Category: Feasible inventions

I’m disturbed by the number of times I come up with some idea to do with firearms. Anyway, today’s invention is an easier way to create a rifled bore ie without having to cut spiral grooves.

This involves driving a mandrel axially through a blank barrel. The barrel is then twisted around the central axis, to the point of slight plastic deformation, so as to distort the internal grooves into permanent helices.

The twistrate of these helices can be locally varied so as to optimise the rotational acceleration of the projectile being fired (ie as a function of the varying gas pressure behind it).

Carrying one of those wire baskets around a supermarket, I like to spread the load as shown. I tend to grip the front edge of the basket and support much of the weight on my forearm.

Today’s invention is a clip-on foam device, in the form of one of those pipe-lagging tubes -but made of stiffer stuff.

This runs across the handle and down its side to the front of the basket, redistributing the weight and stopping any pressure-related pain in arm and fingers.

I was reading today about the AK47 assault rifle. It seems this has been adopted in such huge numbers largely because of its insensitivity to dirt.

Today’s invention is therefore a technique by which more accurate, and therefore less grime-tolerant, weapons can clean themselves.

The rounds used would include an occasional one with no bullet. Instead, the cartridge would fire a plug of wadding, soaked in cleaning agent, down the barrel, clearing out the detritus left by previous rounds and helping to keep the rifling suitably polished.

Google’s Street View is a massively ambitious project. In future, maybe people will ask if all that driving around was such a good idea, but today’s invention makes use of the effort involved.

In many areas the imagery is updated every few months, but even a yearly refresh would be enough to allow automatic machine-based detection of the differences between two streetscenes over time.

This would allow eg planners to spot buildings erected or demolished without permission, as well as signs of gradual environmental damage which might be missed on the hectic timescale of urban life.

Authors of all genres are complaining that they can’t make any money any more (most never did).

I’m writing a SF story at the moment which will offer readers the chance to make use of today’s invention: a web interface by which someone can link to their facebook profile and have one paragraph in their copy of the ebook written by me for that particular reader.

This would involve an extra charge and the buyer could ask that his or her paragraph be included in the standard release in future (with an attribution to them as patron).

The TV remote control is an under-developed piece of kit. Today’s invention is to supply each TV set with a small number of remotes (>1).

These would be personalisable to the tastes of people within a domestic group (what used to be a nuclear family, pre vision-fission). Each device would supply clips of programmes that a family member might like, given their historical viewing schedule.

The devices would then be used in a game in which household viewers would compete to get their choice of programme on-screen. This might involve answering questions, texting messages fast, completing homework questions, showing knowledge of foregoing ads or expressing product preferences.

Today’s invention is a freezer block which can be attached to the base of one’s laptop to cool and protect its innards (even when hammering the CPU on some knee-meltingly intensive task on a very hot day).

These pre-cooled units could be manufactured so as to a) have an insulative underside, this avoiding user frostbite and/or b) fit one’s machine of choice perfectly.

It would even be possible to have the blocks made to the dimensions of industry-standard items such as removable hard disks or optical devices (so they could be substituted-in as required).

Today’s invention is a new form of replaceable roof for a convertible car.

Instead of being stacked in the boot and requiring complicated mechanics to install, this design has bonnet and roof profiles identical. When driving open-topped, the two surfaces mate exactly.

When the weather turns, a pole in the middle of the windscreen lifts the roof away from the underbonnet, rotates it about a near-vertical axis and repositions it facing backwards over the passenger compartment.