Category: Feasible inventions

If anyone were remotely interested, one of my top five films is High Fidelity.

Today’s invention springs from the idea in the original book that everyone likes to describe themselves in terms of their likes and dislikes.

When you meet someone new, you text them a unique codeword which they can choose to forward to a central public number. This downloads to their mobile device a list of say your top five movies, music recordings and books. They can then select any of these to receive immediately a clip or quotation from each.

Naturally, this service would cost the person whose favourites were being viewed. It might also allow an occasional advert to be interspersed in order to lessen the cost of payments to the copyright holders.

It scares me to see people using penknives for cutting anything other than flimsy quill feathers.

Even the Swiss army must regularly slice their fingers because folding knives usually don’t lock.

Today’s invention is a spring steel clip designed to grip a penknife blade and prevent it from folding closed when in use.

I’ve really never been good at any of those primary school tasks such as tying my laces (or tie), differentiating between p’s and q’s or telling the time. Unlike people with Dyslexia, who get extensions to complete written exams, asking for extra time to read a clockface seems perpetually self defeating.

The two-hands-at-once thing is just not intuitive. Today’s invention provides the same precision in time telling but without having to interpret all that distracting hand waving (and with a certain additional aesthetic continuity).

The watch face shows a high-resolution sub-region of a disc representing 24hrs. As time passes, the sub-region shown appears to move around this disc (the edge of which might have 24*60 1 minute-divisions marked on it, as well as the hourly numerals).

The exact time is indicated at the pink dot fixed in the middle of the watch.

Universities and other institutions often consist of a diverse collection of buildings from different eras and architectural backgrounds. These can sometimes be interdigitated with other buildings that happen to be there for historical reasons, but which aren’t anything to do with the urban campus in question. Visitors were always stopping me on the street in Cambridge, standing between shops, government offices and colleges, and asking “Where’s the University?”

The situation is even more daunting for new students who are actually expected to find their way about without stumbling into banks whilst in search of biochemistry. This is a bigger issue when two unrelated campuses abut one another.

Today’s invention is a simple way to group the real estate belonging to such an institution visually. It involves equipping each building with a discreet collection of small, energy efficient lights -in a single appropriate colour. These could be attached (removably) at a uniform height above ground -or below the rooflines. They might be illuminated in waves across the university -unifying even the most eclectic collection of institutional outstations.

People tend to listen to music via earphones at a volume that may be actually doing them harm. I know this because, aside from the published concerns of audiologists, I can often hear their choice of listening across a noisy train carriage.

This morning, it was some banker tuned to Duran Duran, but even real music can be intrusive when you’re only getting the tinniest of high frequencies which have escaped from the foam earbuds.

Today’s invention is simply to incorporate a small microphone in one earpiece. This would register the sound level emitted and reduce the volume -so gradually as to be imperceptible to the (intended) listener.

Obviously the noise-crazed, volume addicts may override the mic, but this approach would reassure the parents of kids who are still in the early stages of deafening themselves.

A quick search for ‘chainsaw safety features’ quickly confirms my suspicion that these are seriously dangerous devices…especially in the hands of anyone who isn’t a professional lumberjack.

Most people who pick up a chainsaw aren’t looking to decapitate a sequoia. They are more likely to be chopping off the odd branch or two whilst hoping to keep their own limbs attached.

Today’s invention is a new form of chainsaw shield. Only a small part of the chain is initially exposed. As it cuts into a branch, the outer section of the shield is deflected away from the user by the wood itself, exposing just enough of the chain at any time.

The outer section is attached by a narrow, sliding, spring-loaded spine to the inner section (which allows the saw to fully penetrate the wood and also protects the user if it kicks upwards).

For those of us condemned to wear two pairs of spectacles (perhaps because bifocals induce motion sickness), life can become complex. The house-wide search for one’s other pair can be time consuming -just when you need to read that small print.

Today’s invention is a double pair of spectacles: two pairs joined together at the ‘legs’. When one pair of lenses is in use, the other pair is worn on the back of the head.

When the user needs a change in refractive power, they are simply swapped over. There would probably need to be two springs connecting both pairs of legs, in order to enable this swapping in a comfortable way. This would also work, of course, for sunglasses as the secondary pair.

I’m convinced that the success of all things Dyson is down to a combination of entertainment value and the ability to view the result of one’s virtuous efforts, rather than any particular technical merit (nobody pays £200+ for a vacuum cleaner just because it suffers ‘no loss of suction’ -please).

It’s partly, too, the nursery colourschemes but mostly the secret behind their sales has to be that swirling-dirt movie which comes with every product.

Today’s invention is a way to equip all such cleaners with a soundtrack -even if they don’t benefit from a bagless, supersonic swirl chamber and a filing cabinet full of patents.

Think how satisfying it is to hear a stream of grit and dust being removed from your carpet/ bed /pet. Now imagine fitting the hose of a cleaner with a small microphone, amplifier and loudspeaker.

Suddenly your device feels so much more effective and this add-on also drowns out the other noises it makes -to an extent.