Category: Feasible inventions

People can reliably sense when others are scared. This apparently happens by smelling some chemicals in sweat but without us being aware consciously of the cause of our sudden anxiety.

The tendency to become aware of others’ fear probably helps us prepare for disasters but it’s not much help when waiting to board a plane or take an exam.

Today’s invention is therefore a pair of spectacles containing a discreet noseclip in place of the conventional ‘feet’ sitting on the bridge of the nose. This would effectively close off the nasal passages.

Worn by people about to encounter some fear-inducing situation, these might have clear glass lenses and thus cause no optical distortion.

When washing with a bar of soap, there comes a point at which it just gets too thin to be used. The common solution is to press the remains onto the outside of a new cake.

Sadly, this usually doesn’t work well (at least without Herculean levels of compressive force being applied -which, with slippery soap, is quite a challenge).

Today’s invention is a way to overcome this minor issue and also appeal to the increasingly frugal buying public.

It consists of a slot moulded into each bar of soap (always a favourite marketing tactic, to reduce the volume provided, per unit cost).

When that bar has been mostly washed away, it’s remnant can be inserted into the wedge-shaped recess provided in a new bar, making their amalgamation much easier.

No fan of television, I -but I do sometimes have to recognise that there are some good/useful/interesting programmes out there which I’m missing because of my obsessive online urge to avoid boredom.

Today’s invention is a newsfeed for browsers which directs the visitor to anything just about to appear on tv which is relevant to his/her stated interests, location, browsing history and channel subscriptions.

I came across this product recently which seems to have been intended as a cure for office boredom.

Today’s invention is inspired by that sentiment. It consists of a dance mat laid out in a keyboard arrangement -with responsive areas acting as keys which are large enough to accommodate the toe of a shoe but which cause the mat itself to be no more than say 1sqm in size (allowing it to be dropped on any floor).

This device would communicate with one’s phone and allow messages to be danced out and sent direct to eg Twitter.

The mat might also have one’s friends pictured down one side, enabling them to be selected and eg texted individually.

My ties often end up in a ball in the wardrobe. Sometimes I actually remember to use a tierack, but this does nothing to help restore any wrinkled ones that have been knotted around my neck all day.

Today’s invention is a tie tidy which is not unlike a very narrow spin dryer in function.

Many ties would be placed, overlapping each other, on the inside surface of a cylinder with diameter say 20 cm and height 15cm (ie tall enough to accommodate the width of even my 1970s examples).

This would be spun, hard, about its vertical axis and humidified air fed inside until any creasing had disappeared (this would also avoid the dangers of fraying or singeing at the hands of amateur ironers).

Today’s invention is a way to reduce resistance to the motion of the rotor within an electric motor.

This would involve shrouding each of the windings attached to the rotor with a light, tight-fitting, aerodynamic cover (orientated for low drag in the direction of rotation).

A further net decrease in drag on the rotor could be achieved by placing the motor in a shell with a well-lubricated rotary seal around the output shaft.

This would enable the air pressure inside the shell to be maintained at a much reduced level.

My car has the petrol filler cap on the ‘wrong’ side surprisingly often, when I drive into a service station…How is one to remember which side it’s on?

Sure, it is still possible to drag the hose across the paintwork and fill up a tank located on the far side from the pump but this is hard work, damaging and potentially dangerous, since the nozzle may not engage properly with the inlet tube.

Today’s invention is a telescopic tube which allows a driver to pull up at any pump, thus not wasting time in queueing for one with nozzles on the filler cap’s side of the vehicle.

To fill up with cap adjacent to pump, just do the normal thing. To fill up with the cap far from the pump, simply extend the tube from under the outer cover of the cap and clip it in place on the opposite side of the car (the clip would be at a height to ensure smooth fuel flow into the tank). This allows safe use of the petrol pump with minimal waiting.

When trying to buy paint, the biggest imponderable is how the new paint will cover the old surface. This can be 300% out if you are about to splash white emulsion on a fresh plaster coating.

Today’s invention is a handheld tool consisting of hygrometer sensor, of the type used to detect damp in walls, plugged into a cellphone (with camera).

A program on the phone directs the user to take a picture of the colour
of the existing wall (under normal light conditions). The moisture sensor is jabbed into the wall surface (somewhere unobtrusive).

The phone then requests an image of the paintcan barcode (which can be done in the shop, before any purchase is made, to allow comparison of the severals shades of ‘dusky pink’ on offer).

The program can then advise on how much of the paint will be required to cover a square metre of wall surface.

Today’s invention seems, to me, to be different from other forms of frameless glasses.

These would be in the form of two transparent near-hemispheres, made of flexible plastic so that the thin ‘equator’ region can be pressed onto one’s orbits and the lenses stay in position due to atmospheric pressure. The optical properties of the material would resemble those of existing contact lenses.

When not needed, these can be nested together and placed comfortably and safely in a back pocket.