Category: Possible inventions

You can buy all sorts of fancy gizmos if you have a collection of old-fashioned, automatic, mechanical watches that you want to keep wound when they aren’t on your wrist.

Today’s invention is a new, somewhat humorous variant.

It consists of a mainspring and escapement attached to a pendulum (exactly as used to control grandfather clocks). The pendulum in this case consists of one or more watches, so that not only are they kept wound by the mechanism, the whole system allows the owner to read the time via the watch face(s).

Since the period of oscillation (for small angles) is independent of the mass, a small collection of such watches could be arranged to form the pendulum.

Periodically of course, the mainspring will need to be would up tight.

Racing cyclists are obsessive about drag reduction. This is about the only thing I have in common with them.

Today’s invention is a bicycle seat post for racing bikes.

When the cyclist stands in the pedals to race uphill, the seat post withdraws into the frame, thus lessening drag associated with having a long cylinder thrashing around in the airflow from side to side.

The seat might also be especially aerodynamic, with a tapering rear profile.

The rider would then simply touch the lowered seat with his behind when the hill was climbed, for it to rise back into position and lock in place.

I love the competitiveness of boxing but brain damage is a real threat from which no conventional sparring helmet can protect you.

Today’s invention is therefore an unconventional head protector for boxers.

It consists of a plexiglass dome attached to a robot arm. Both boxers would wear one, each bolted to their own ringside robot which could skirt the ringside ledge very fast.

The idea is that the dome would constantly sense its position relative to the wearer’s head -maybe every few milliseconds. The dome would always maintain a distance from the outside of a boxer’s cranium.

When an opponent lands a punch on the dome, the robot arm would react very rapidly to resist both the motion of the incoming glove and the subsequent travel of the dome -so that punches to the head could be automatically recorded without any contact actually being made.

Even if a boxer slipped, the arm would maintain the dome/head distance and then perhaps help cushion the impact between head, dome and canvas.

Even though I’m sceptical about the net value of bottle recycling, I like bottlebanks -maybe it’s partly the urge to avoid waste.

One problem, though, is the terrible continuous noise created when people drive up at random times and smash the contents of several boxes full of empties.

Today’s invention is a way for this smashing to occur only at fixed times.

Glass items would be left in a series of plastic milk crates on top of a cylindrical housing (thus creating very little noise). The crates have no bottom floor.

An inner cylinder (blue) with holes rotates so that when the holes and bottle/jars coincide, the glassware falls through and makes a smashing noise.

This system rotates at a speed which causes the cratefuls all to drop through on the hour, thus causing much less disruptive noise -like a town clock striking.

In addition, the cylinder wall allows people to insert bottles in holes at different heights. As the inner cylinder rotates, these positioned bottles fall inwards creating a slow, introductory ‘chiming’ before the main crash.

Cooked food should always be served piping hot…right?

Well, surely we are past the stage of requiring that everything be sold at a potentially dangerous temperature -just to prove it has had its bacteria stunned into submission.

Today’s invention is an optional extra service for consumers of ‘fast’ food.

Children in particular have difficulty eating food that is too hot for them, so as an alternative to waiting and blowing (hardly hygienic), the proposal is for food sellers to have a portable food chiller.

Food would be thoroughly cooked as usual, but could, for an extra charge, be placed in a compact, circulatory, high-speed wind tunnel. This would be used to cool food to an acceptable, user-chosen temperature…and allow rapid, safe consumption.

Now that people are creating insect-like drones, I’ve been thinking about how to make them invisible -to one observer, anyway.

One way is as illustrated. A very small, manoeuvrable drone (d) is equipped with a camera which informs it of exactly where the observer is looking (x).

Irrespective of whichever ‘x’ one is looking at, the drone forms one image on the blindspot of one eye (b) and, by flying very rapidly from position to position, it forms a stable image (s) on the back of the other eye (which then fades out).

This allows the drone, given suitably fast electronics and flight dynamics, to stay unseen.

Atmospheric re-entry vehicles rely on either ablation shields or insulating tiles to stop them being incinerated by contact with the shockwave they generate during descent.

Today’s invention is to make a re-entry vehicle in the form of a vacuum flask. This could consist of one capsule nested within another and secured in place using wedges of thermal tile material.

Before re-entry, a valve would open, expelling the air in the gap to space and then lock closed, forming a vacuum in the layer between inner and outer shells.

Although probably heavier than the conventional approaches, this would be comparatively low-tech, robust during ascent and would allow easier reuse of the vehicle.

Such a device might provide a way, in smaller, pod format, to allow expensive equipment, valuable memory devices or samples to be dropped back to earth more reliably.

Animals, like people, tend to choose mates based partly on body symmetry. Today’s invention is a rat trap which aims not to kill any animals, but to reduce their reproductive attractiveness.

A narrow box has one-way gates at both entrance and exit. A rat (or mouse) is attracted to the smell of some bait and as it passes along inside the box, it triggers a small aerosol paint spray. This contains a harmless but longlasting dye which creates a striking pattern on one half of the rodent.

This might take the form of a high-contrast ‘dazzle’ camouflage or zebra stripes, but the idea is that by making rats of both sexes look strongly asymmetric, they will be much less likely to be chosen to mate.

This device can, using a small reservoir of attractant scent, allow hundreds of animals to pass through every hour.

By lowering the reproduction rate significantly in this way, the rise of rodent plagues (which consume 16% of rice produced in Asia) can be avoided.

Even more innovative specs…today’s invention is a pair of safety glasses.

These are equipped with at least one lens with an augmented-reality overlay. This display is activated when the glasses are worn oriented towards a piece of dangerous machinery such as a lathe or a chainsaw.

The display will then show a number of close, but randomly distributed spots (say 10) on the surface of the machine that must be simultaneously pressed in order to power it up.

By using all one’s fingers, and only whilst wearing the glasses, is it possible to see how to turn the equipment on.

The machine might actually have 15 sub-surface contact switches embedded in it and use a random set of ten each time, to ensure that operators don’t just learn the required finger pattern.

No-one without the right goggles on can operate the system in question and thus people are protected form injuring their eyes.

Car accidents often happen because drivers are perceptually overloaded by the complexities of the urban landscape. There are lots of distractors, especially at road junctions. Blaring the horn is usually pretty ineffective, due to the background hum and the nonspecific directionality of the horn note.

Today’s invention is a device to help drivers, especially novices, when driving at low to moderate speeds in town.

A coiled hose, like a chamelon’s tongue, is built into vehicles. When you press a button on the steering wheel, a blast of compressed air inflates and rolls out the tongue, 5m or so in front of your vehicle.

The tongue would have a fluorescent end whose movement would be sensed by the peripheral vision of other drivers, more effectively alerting them to your imminent arrival. A light spring inside allows the device to roll up again rapidly.

If the tongue were to make contact with pedestrians or vehicles, it would be soft enough to do absolutely no damage.