Category: Possible inventions

Today’s invention is a hot air balloon which can convert to a parachute if damaged in flight.

The balloon is made of several horizontal layers zipped together.

If damage occurs, the layers below the tear can be unzipped by pulling on one of a number of wires from the gondola (assuming that the tear hasn’t happened too high in the envelope).

This allows the remaining part of the balloon to stay inflated, albeit with increasingly cool air, and act as a parachute.

It also opens a small aperture at the apex to provide more stable descent.

It seems that shining a bright light into someone’s ears can alleviate the symptoms of seasonal affective disorder. There are light sensitive cells inside the head which react to changes in illumination, apparently.

Today’s invention uses this discovery to help overcome jetlag.

A pair of sunglasses has a daylight-frequencies lamp located on each of the legs. These are mounted in earphone-like cans, so that the effects of ambient light level changes can be excluded by positioning the cans over the ears.

The light levels emitted by the lamps are gradually varied during a long flight so that the body is fooled into arriving at the destination already attuned to local time.

A friend recently reminded me about the Kamm back aerodynamic design for road vehicles.

I have also been reading about the genius who has invented a car engine which runs on liquid nitrogen.

Today’s invention is a related approach.

A vehicle has a tank of liquid nitrogen aboard. In order to boost the ‘air’ pressure at the rear of the vehicle, and cut the form drag radically, it continuously releases some of the nitrogen into the space which would otherwise be a low-pressure, fuel-wasting vortex.

Those learning to drive have a hard time.

Once you can drive, though, it’s easy to swap to a new vehicle. Today’s invention is therefore a specialist car for learners.

Painted in bright yellow, for extra detectability, it has a number of special features.

As well as extra elastic bumpers (1), it has mirrors equipped with cameras which can tell when the learner is looking at them (2). These would ensure that signalling and changing direction only happened after checking behind.

The instructor would have dual controls but would be seated in the rear, so as to allow for better visibility and a greater sense, in the mind of the pupil, of their being in control (3).

Doors would be transparent for improved vision but also to provide an understanding of the vulnerability of car occupancy (4).

Lastly, (5) data from the vehicle’s sytems could be recorded on an onboard computer for later interpretation.

I was thinking how little security is on display in British railway stations. Doors are left open and all sorts of people mill about the platforms.

What if some crazy were to hijack a train and crash it into the buffers in a main station? 40 tonnes at 120 MPH would be a disaster, if it couldn’t be diverted into a siding in time.

Today’s invention is a massive railway car which, in such an emergency, could be dropped onto the tracks using a purpose-built mobile crane outside a mainline station.

As a runaway train approached, the car would motor towards it and make gentle contact at matching speed. It would fire up a rocket motor, to retard the train and then apply its brakes so as to prohibit entry to any station.

A combination of these forces, under software control, would halt the train, without causing impact injuries to its occupants.

I walked past a lorry the other day shredding papers from an office building. The whole thing was covered in ‘confidential shredding’ notices and yet anyone could have walked off with a wheelie bin full of secrets.

Today’s invention is a way to ensure that if you are daft enough to commit anything private to paper, it will stay private.

It is a novel shredder fitted with a seats and a set of bicycle pedals.

A small amount of non-secret paper is inserted in the slot and the pedals are used to shred it initially into the collection box (which is sealed, apart from a small air inlet and a chimney which protrudes through an open window).

The cranking also causes a lighter flint to spray sparks on the paper, igniting it.

A small steam engine boiler is located within the system, above the burning paper. Once heated, this helps to drive the pedal crank, making the job of shredding less arduous.

In this way, the secret papers are rendered completely unreadable, there is no costly, street level lorry and office staff get some exercise.

In search of ever faster bicycles, today’s invention is a new front wheel unit, without all the usual drag-inducing whirling spokes (and no significant weight increase).

Instead, the front wheel is a plain steel circle which has a smooth interior surface.

A single, aerodynamically-profiled fork blade carries two sets of small rollers.

The top set can be slid down the fork so that the rollers can engage with the inside of the wheel. The top set is then moved back upwards and locked in place, so that the wheel can spin, whilst staying in contact with all the rollers.

Today’s invention is a screen mounted on the underside of a car’s bonnet.

Once the bonnet is opened, the screen has projected onto it movies of detailed maintenance procedures with descriptive overlays (and even, using motion detecting cameras, clickable links to sources of parts etc).

Movies could be shown of factory experts actually undertaking particularly difficult tasks (and engine compartment cameras might be used to create films of events in the service history of a given vehicle).

This screen could also be used for providing entertainment to the passengers during rest stops.

Used in an armoured limousine with forward facing cameras, the screen could be flipped up when the vehicle was under attack and driven forwards using realtime images of the road ahead.

Today’s invention is a form of forklift truck with several sets of detachable forks.

This can be used to create improved accommodation within eg tall industrial units by introducing mezzanine floors, but without the costs of building permanent, single-use, structures.

A fork lift can thus be used to raise one end of a steel decking unit, leaving the (locked) forks behind to act as supports.

After attaching a new set of forks, the other end can be raised and locked in place, allowing the truck still to be available for other lifting duties (using the other spare fork units with which it comes equipped)

It takes surprisingly little structural steelwork to hold the weight of a car safely overhead.

Today’s invention helps deal with the shortage of urban parking spaces as well as providing weather protection to pedestrians.

A ramp allows cars (blue) to drive up onto a trackway over the pavement and park.

Another raised lane is provided to allow parked cars to pull out overhead and rejoin the street via a second ramp.

Pedestrians thus are sheltered by the cars themselves and the roadway has an extra lane (yellow) that would otherwise consist of (filled) parking spaces.