Category: Possible inventions

When gear teeth mesh together conventionally, each can be subject to a high level of stress due to the contact pressure: especially in high-torque applications. This obviously leads to shortened working life.

So now imagine pressing the gears together so that, instead of making contact via a single pair of teeth, there is a flattened region, consisting of many teeth, where the gears mesh.

Each of these ‘wheels’ would need to be constructed in the form of a caterpillar track. Instead of a rack and pinion arrangement, this effectively becomes two racks of different lengths.

There would be a degree of indeterminacy as to how much stress each pad carries at any moment but this approach would reduce the stress on each track pad and also potentially allow variable contact geometry for different types of duty.

I recently bought some miniature barrel organs for my children which each consist of a hand cranked drum with protrusions which hit the tangs of a multiprong tuning fork as they pass. These toys cost about £2 each and still give a recognisable rendition of various ‘classic’ tunes.

Today’s invention is a novelty consisting of a metal comb which, when rubbed from one end to the other, plays a tune in a similar way. Each tooth of the comb would act as a tuning fork because, although all lengths would be equal, they would have different thicknesses. Some teeth might have to be removed, of course, in order to provide the right musical timing.

Combs might be supplied which mimicked the ringtones of people’s cellphones and which allowed individuals to introduce themselves to each other by saying effectively ‘Can I talk to you?’

I’ve made a number of parachute jumps…one is a number. I was inspired by my late uncle who was killed during parachute training in the desert war (the big one in 1941).

As I made a dent in that field in Kent, it occurred to me that the parachute landing fall I’d been taught wasn’t exactly very effective -I still have twinges in my right hip 26 years later.

Today’s invention provides a way for parachutists to be better protected from terra firma. They would be equipped with the equivalent of a small inflatable lifeboat.

At an altitude of say 20 m (the last few metres seem to go by unusually quickly) a small cannister of compressed air would inflate this rapidly, in a similar way to the airsacs provided for the Mars landers. This would cushion the inevitable impact and reduce the number of injuries which occur -especially when parachuting during high winds.

The pillow might deploy automatically (like an automobile airbag) and it could be equipped with a pressure release valve so as to provide an effective cushion which would not rupture; allowing its reuse.

When my tyres lose pressure I find I’m strangely reluctant to root about in the oily grime of the local garage forecourt in attempts to get the airline to work (for which experience I may also find myself charged 20p).

Today’s invention is an alternative approach, which removes the need for all of that nonsense about tyre valves too.

When a tyre is fitted to a wheel, a small volume of water is placed inside the tyre. A low intensity microwave emitter placed in each wheel well then fires a beam through the tyre tread and is absorbed by the internal water, turning most of it to steam, which inflates the tyre.

Placing some fluorescein dye in the water provides the added benefit of easy leak tracing, should you happen to drive across the usual collection of nails and broken glass to be found in many public car parks.

This approach has the added feature that the tyres can be warmed quickly for better grip, even on frozen roads (and because the rate of diffusion of water vapour through rubber has got to be less than that of Nitrogen, the tyres will stay inflated longer).

I reckon I can now watch “The Italian Job” in about 20 minutes, “Blade Runner” takes longer. These are films I know well but I don’t necessarily enjoy every scene equally, which allows me to repeatedly fast-forward to the next interesting bit. It’s still important to view the intervening action, but I’m quite happy to do that at an accelerated pace.

Now that people have much less time to spend, even on entertainment, today’s invention is a digital recording system which will enable a large test audience to watch a movie online and then a record can be kept of which bits they fast forwarded through.

A version of the movie would always be available for download (perhaps at a different price) stored in such a way that each section was re-recorded at a speed proportional to the amount by which people had fast forwarded during their viewing. Boring bits would therefore be shown at an averaged higher speed, significant or simply much-loved sections would be run at normal pace.

This would save both on time spent viewing and the bandwidth required for delivery. It might also provide filmmakers with more objective understanding of what the most enjoyed sections of their movies really are (ie that ten-minute car chase with multiple explosions might get omitted from a final cut).

If the members of the test audience could record their age, sex etc, then versions of a movie might be created, tuned to specific demographics.

My first ever i-max cinema trip took me into space aboard the Shuttle. I was impressed by the perceptual effectiveness of just having a big, enveloping screen.

Today’s invention attempts to recreate a version of that experience at much lower cost and in a portable format.

Take several banana slide type phones and clip them together as shown (one such phone is highlighted in orange). Insert your face into the arc which is formed and play coordinated moving images on the screens, so that a wraparound visual patchwork is created.

The arc might even be made long enough to encompass the user’s ears, so that a form of surround sound could be generated.

If you are designing a garden ‘water feature’, ie a stream which splashes into a pool, how can it be made to emit the most pleasing noise, for a given flowrate? Some current systems I’ve listened to provide a pretty consistent hiss, most unlike the natural stream or waterfall I suspect they are supposed to be impersonating (actually more like the effluent pipe from some highly efficient industrial process).

One possibility is to use an archimedes screw mechanism. This could most easily take the form of a hose wrapped around the outside of a pipe which would, when rotated axially by a small motor running at constant speed, deliver gouts of water from a reservoir).

Using a bank of such screws arranged concentrically (each with a different screw pitch), it would be possible to supply a large number of small dollops and a much smaller number of large dollops -somewhat more like the pink noise which might be expected to emanate from a natural waterfall.

I’ve been told it’s effeminate of me not to eat the entire apple, core and all. Be that as it may, I’m really keen on ingesting just the flesh of an apple…pips and that stringy central stuff are really offputting.

There are lots of apple corers around…so I figured one more can’t hurt. Today’s invention is a corer which can remove all the internal inedibles, leaving more of the delicious fruit than a simple boring process can manage.

A needle consists of two halves (the black and the orange regions, forming a hinge joint at the left hand end). The black section is very stiff and acts as a supportive spine for the other, orange half. This is made in such a way that after the needle has been thrust through an apple, and the apple rotated, it can gradually bow outwards when pressed from the right hand end.

This bowing, which has its maximal range limited by the ‘keystone’ shapes of the orange half, eviscerates the apple and allows the core fragments to be shaken out the right hand end.

This might allow apples to be pre-cored, plugged at both ends and filled with eg yoghurt to add extra value and protect from browning in the atmosphere.

Tamagotchi have grown up a little -we now have eg Pixel Chix , a phenomenon consisting of a game-like metaphor played out on a single LCD screen embedded in a mini doll’s house. Today’s invention is a social networking tool for these animated avatars.

If a child wants to take their pixelated friend, Chix1, to a party at someone else’s, they plug their phone into the house (via the normal house-to-house interface) and transfer the character to it (Chix1 waves goodbye, exists the house, waves hello on the phone screen a second later). When the phone comes within bluetooth range of the phone where Chix2 has been loaded, Chix1 will say “Can I go and play on Chix2’s phone please?”

They can then interact on the phone screen before eg having a sleepover at one or other’s house, etc…you get the picture. This would allow clothes and pet swapping too of course. It would be important for believability that only one embodiment of eg Chix2 be active at any one time, anywhere on the network (but parents could delete one and recreate it elsewhere, by text message, in the event of an alleged kidnapping).

This would have been a natural for the Disney phone operation and might even have stopped the whole thing imploding.