Category: Feasible inventions

Running on a treadmill tends to lack much competitive ‘edge’. Certainly, it’s no spectator sport. Today’s invention is therefore intended to offer indoor runners a new form of challenge.

Two running machines would be placed with the runners facing each other. The rollers supporting the belts would be connected by an ‘active differential’ gearbox.

This would be electronically controlled so that as one runner speeds up, so he or she increases, slightly, the resistance of the other’s machine (or even the gradient of the belt).

The gearing would be programmable so that runners of different types could compete against each other. The first one to press the ‘yield’ button would disconnect the machines and lose the competition.

A sprinter, for example, might try tactically to wear down a marathon runner quickly by accelerating away, but if that failed he would then find himself in for an unusually prolonged race.

Today’s invention is a way automatically to ensure that one’s satellite dish or tv aerial are optimally orientated.

The receiver in question would be fitted with a couple of small motors, one for each degree of freedom (ie probably no more than two).

These would be controlled by having a camera observe the screen and compare the degree of difference between a known, testcard image and the one currently being broadcast. The system would then run the motors until any disparity was minimised.

This could be arranged to occur continuously and thus maintain picture quality even during stormy atmospheric conditions.

Washing hands with liquid ‘sanitiser’ requires the user to press a springloaded valve on a plastic bottle to get the soap out (I have seen some proximity-switched ones, but they were broken and not really domestic items anyway).

Today’s invention is simply a new base design for these dispensers which avoids the need to finger the (often revolting) trigger mechanism.

This allows one to press on the upturned bottom of the original container with a clothed elbow and catch the soap in the other hand -without knocking the whole apparatus onto the floor.

I’ve really got to hand it to these people for actually building their vision of cuff lights.

Today’s invention is a simpler relative: cufflink task lights.

Personally, I’m never sure why anyone would wear cufflinks, so here is a reason. Each link would have a bright set of leds pointing in the direction of the wearer’s extended fingers (and a few watch batteries).

This would allow all the task lighting required when fine tuning the carburation on one’s Aston, en route to an evening at Glyndebourne.

I sometimes travel on a cross country bus which has no seatbelts fitted. On this subject, I was recently reading about a war correspondent who said that the most dangerous thing in his job was not bullets but car collisions: he reminded everyone to fasten theirs -especially in war zones.

Today’s invention is a seatbelt which people can take with them from vehicle to vehicle.

It might even take the form of a proper, three-point harness woven into the front of eg a photographer’s gilet (adding some extra gadget cool, beyond the utility belt, perhaps).

The three loose ends could be thrown around and joined behind or under the seat using an extra, standard quick-release catch. The straps would then be tensioned for a more secure journey.

Useful also, I imagine if travelling in the back of a pickup with livestock across rough terrain.

Today’s invention is two pairs of scissors in one. The frame of the scissors would be sprung apart, by default.

Different blade combinations could be slotted into the frame as desired.

Here, a set of ordinary straight blades is combined with pinking shears. Turn the scissors around and a different form of cutting tool is immediately available…no more searching for that other pair among the folds of material.

Each end of the frame might be coloured differently to ensure the correct set was about to be used at any time.

An ambigram is a word or phrase which looks the same when viewed standing on one’s head.

Currently, many scrolling mechanical street adverts allow the internal, looped sheet bearing the ads to be inspected through a glass pane on only one side of the case.

Today’s invention is to create ads on the rotating sheet which consist of ambigrams, so that these may be seen equally easily through either side of the case -thus doubling the available area of advertising.

When using an axe, it’s normal to hold the end of the shaft with one’s weaker hand and slide the dominant hand down the shaft as the blade is swung to strike the target.

Today’s invention facilitates this by providing a pair of non-slip grips.

The dominant hand grip (blue) slides on lubricated guides in the shaft so that the normal movement can be smoothed and the hands whipped together with a much higher-impact snap, without hurting one’s fingers.