Category: Possible inventions

Today’s invention attempts to deal, again, with the problem of people who refuse to wash their hands on exiting the bathroom.

It takes the form of a circular door handle (orange). This would be made from bacteria-inhibiting plastic.

The handle would be located in a cylindrical housing as shown. Each time the door hinge was moved, the circular handle would rotate within the housing, driven by the three wheels indicated.

A fresh segment of handle would therefore be presented to each new door user.

The housing might also be equipped with additional cleaners, such as a disinfectant spray and air dryer or even a small microwave (in the red box).

Closed captions or subtitles are now applied to enormous numbers of media productions (due partly to legislation which makes it illegal to discriminate against hearing-impaired people).

Companies can even now pay to obtain a real-time profile of the frequency with which their corporate titles are used eg in global news broadcasts.

Today’s invention is an entertainment-related variant on this, to allow better access to a higher fraction of interesting stuff.

A channel hopping viewer could pay to enter a small set of (weighted, personal) keywords online.

When these appeared in the captions for anything on tv or the web, a short burst of that programme or video would play on their screen.

This would enable a new form of media consumption, somewhere between browsing and channel hopping, with the power to choose to stay with anything interesting that appeared.

Naturally, dialogue in adverts would be tailored in attempts to achieve even better targetting via this process.

Today’s invention returns to the vexed question of umbrellas which blow inside out.

The solution is simply, let them.

In the diagram an umbrella is shown which has a duplicate set of struts on the outside.

When a gust inverts the umbrella, the user simply detaches the handle, at the blue circle, and reattaches it to the other end of the shaft.

Today’s invention is a generic system for protecting against friction (and thermal damage).

A kevlar braid is pressed into a spiral-shaped duct.

A temperature sensor within the duct detects any build-up of friction on the pad.

This releases a lock on the braid so that it is free to flow from a bobbin behind the pad, around the spiral and be dragged out through the centre by the frictional force itself.

This means that the pad is rapidly self-renewing when abraded.

I imagine several of these being attached to a motorcyclist’s leathers, so that when they skid down the road, they will have lesser skin damage (although a similar approach might also work within an aerospace ablation shield).

Many large metal structures, such as bridges and supertankers, carry vast amounts of paint as protection against the elements.

This needs to be frequently replaced by teams of people doing a difficult and often dangerous job.

Today’s invention is a new type of paint which has a very high oil content. This means that the paint never dries to form a hard outer coating (like climb-resistant paint).

It also allows an army of small robots to roll over the surface continuously, providing much more frequent recoatings than human repainting would allow.

The robots would have magnets to hold them in place and a range of rotary scraping tools with which to scuff off the soft coating.

The paint itself would be made using cheap, heavy oil so the robots could burn it as their fuel source.

The base coat could be a conventionally hard, white one and outer oily coats would be in a contrasting colour so that detecting when the soft protection had been locally damaged or removed would be easy.

Today’s invention is a way to modify existing jets to give them vertical takeoff (if not landing) capability.

Planes would be fitted with an extra set of brakeable wheels on rearward-pointing stalks.

The nosewheel would be replaced with one that had a pneumatic cylinder attached.

This would be used to bounce the nose off the ground/deck and at the same moment, fire up the engines to achieve a near vertical takeoff.

This would require a degree of computer-aided coordination, but would also overcome many of the ground effects which cause difficulties for conventional VTO aircraft.

Today’s invention is inspired by Anders Nils Gunnar Widgren, Inventor, who drew my attention to a new Swedish inventing programme on TV.

This featured sausages with triangular cross-sections (to stop them rolling off a grill).

My proposal is a new form of skewer which impales a sausage axially and on the end of which is a spiral, bimetallic strip.

As the sausage cooks, the strip heats up and rolls up tightly, ensuring that the sausage rotates and is evenly cooked automatically.

Today’s invention is another attempt at a personal flying machine.

This consists of a set of inflatable, cigar-shaped envelopes attached to the top edge of a large paramotor.

These small airships would be filled with eg Helium but angled so that a large component of lift would come from the angle of attack of the ‘wing’ they form (rather than just from buoyancy).

The pilot (and fuel tank) is suspended below the whole affair in order to maintain stability and would steer by tugging differentially on wires attached to the balloons.

I love living in a leafy environment. It’s therefore quite upsetting when I get experts telling me that it’s best to have several trees chopped down to avoid the risk to my house or those of my neighbours before windy weather threatens.

Today’s invention is a small, automated chainsaw system which can be attached to the base of a potentially dangerous tree and left there for the long-term.

This would be suitably camouflaged in shape and texture to make its presence less noticeable.

A wire on an extensible reel, would be run from the saw to near the top of the tree.

When the wire was stretched beyond a safe limit, by a storm-force wind, the chainsaw would fire up and fell the tree.

The saw would be placed so that the direction of fall would always be away from the nearest property.

A watched kettle never boils, it’s said. Today’s invention is a way to help limit that awful feeling, when engaged in some boring activity, that time is standing still.

Imagine a watch which can sense when you look at its face (which might easily be arranged by having a camera and software which recognises your face on board).

If the device sensed that you were clockwatching and therefore bored, it would automatically supply you with some email to deal with on its screen, an instant messenger client to talk to other bored participants in a mtg or even a brief games break.