Category: Feasible inventions

It makes me mad that I have to hibernate my laptop (which is slow and often fails to work), just so as to swap in a new battery.

Today’s invention is a new system designed to help with a rapid hotswap…at least until battery technology makes its long-promised leap forward.

Laptops would be wired to take on board power for a short time when placed in sleep mode.

A portable USB mouse would incorporate a rechargeable AA battery (perhaps recharged continuously, using the mousewheel as a dynamo).

When your laptop charge is running out, you can activate sleep mode and just quickly swap out the main battery in the knowledge that your internal state will be preserved, using power automatically fed to it from the mouse.

Thinking about the next era of spaceflight has made me wonder about the logic of the ‘splashdown.’

Even with the Right Stuff, astronauts and instruments aboard must take an extra beating when the capsule hits the sea (especially if one of the chutes is malfunctioning).

Today’s invention is based on the training pools provided for ski jumpers in which bubbles are injected into the water, to help lessen the shock of diving in.

It takes the form of a cannister of highly-compressed air which is automatically jettisoned moments before a returning command module splashes down. This sinks and fires several jets of air outwards radially, to form a large bubble-filled volume.

This would allow the craft to penetrate somewhat more deeply, but decrease the resulting bang to less bonecrushing levels.

Today’s invention is a way to encourage cars to move out of the way of an ambulance approaching from behind.

Everyone knows the Doppler effect causes the ambulance siren to appear to increase in frequency as it approaches.

It’s therefore a relatively simple matter to take a normal siren and electronically process it so as to raise all its frequency components in proportion to the distance between ambulance and car.

This would give the nearest car driver ahead the auditory impression that the emergency vehicle was approaching much faster than in reality -and thus cause him to pull out of the way more urgently.

Today’s invention is for wearers of shoelaces.

Laces have a tendency to be made of material which forms good knots.

Their frictional surface is a disadvantage, however, when trying to feed aglets through eyelets.

It’s especially problematic when the laces bind against one another -either when opening the lacing to put the shoes on or when your feet swell and the laces lock locally against one another (causing circulation problems and pain).

The proposed solution is to create laces with a low-friction coating everywhere except for the end-sections involved in bows etc. This could be achieved by coating the central section of laces in a layer of ptfe-type material.

I tend to save a lot of files on my desktop. That visual metaphor is very useful for me (in a way that some symbolic, hierarchical, file pathway, abstract structure thingy is just not).

The trouble is that when I save stuff, it ends up in some random location.

Today’s invention is therefore a program which, when you select ‘save’ fires up a small image of the desktop allowing you to click the desired location.

Bicycles again. Just because extensible cranks are staples of the perpetual motion brigade, doesn’t mean they aren’t useful.

Today’s invention is a set of extensible crank arms for a bicycle.

The right crank is shown as telescoping outwards on the downstroke to provide a greater turning effect. The left one is shown having withdrawn to normal length -to allow the pedals not to hit the ground.

Controlling this lengthening might be done using a cam on the frame or, more simply, by allowing the power stroke to push the pedal outwards and having an internal, longitudinal spring return it on the upstroke.

The riding action would be a little more asymmetric than normal, but the effect on hillclimbing would be significant.

People don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom nearly as frequently as they should.

Part of the reluctance, I reckon, may be to do with having to grab hold of taps which have just been handled by someone who is only marginally cleaner (having at least used the taps).

Push button taps allow you to get water and avoid touching the tap a second time, but their automated stop wastes a lot of post-wash water. Similar proximity switch versions are complex and fragile.

For added hygiene, today’s invention is a tap which is switched on and off under the water outlet.

In this way, the tap itself is always kept clean and can be closed immediately handwashing is complete (and rinsed by the last of the falling water).

Home delivery of goods and services is just not keeping up with the Internet era.

It’s just not good enough for couriers to demand that people stay inside all day to take receipt of items (or that they have to provide a giant metal box to store them).

Today’s invention is a system to be fitted to delivery vans to help receivers predict delivery.

The system starts the day with a list of postcodes for parcels on board each van.

As a GPS sensor detects that the van has come within say 30 minutes of a packet’s destination (taking into account the time required to make the intermediate drop-offs), an email is automatically sent to the householder in question so that they can arrange to be in at the predicted time.

If no acknowledegment is received by the vehicle in transit, it will divert to another delivery destination and may try again later.

I’m always incensed, after paying £60 for a tank of fuel, to find that the garage airline either doesn’t work, or tries to charge me for using it (20p used to be bad enough but it’s now 50p ‘minimum vend’ -inflation?)

Does anyone carry a variety of change in their vehicle?

No wonder large numbers of people are driving around on under-inflated tyres.

Today’s invention is a simple modification to the air machine on forecourts. It’s a reader, embedded in the compressor housing, which can recognise how many points are on your loyalty card, once inserted, and dispense air accordingly.

This would be another reason to visit a particular supermarket garage and it would also make driving a bit less hazardous for everyone.

Today’s invention is a train in which every other carriage has no wheels.

It is instead coupled to its nearest neighbour carriages by a large hinge at either end. These support the weight of the carriage and its occupants as the train passes along the track.

The unwheeled coaches can be made much more like aircraft cabins: strong but not made of Victorian ironwork.

This arrangement greatly lessens the mass of the entire train, whilst leaving unaffected the weight of the engine(s) which are necessary to achieve frictional purchase on the rails.

Naturally, a huge saving in fuel cost is anticipated due to avoiding having to accelerate all that undercarriage mass.