We are constantly being exhorted by various medical ‘experts’ to consume five fruit items a day. I had been avidly chewing my way through five apples on a daily basis, only to be told that this didn’t count: they had to be different fruits.
So, today’s invention is a reusable net bag with a name tag and containing five pouches, each of which holds a different item of fruit. This would allow convenient, healthy fruit buying as well as monitoring of the amount actually consumed by any individual.
Having spent an earsplitting two days listening to the whine of a dust-filled projector, I began to think of solutions.
When a device such as this screens a message saying “I’m overheating,” it’s probably time to clean out the clag which is mostly causing the problem. Today’s invention is a fan, suitable for computers, projectors etc which is driven by a gearwheel engaging with teeth on the outer edge of a ring joining the ends of its blades. This is an alternative to the normal fixed, central driveshaft.
Such an approach allows a button to be pressed which briefly withdraws the axle supporting the fan and spits this (plastic) item out of the body of the device, allowing it to be thoroughly washed clean, dried and reinserted.
Almost every electronic device now comes with an on-screen keyboard.
Today’s invention introduces an extra measure of novelty and functionality. Although there are lots of keyboards which claim to have arranged the keys according to which are most frequently used (in the population as a whole), the idea today is to use the mapping techniques recently applied to the US election to take account of population density variations.
Each key would have its usage frequency recorded and its on-screen size increased the more it was clicked. The electoral maps techniques could maintain a continuous surface of keys, whilst also changing their individual sizes.
This would make finding the keys most commonly used (by an individual) easier and thus improve both typing speed and accuracy.
I’m given to believe by the nice people who sold me my new, wood-burning stove that it’s about four times more efficient than just burning the fuel in an open hearth. I suspect that it’s actually still horribly inefficient and a pretty good tool for promoting global warming.
Naturally, I thought of searching the patent databases to understand what innovations are out there to improve performance. Lots of ‘prior art’ exists on fitting fins, ducts, baffles etc inside a stove, to improve burning efficiency, or to extract heat from the flue gases.
Today’s invention is a little different in that it consists of a bank of magnetic fins which can be attached to the outsides and rear of a cast-iron stove and which greatly improve the convective heat transfer to the airflow in contact with these areas. Painted in matt black heatproof enamel, these would be comparatively unobtrusive, yet capable of boosting the effective output of many domestic heating stoves.
Repeated heating and cooling would result in eventual demagnetisation, requiring renewal…but these fins could be made with detachable magnets whose replacement could be arranged to occur as part of normal system maintenance.
I like to carry my things in some kind of coat, leaving my hands free. I find it helpful to have a single pocket for storing items like my keys, my wallet, phone etc, rather than have them roll around in the same one.
Today’s invention is a coat on the inside of which is a set of short, horizontal zips. To each of these a detachable pocket, from a range of sizes, can be zipped: one pocket for each object being carried.
This allows a selection to be made of what things to take each day, enables e.g. one’s phone to be carried where the user chooses, provides for flexibility if one wants to change one’s wallet position occasionally for security and still manages to stop keys from committing ipodicide.
This idea doesn’t yet extend to a laptop, but I’d really like to be able to buy a modular machine with wires between elements, each of which would be stored in its own ventilated zip-in pocket (which would also distribute the weight much more effectively than any shoulder strap).
It’s always hard to get the attention of waiting staff in a restaurant. You may need to place an order fast or get the bill and leave, but they need to keep an eye on other tables too.
Today’s invention is a way to effectively gain their attention, without any impatient finger snapping or having to stage-whisper ‘Excuse me’ three or four times.
It consists of a table fork, the handle end of which acts as a tuning fork (this would need to be made so as to clearly indicate that that end wasn’t for picking up food).
When the non-foody end is plucked and the foody end applied to the plate surface, a pleasant, pure musical tone is emitted -attracting the attention of the appropriate waiter (each fork would have a perceptibly different note).
I was reading today about a Glasgow inventor who has created a software technique for visualising plastic surgery when it’s still at the planning stage for an individual.
It occurred to me that this includes an element of guesswork that could be lessened.
Today’s invention is to store a 3-D scan of everyone‘s face who is involved in hazardous activities eg the armed forces, motor racing, emergency services etc. If they sustain serious facial injury, there will at least be a ‘before’ image which might help a surgeon understand what the end result of reconstructive surgery should attempt to be.
Drill bits and screwdriver heads seem to disappear from my toolbox all the time.
Today’s invention is a way to ensure that I have to return each head (or blade) to the toolbox before grabbing the next one.
A transparent soft plastic magazine holds all my screwdriver heads -except the one which is currently in the screwdriver itself. To get a new head, I have no choice but to extract the one which is in the screwdriver and press it into the correct side of the magazine to squeeze out whichever new head is required.
This might easily be extended to any system of replaceable elements which is used one at a time.
It often happens that I get a call (or text) to my mobile from someone I’m only metres away from. If I’m the one making the attempt at electronic communication it’s particularly annoying because it costs me a frightening amount to get connected -even if only for long enough to say “hi, where are you, oh I see you now.”
Today’s invention is a cellphone application which works out if the caller and intended receiver are within visual range (or at least within the same cell). Instead of making the call, the phone could simply issue a warning “YOU ARE NEAR THIS PERSON’S PHONE, STILL WANT TO CALL?”
Pressing ‘cancel’ would then offer the opportunity for the phone to say the name of the person repeatedly until the meeting occurs (people hear their own name effectively even in a noisy crowd). This would be particularly useful to those benighted drivers sent to pick up Mr Unspellable from International Arrivals, armed only with a small cardboard sign.
Motorcycle helmets (and those used in all forms of motorsport, for that matter) suffer from a stupid drawback. As well as the hole at the bottom through which to insert one’s head, there is also one at the front via which images of traffic lights, police cars and fast-approaching tarmac, can enter.
Both holes weaken the structure of any helmet (just ask an egg). Today’s invention is a way to lessen that structural weakness caused by having an observation slot in the front face. Make the entire thing out of some transparent polymer eg a variant on polycarbonate or plexiglass. This would allow the shell to have no visor opening, the wearer would look through the wall of the bone-dome (This would be similar to helmets worn by the Apollo astronauts, but with conventional internal padding for roadgoing use).
Although scratches might be hard to avoid, and one’s ghastly compressed hairdo would be exposed, it would provide a much wider field of view, leading to doubly improved safety. Making bikers (and racers) more recognisable as individuals would have certain social benefits too.
