Category: Possible inventions

Fighter planes used to carry drop tanks…fuel-filled underwing cylinders which, once exhausted during a long-distance mission, would be jettisoned to allow greater manoeuvrability during an attack.

Now that aerial drones or UAVs are becoming commonplace, today’s invention represents a way for airforces to undertake their missions with greater flexibility -and without having to tie up massive aerial tankers which are themselves pretty vulnerable.

Each fuel tank, in additional to the internal ones, would be a UAV in its own right.

On reaching a target area or when under attack, a military jet would release the tanks which would adopt a randomised holding pattern in the sky until docked again with the original plane or with another emitting a recognised callsign.

This would allow the parent craft to be a much less vulnerable target and offer the chance for different planes to rendez-vous with fuel in an emergency.

Rhinoceros horn sells, as a constituent of traditional medicine on the black market, at up to $54,000 per kg. Poachers are gradually driving all the subspecies to extinction.

Many Rhino have their horns removed but this influences their natural mating behaviour and is difficult and costly to apply to even the small numbers of animals that remain.

Todays’ invention is an self-driving solar-electric vehicle which patrols rhino territory quietly and which emits the smell of an invading male rhino (ie has a pile of dung on board).

This will attract rhino and often cause them to attack. The vehicle is equipped with protection panels which are heavily painted with a bright coating which is both colourful and mildly poisonous if ingested. This contaminates the horns of the animals on impact (but since it’s dead keratin, it doesn’t get metabolised by them).

The coloration is visible to poachers, saving the lives of any creatures which are thus marked, since it’s hard to remove without mechanical damage, visible to a buyer.

By undermining confidence in the supply chain (including manually spraying any rhino that are encountered by eg tourist buses), poaching can be seriously disrupted.

The streets are full of people with cellphones pressed to their ears.

Their other hands are usually employed in covering their other ears, in order to avoid distraction by the background hum of traffic and chatter.

Today’s invention is a flexible, sound-insulating back for one’s cellphone.

In a noisy environment, this cup can be unclipped and placed over the non-listening ear whilst taking a call. The cup has a soft outer ridge which forms a good seal against the skin around one’s ear, when pressed into place, thus freeing-up one of the user’s hands.

The cups could be made in a skin tone to match the user’s own (or moulded into a quirky, Vulcan version).

Banking is not really an industry and certainly not one with much interest in innovation. Today’s invention, however, attempts to provide some extra security for those still insisting on using those dreadful, old paper cheques (or money orders/traveler’s cheques).

When someone wants to make a purchase, they pull out a chequebook-shaped, tamper-proof box. It contains some paper blanks and a small printer.

A keyboard allows entry of relevant data and there would be a screen to allow a signature (if an ink one was not required).

This system allows only the user to access the cheques, using their fingerprint and/or a passcode (but anyone stealing the device could not misuse the owner’s funds as they could with a current book of cheques).

All of this process would occur under the watchful eye of some seller (the accountholder could press a button on the device to have the bank send the seller a photo of the account holder -for additional confirmation of a large financial transaction).

Today’s invention is a form of Velcro in which the side with hooks and the side with loops are held apart by some extra long ‘hairs’ made of the same material -but longer.

These hairs act as springs so that the Velcro will mesh and join only when the two sides are forced together sufficiently strongly. The hairs are sparse and thin enough not to obstruct the normal hooking process when the faces get close enough.

The force required to join the strips can be preset by altering the length of the hairs.

This would help avoid the problem associated with the hooks side becoming attached to and removing clumps of eg wool from passing sweaters.

Today’s invention is based on the interesting finding that many birds have evolved to look downwards or sideways when in flight, rather than ahead. They are also sensitive to movement, rather than stable visual phenomena.

This may account for their odd tendency to collide with objects (including planes) despite their superb visual capabilities.

I therefore suggest that aircraft be equipped with a scanning searchlight, pointing ahead and downwards. This would flash the outline of a giant bird of prey on the ground or onto clouds in front of the plane.

Flocks of birds, looking downwards, would be startled by the effect and turn tail before a birdstrike on the aeroplane could occur.

Motor racing, especially Formula 1, is going to great lengths to make overtaking easier and avoid the usual high-speed processions which are hurting their TV ratings.

Today’s invention is to design all the cars around a similar rhombus-shaped plan, as shown.

This would reduce any sudden changes in flow cross section during the overtaking move, lessen the aerodynamic benefit of tailgating and thus greatly reduce the drag and buffeting when one car (yellow) attempts to pull out from behind to overtake another (red).

Today’s invention is a way for aircraft to communicate with the ground if their radios are jammed or otherwise interfered with.

Pipework would lead from the aircraft’s waste water system to each wingtip.

In a radio breakdown situation, an Air Marshall, for example could send a text to a receiver on the plane which would translate this into morse code.

The code would be interpreted by the waste water pump and generate bursts of fluid from each wingtip.

These might alternate, thus forming a pattern of water vapour tracks in the sky which could be read from the ground without eg a hijacker becoming aware of the communication (…LLRRRLLLLRLRLL…)