Category: Possible inventions

Wind farms are still by no means economically viable everywhere (and even economies of manufacturing scale may never make them so).

Nonetheless, in areas where they actually work, they are still unpopular because of the ‘NIMBY’ problem. People don’t want to have these large, noisy devices covering their scenic local countryside.

Today’s invention is a way to ensure that the windfarms can be seen as impermanent and also so that their activities can be shared around from place to place -rather than being dumped forever on a single community.

Take ten current-design, triblade wind turbines. Mount these at angles on an ex-military tracked vehicle which can be frequently repositioned using a farm tractor. This allows numerous vehicles of this design to be moved about in the countryside and even located so as to optimise their energy capture from say month to month.

For institutions which consume a lot of fruit (such as school or hospital canteens or food processing factories), there is always an issue about ensuring that individual items of fruit, usually covered in pesticide residue, are adequately washed to ensure the longterm safety of consumers.

A quick swill under the tap won’t achieve anything like the required degree of washing.

Today’s invention in a device similar to a golfball scrubber, as used on courses all over the world. Items of fruit are fed from a hopper into an array of ‘cells’ -each of which has internal faces covered in toothbrush like material. As the cells are pushed backwards and forwards (manually) the brushes rub the fruit and clean off any wax and residues effectively. After a time, the cells can all be inverted, dropping the fruit gently into another large container ready for use.

Call me obsessive, but I get irascible if I find butter in the jampot. It’s not as if I eat a lot of jam, but somehow the whole process of spreading one semifluid on another, using the same implement, offends me.

Today’s invention is intended to allow the application of jam (or marmalade or smooth peanut butter, if you insist) onto a buttered piece of toast/bread, without ever getting one of these venerable spreads into the container of the other.

An ordinary jamjar has the lid removed and replaced by a nozzle device. This has a bellows pump in the neck and a removable grid of nozzles at the other end. Pumping the bellows eventually drives some jam through the nozzles in little spurts -which cover the buttered surface and coalesce there without needing to be spread. To extract the dregs and clean, the grid can be removed. (Obviously ‘whole fruit’ jam or lumpy peanut butter would present a problem).

There is, apparently a worldwide campaign to encourage anyone who has just used a lavatory and only left urine, not to flush. This is intended to conserve a vast amount of water (at the expense of some very minor embarrassment).

Although there are numerous scented, disinfectant-laden and usually blue-coloured toilet liquids available, today’s invention is a new one.

Made from grass cuttings, this green liquid, dispensed into the cistern, would disguise the presence of urine and thus greatly decrease the flushing frequency (without adding any noxious chemicals to the drainage system).

Inspired by IDEO’s fingerblaster and the Aerobie Rocket Football today’s invention is a new way to deal with the mountains of plastic soft drinks bottles which I see littering the roadsides near my home.

Each plastic bottle would be blow moulded with fin-like protruberances at the bottom end. Council waste bins would be equipped, by the drinks manufacturers, with a branded hoop clipped to the top of each one.

People would be encouraged, by a marketing campaign, to see the challenge in firing their winged bottles into bins, rather than just dropping them. Groups of youngsters would be encouraged to film long-distance target practice shots and upload these to YouTube, in order to win a national anti-litter prize.

They might gain extra points by also filming the process of loading their bottles with other rubbish to provide better flight dynamics and clean up their neighbourhood whilst having some extra fun.

Responsible dog owners are supposed to collect their animals’ excrement and carry it to a designated dog waste bin (at least in many cities).

Today’s invention is a way for such people to illustrate their responsibility by carrying with them a highly visible, ultra-durable bag marked “Dog Waste.” Any scurrilous owners not thus equipped and allowing their canine pals to defecate literally with abandon could then be approached by dog wardens and, if necessary, fined.

The bags would be inverted to lift the dog mess and also be equipped with a nylon rope so that, when filled, each could be dragged behind the owner in search of a suitable bin, rather than be carried in a pocket. This would further publicise their effort, avoid the dreadful stench and allow their dog, if walking off-lead behind, to follow and catch up more easily.

These bags could be hosed out on returning home which would also reduce the problem of dealing with the millions of plastic bags filled with dog poo left in waste bins.

When small but visible regions of one’s textured wallpaper get damaged, it is usually painful to have to consider repapering an entire room.

Today’s invention delays the redecoration work by attempting to repair the texture of (monochrome) paper.

A textured surface, A, has sustained a small region of damage, B. A (lightly-greased) matrix of fine rods, C, is then pressed into contact with an undamaged region of texture, so as to take up its surface profile. C is then wedged in place over the offending hole in the paper and a papier-mache pulp (D, in blue) is squeezed through a small gap in the matrix. This can then be repainted conveniently when the pulp hardens and the matrix is removed.

This approach might be obviously adopted for the repair of a range of other textured surfaces.

Armies tend to get equipped with felt overboots every time their local megalomaniac decides it’s a good idea to pick a fight with Russia (The French army still gets these issued with only a single word of explanation: “Moscow”).

Standing on a Northern railway platform recently, I was reminded of these facts, whilst also thinking that wet leather is a surprisingly good thermal conductor of heat from my feet to the frozen ground.

Rather than go with felt, though, I thought that it would be good to stand on two vacuum flasks.

Today’s invention is a clip-on sole for shoes containing two, flat ‘vacuum’ chambers; one for the forefoot and one for the heel. Each of these chambers would have a thin outer wall made of fibreglass, to sustain the low internal pressure, whilst also minimising the conduction of heat from foot to floor.

Stabbing attacks on e.g. police officers and other public-facing staff are particularly hard to defend against. Even bulletproof clothing can be punctured by a sharp knife.

It’s possible to wear a vest which can withstand a sharp point, but the pressure generated at the tip of a knife blade is enormous and the appropriate protective clothing becomes too bulky to be comfortable.

Today’s invention is a new configuration of shielding consisting of a continuous, flexible sheet of concave hexagons, moulded in tough plastic. When a knife point slams into this surface, it will tend to deflect into the base of the nearest concavity. Each dip contains an embedded metal ring (yellow) which locates the point and spreads its impact across neighbouring ‘cells’, without ever allowing the point to penetrate to the person underneath (pink).