Category: Possible inventions

Today’s invention is a mobile phone which needs no battery replacement. Instead, the clamshell design is made robust enough to act as a grip exerciser: the kind that squash players use, consisting of two handles which are sprung apart.

The halves of the clamshell would be similarly sprung apart (when not in the closed position). In between calls, a sporty user could repeatedly (and probably ostentatiously) squeeze them together and thus store enough energy to charge the internal battery.

Less sporty users could place the phone on the ground and press on it with their foot a few hundred times, in the manner of someone inflating an air mattress.

When someone comes to my door late at night they may find themselves ringing the bell and waking everyone in the house.

Today’s invention is a doorbell which works out if the time of their arrival is after bedtime and if so, pressing the bell makes a call to my mobile phone (which would automatically set itself to discreet ‘buzz’ mode at my regular bedtime).

Different patterns of bell pressing (indicated on a small sign on the door), could call different individuals’ phones…without saying to the putative visitor anything about who is in or out, or supplying them directly with any resident’s mobile number.

Fire extinguishers are plain ugly (beige, silver and red just don’t go together, let alone with anyone’s idea of decor). They need to be found and used by people whose first reaction is probably to panic and run away -hence the utilitarian colour coding.

Today’s invention is a generic cylindrical cover for extinguishers which can be decorated in exactly the same colours as the surrounding walls (using paint and or wallpaper).

When a fire is detected, by a smoke alarm mounted on each extinguisher, the springloaded covers are automatically shed, noisily highlighting where the firefighting equipment can be found.

Whiteboards of the old fashioned, non-computing variety, always seem to get drawn on with permanent marker. Some hours of scrubbing with ethanol and the errant writing can be converted to a desaturated greyish/pinkish/blueish greeny shade but it will never be the same pristine white as if the correct markers had been used. Whoever grabs the wrong pen in an attempt to get that great idea down urgently thus has it immortalised as a ghostly, inky after-image…which is not actually that good, especially if it turns out later to be wrong.

Today’s invention is a way to ensure that one’s whiteboard stays white.

A very thin, transparent plastic sheet hangs in front of a conventional whiteboard (shown grey), its weight supported by a few elastic bands. In the centre of the sheet is a hole into which only the correct whiteboard markers can fit, allowing them to be used to draw on the underlying board, whilst preventing any other kind of pen from penetrating the sheet as far as the board itself.

To clean the board, simply raise the screen and wipe as usual.

I really like the idea of staying out of the sun. For some reason, I can only see properly in low light levels, so I was perfectly happy living in a flat underground at Oxford Circus for an entire year (I occasionally went outside to lectures and to barter with the natives for supplies, of course).

Today’s invention is for my fellow troglodytes. Imagine a column of simulated windows, in the form of computer displays, on the wall behind a lift. Containing no real windows, the wall would thus provide greatly enhanced heat insulation and physical security.

Each of computer-driven screens would show a different view of the same scene, taking into account the change in perspective during the ascent. The images (e.g. beautiful parkland or idyllic beach, albeit with natural light levels somewhat muted) could even be made to darken appropriately as the day wears on.

Spray painting vehicles has been an automated, ie computer-controlled, process for over thirty years. Great efforts are made to ensure consistent, uniform-looking painted surfaces.

Today’s invention is a way to invert that emphasis and provide eg motor vehicles with the same kind of subtle patina, from new, as say stonewashed jeans.

A computer-controlled spray gun would adjust, in a continuous way, the relative amounts of matt and gloss paint being applied to a bodyshell. Planar regions would be matt-er, sharply curved regions shinier. This would give an interesting impression of wear by contact with high-speed streamlines, for example.

It would also be possible, given the usual CAD model of the surfaces involved, to apply a different level of shine corresponding to the general local curvature properties. This might even enable cars to be formed using simple (ie cheaper) geometry, but whose appearance could be made more convoluted and ‘characterful’ just by painting (a little like blusher on cheekbones).

Various off-road vehicles are now being equipped with rubber tracks rather than the traditional multi-link metal ones that have been around since 1916 or so.

This offers many advantages such as reduced roadwear and noise but today’s invention takes things a step further. The vehicles would have multiple wheel units which would allow them still to move if one was damaged. The rubber tracks would each be moulded in a single loop, with no joints. A number of these loops would be carried on the exterior of the vehicle (possibly compressed flat).

When a track needed replaced, the wheels on its unit would be spun to shed any remnants and the vehicle driven to a fresh patch of ground. A track loop would be dumped off the back and made to stand on its tread. Some wheels on the unshod unit would be drawn in radially and the vehicle skewed so that they enter the central space like fingers fitting inside a bracelet. The wheels would then be expanded to locate the rubber track on their rims.

Many track loops could be carried and vehicles could even swap loops rapidly -without occupants ever having to dismount.

I’m greatly impressed by systems such as this which can park the heads of a dropped laptop’s hard disk before it hits the deck.

Today’s invention is a technology with a different operating principle, but similar objective. The mantis shrimp is a marine creature which clubs its prey so fast that the impact generates a tiny spark of light. This phenomenon of sonoluminescence might be used by engineered systems to automatically protect themselves from the effects of impact.

Imagine eg a laptop dropped onto a hard surface. It could be equipped with a fine, water filled conduit connecting the corners (ie regions of high impact probability). On contact with a hard surface, photodetectors would register any luminescence and switch off sensitive internal systems before the solid- transmitted shock wave would have time to pass through them. This system would work without having to sense any sudden accelerations (except, indirectly, the crash itself).

I travel quite a lot on trains. These are haunted by ‘guards’ who seem to make a fetish of checking the doors are open or closed, waking up sleeping passengers and bellowing the names of stations after the PA system has just done this. Their main function is to check that people have paid to travel, in a rail network where fitting ticket barriers at all the minor stations would be prohibitively expensive.

Today’s invention does away with all this ridiculous manual ticket checking. Each train door would be equipped with pair of unidirectional gates like the ones which are used at football grounds. People could leave the train freely through one side and enter via the other side by inserting their ticket.

Only the trains would thus need barriers fitted and they could therefore be removed from all stations, greatly improving the flow of passengers and their safety in emergencies. This approach would allow an accurate count to be made of the individuals on board a train and thus ensure that dangerous overcrowding was detected and minimised.