to hold onto their breakfasts, by allowing the car to take multiple alternative routes.

Rather than have these points change in a predictable way, it might be possible to have them switch, during the course of a ride, in response to the phone messages from observers and/or passengers.

The next step after that is multiple cars with the potential for overtaking!

#1888: Smartank

A friend of mine who’s an economics prof told me once that his entire discipline can be summarised by answering the question “How far would you drive out of your way to buy fuel at a discount of n%?”

Today’s invention is a vehicle which will be aware from moment-to-moment of its current fuel load and consumption rate as well as the distribution of petrol stations (and prices) within driving range.

This, together with the driver’s input of his/her destination and urgency allows an approximate optimisation to be undertaken, so that the car can be rerouted to take on board fuel -if the combination of detour shortness, low price and urgency justifies this.

This analysis would involve evaluation of the cost/benefit ratio of a detour ie (extra time and extra fuel used) vs (fuel cost saving).

(If the price were sufficiently low at a particular location, it would be worth driving there in a car with a specially enlarged tank. This approach could be further augmented by making predictions about the future price of fuel. In other words, is it worth driving for x km today for a discount of n% when the price in three days’ time will be discounted by n+m% ?)

#1887: Headlinks

I have never managed to achieve fast enough Internet access (is loading 70 tabs in my browser simultaneously really that unreasonable?)

Today’s invention is a smart program which knows when my browser window takes up less space that the whole of my screen (as it often does when I’m trying to get stuff done on a laptop).

It communicates the current dimension of the browser window and requests that only those images on the server that will actually be visible get downloaded to my machine.

This would give me enough material to assess the top lines of many web pages so that I could avoid loading more content, close their individual tabs and thus free up some bandwidth for more interesting material.