Category: Possible inventions

I’ve been reading about the history of encryption (without understanding everything, written as it is by people who assume that everyone shares the same background knowledge). I enjoyed being reminded of the idea of writing a message on a spiral strip of paper wound around a baton of a particular diameter, to form a continuous sheet. Unwinding the strip allows you to pass it, as a coded message, to someone who knows the correct baton diameter to be able to read the writing.

Today’s invention is related to that approach.

It consists of a bundle of fibres, with say half black and half white (‘on’ or ‘off’). At different locations along the length of this cable, the fibres are arranged to form a crude ‘image’ of eg a letter or some other piece of information (<200 fibres would be enough).

Only the intended recipient would know where to section the rope to be able to see the intended letters in the right order. At other locations, there would be merely noise or decoy symbols.

This could be made so that the bundle was of optical fibres, bonded together to preserve the images and interrogatable from outside using eg a lightmeter device spun in a tight helix around the cable circumference.

Message symbols within the rope could occur very spatially frequently (limited by the wavelength of light) making it possible to compress a lot of information into a small space. This would potentially allow it to be understood only by someone with a machine capable of extreme precision in determining where to take the readings along the cable length.

Huge numbers of people around the world commute by train each day. Many of them will have spent the previous evening watching inane late-night tv programmes and therefore be in search of a good sleep en route. This can be disrupted by many external influences. One major one is the entirely pointless ticket collectors that roam around clipping or inspecting people’s tickets (when the barriers at journey’s end seem entirely adequate on their own).

Today’s invention is a transparent plastic case which is attached to the passenger by a light chain. This allows the ticket in question to be left for inspection (and obscure clipping rituals) without its owner having to be woken by yells of ‘tickets please’.

I’d really appreciate one of these with a small microphone and some processing power on board which could listen to the wheel rotations on the track and calculate (even if the train speed varied from day to day) exactly when to sound the alarm in time to avoid me missing my stop.

This would mercifully bring an end to all those earsplitting broadcast announcements of one’s arrival at every single station.

Adverts on vehicles are pretty inflexible. You usually get taxicabs or delivery vans with a giant sticker or even a full paintjob, in return for which the owners get some kind of regular payment.

Today’s invention is a more flexible way to get a mobile advertising message across.

I envisage panels of a vehicle’s bodywork each being equipped with an array of individual cooling contacts. These would locally cool the panel from inside the vehicle, forming a pattern in ice on the outside. This pattern could take the form of a high contrast, pixelated version of a famous logo, set in stark colour contrast to the normal colour of the unfrozen parts of the bodywork.

When a new sponsor was found, the pattern of cooling could be changed, by use of a computer interface in the vehicle, which would also allow selection of any required logos.

Big screens on electronic products are hugely wasteful of detail. Despite how things may seem, we don’t see the world in uniform high resolution at all. Instead, only about 1/3 of a degree is seen by the eye in great detail and the rest is really very blurred indeed (See this for more background).

Try finding the face of a relative in an unfamiliar team photograph…you have to scan serially before detecting the individual concerned.

Today’s invention allows people to exploit this phenomenon to generate the appearance of a large screen using a very small one (such as a cellphone). Just consider one eye for simplicity. The trick is for the system to sense the net direction of movement of the eye and to shift the image displayed in the opposite direction.

Once the eye starts moving, we might have only 0.01 sec before it is looking at the edge of the cellphone window…which suggests that the motion sensing might best be done by detecting electrical signals to the eye muscles (via eg an eyepiece containing tiny inductive coils).

If the eyes are starting to move leftwards relative to the screen, the image would be moved rightwards, so that the area to which attention is being drawn becomes rapidly centred on the small screen at high resolution. In this way, the illusion is created of looking at a much bigger image through a small window -which moves effortlessly to the area in which an observer is interested.

Even if they are careful, the average wearer of spectacles usually ends up parking their glasses, by accident, face down on some hard surface. The high cost of anti-scratch lens coating (which never really seems very effective) can be avoided entirely by use of today’s invention.

A pair of small, translucent plastic knobs are attached to the front of one’s spectacles, using two small self-adhesive pads. These are positioned at the top outer corners of the lenses, on the opposite side from the legs.

If the specs decide to roll forward onto the lenses, the protruberant knobs make it impossible for a flat surface to come into contact with any part of the optics themselves.

Anything which is string-like, and which has an untethered end, can get itself into a tangle. Whether it’s an electrical cable, a headphone wire or a mountaineering rope, these tangles can be costly and even dangerous.

Today’s invention is a system for automated untangling of such strings (although it won’t cope with tight knots). This could be built into the end of many ‘stringy’ components and automatically activated periodically to ensure tangle-free operation.

The free end of each tangled cable is looped around and attaches to itself using a profiled ‘nose’. This nose is then driven slowly along the cable, pulling the free end with it. The nose thus passes through all the loops and loose knots until it reaches the other end of the cable, leaving a single U-shaped loop behind it.

The driving force for the nose is generated by successively adding C-shaped beads to the string behind it. This mechanism might be used as a drive for other small tethered ‘vehicles’ which need to progress along a complex, curving track (eg curtains, or zips).

I’m often advised to clean my teeth with the toothbrush in my left hand. Aside from the subtle cognitive benefits which undertaking a task using the non-dominant hand like this may bring (who knows why), a monodextrous brushing pattern leaves areas of one’s mouth less uniformly cleaned.

Today”s invention is a way to help remind people to alternate the brushing action between hands on successive occasions.

The brush is stored in one of a pair of model fists, which are joined together, and this unit sits on a shelf orientated to match the user’s fists, when held out in front. Each model fist has a hole in the top to accommodate the handle of the brush.

On removing the brush from one hole, it drags the platform on which it rests upwards (a small magnet is attached to the brush and to each platform). This closes the hole and opens the one in the other fist.

When brushing is complete, the brush is then located in the open fist, which corresponds with the hand to be used next time.

For those of us not keen on the idea of being identified by our irises, fingerprints, veins or even our exhalations, today’s invention provides a way for machines to recognise us just about as reliably.

Almost everyone carries a set of keys with them. People could upload a fixed-format, digital silhouette photograph of each of the keys which are kept on their usual ring, and the profiles of these would act as an easy but high-precision identifier.

If you need to withdraw money or board an aircraft, insert a selection of your keys into a slot and you can be recognised by the system in question.

Only the owner would know which order to insert these n keys, so that if they were lost, there would still be only a 1 in n! chance that these could be used for illegal purposes.

Since many long-haul airliners now have significant headroom for passenegers to walk about in, it occurred to me that this might be used to help fit more paying customers in -but also allow them a higher level of comfort.

In certain regions of the plane a double-deck seating arrangement could be built in. This would allow people to sit in a semi-reclining position, with significantly greater legroom, secure in the knowledge that no-one was about to crash the back of a seat into their lap.

These seats would also provide a more private space and incorporate a personal viewscreen on the rear of the seat above. There would be some adjustment in the height of the headrest to accommodate the taller-than average, but these seats would be the preferred option for more active travellers of average proportions.

In the event of an ’emergency’ the cellular construction of these seating spaces would provide people with a protective cocoon.

I’ve been thinking a lot about landmines lately. They seem to serve two purposes: as tactical barriers to an advancing army and as a way to deny access to an area (for an unspecified period in the future). These weapons seem particularly unpleasant because they affect civilians directly and keep doing so for years after the latest crazy warfest has abated.

I’m working on ways to neutralise mines themselves, but today’s invention is an approach which restricts the military benefit of laying the damn things in the first place.

Local people can defend their territory from minelaying by creating multiple smooth-earth paths across their land. These could be created using a multishare plough and lots of footstamping (some water might also help, if available).

The smoothness of these paths would make it impossible to conceal mines beneath the surface, leaving clear routes along which people could move and rendering the sowing of mines in the normal land to either side futile. The paths could be sunbaked and straw-packed, making them rainproof to an extent and more durable to foot traffic.

If achieveing smoothness were a problem, the surface could have elaborate patterns impressed on it (during the ploughing and stamping process) which would be difficult to duplicate at short notice by an invading army. Imagine a Bayeux Tapestry depicting local history. Afterwards, the land can be returned to normal use by breaking up and digging-in the baked mud.