Today’s invention is entirely decorative.
It is what used to be called a ‘standard lamp,’ consisting of a spherical, then-walled metal balloon with a lamp attached. The sphere is filled with helium and anchored to the floor by the lamp’s power cord.
Light from the lamp reflects off the sphere and the cord allows some movement of the lamp as it experiences the natural air movements in the room. Several adjacent lamp units amplify this effect.
Sliced bread is a benchmark for inventiveness.
Having performed several searches, as usual, I haven’t yet come up with any prior claims in connection with today’s invention: a loaf consisting of both brown and white slices.
People like variety, so I reckon this is a reasonably healthy way to introduce some novelty and add extra interest to a staple foodstuff. One brown and one white loaf would be sliced in the usual way and interdigitated, like two halves of a pack of cards, resulting in two such mixed loaves.
A more advanced version would have several different types of sliced bread involved. It might even be possible to introduce a toasted image onto some of the slices before ‘zipping’ the bread together to conceal eg a surprise message (and tie this in, perhaps, to some consumer competition).
Beset by handheld games consoles, being used by various offspring post-Xmas, I’ve become aware of how important it is to limit the obsessive usage of these.
Today’s invention is an additional, password-protected interface on all such devices which allows a responsible adult (or even a meanie parent) to specify in advance times when they may be used.
This might have a small alarm to alert the user when access is allowed and also when it’s about to end.
Today’s invention is simply a DVD on which is stored a movie of someone in silhouette getting up out of an armchair and periodically walking about.
This is projected onto the inside surface of a curtain in order to act as a deterrent to would-be burglars.
On occasions, the shadowy person disappears off to one side of the window for periods of several minutes at a time.
When the end of this classic of the cinema is reached, a script simply reruns each section between such disappearances -in a random order so as to avoid the repetition being detected.
Imagine pouring wine slowly from a bottle into a glass. As you look down on the bottle at any instant, the wine’s surface can be seen to touch the inside of the bottle along an elegant perimeter shape. An instant later, some wine has left the bottle and the perimeter has moved downwards, taking up a different perimeter shape.
Today’s invention is to mark a series of these perimeters on bottles, during their manufacture, at vertical intervals corresponding to eg 1 unit of alcohol.
This would allow someone serving wine to monitor exactly how much went into each glass and thus protect the health/ driving licence of the drinker.
There are large numbers of people capable of generating some kind of artistic output, but not able to make a living doing so. In accordance with a power law-type distribution, there is also a very tiny number of artistic people who are fantastically wealthy.
Today’s invention is a simple process by which the successful artists can help spread the economic benefits in their common ‘industry,’ and support the development of new work -without having to make charitable donations.
Famous person X can simply help compile the works of unknown persons Y,Z etc (ie the ones they like best) and use celebrity to sell much more of Y and Z’s output than would ever occur otherwise. This would be marketed as “X’s favourite contemporary poems” (or paintings, or pottery). It’s more about creating proteges, rather than patronage. In this case the celebrity benefits mostly from the PR value of being seen to support their fellow creatives.
I’m tired of finding that the salt seller on my dining table is always full of of a concretion of water vapour and salt.
Today’s invention is a salt and pepper set, each of which has a small buzzer embedded within it. Periodically, when not being used, these will fire up and shake the contents around, making it impossible for them to solidify and ensuring a steady stream when shaken over food.
The vibration might also be activated manually, via a button press or an integral accelerometer, to help dispense salt or pepper -rather than having to thrash these containers about wildly in front of fellow diners.
If we must continue to store paper, rather than bits, then filing cabinets do a reasonably good job.
The standard mechanism used to help avoid a cabinet toppling over, however, is a neat mechanical interlock which allows only one drawer to be open at any time.
This is fine until the higher drawers are crammed with paper and all the others are, for some reason, emptied.
Then, opening eg only the top drawer can still cause the whole thing to topple forwards in a potentially dangerous way.
Today’s invention consists of a simple (if inelegantly pictured) mechanism which ensures that opening any drawer also opens the bottom one. This lowermost drawer, once extended, acts as a brace which stops toppling, irrespective of how the contents are distributed within the cabinet. Closing the bottom drawer closes all the others simultaneously.
It turns out that there is a mathematical proof that up to six people occupy the smallest possible sleeping bag volume if they lie down beside each other but that seven people will take up their smallest possible sleeping compartment if they lie in a ’rounder’, 2-on-top-of-3-on-top-of-2 arrangement (however improbable/uncomfortable that seems).
Today’s invention is a slightly more practical application of this idea to the problem of laying pipework underground.
If there are 6 or fewer parallel, circular-section pipes, the required volume of earth to be removed will be minimised if these are laid side by side. If you need to bury more than 6 such conduits, they will require the least possible digging if placed in a ‘hexagonal’ arrangement.
For long pipelines, this difference could represent a substantial saving in time and energy.
Pens frequently lose their tops by some magical process. Rather than attach a pen top to the writing end by using a chain or a skein of plastic, today’s invention is a pen in the form of a circular bracelet.
The closure is formed by inserting the ballpoint into the distal end of a tightly wound spring (which accommodates the flexible ink reservoir).
When the bracelet is opened for use, it straightens and allows normal penmanship.
