Home Archive by category "Possible inventions" (Page 77)

Category: Possible inventions

#1288: N-shooter

Again, the boyish obsession with firearms, I’m afraid…

Today’s invention is a cylinder for a revolver with a massively increased capacity.

This would be fitted to any revolver of the right calibre by ‘breaking’ the weapon as usual and replacing the existing cylinder with the one shown in the diagram.

This would be driven from chamber to chamber using the cocking mechanism and a ratchet formed on the inside surface of the new supersized cylinder (exactly the same type of drive as is used on conventional revolvers).

#1286: Contourkeys

Rather than cart around a collection of Yale keys, today’s invention allows a user to carry only the outer profile of each key,

These can be made of very stiff metal so that twisting within the lock can be sustained repeatedly without breakage.

The key outlines might also be nested, so that the whole ‘keyring’ can be conveniently stored flat in a wallet, for example.

This might take the form of a metal business card with laser-cut profiles in it -each of which which could bend outwards independently to allow door opening.

#1285: Verturbine

Vertical wind turbines suffer from the problem that their blades cause a huge amount of drag when rotating around into the wind. Today’s invention aims to overcome that.

A (blue) platform carries a fin and is free to rotate into the wind like a weathercock. On this platform stands a vertical cylinder with a semicylindrical blade attached via a springloaded hinge (shown in red).

The wind, blowing from the bottom half of the diagram, rotates the cylinder anticlockwise about its axis on the platform (A). Rollers attached to the platform then close the blade, removing its drag component and compressing the sprung hinge (B).

Inertia carries the cylinder around until the blade is released for another cycle (C). More blades of course would be better.

#1283: Camouflag

Military vehicles often need to carry various electronic self-identification technologies on board to ensure that they are not accidentally attacked by their own side’s missiles.

Today’s invention is a simpler, less costly version of this approach, applicable to every vehicle, in which a 2-D barcode (eg QR code) is carried on a pull-out, printed panel (as flags are traditionally used).

This ensures that optically guided missiles will not engage with friendly vehicles marked in this way and it also allows the code to be almost indistinguishable (to human eyes) from the background camouflage pattern applied to the vehicle in question.

This makes it hard for enemy spies to copy the code and use it to protect their own tanks (especially since a new code panel could be printed out daily).

#1280: FramePipe

Motorcycle exhausts are never really an attractive feature of any machine.

Today’s invention is to use the frame of a bike as a conduit for exhaust flow from the engine. This would work particularly well in those machines with large-section box frames (into which various filters might easily be fitted, without significantly increasing ‘back-pressure’ on the engine).

There would be an outlet from the frame, somewhere at the rear of the machine.

This would also lessen the weight of a bike (even if some local strengthening were required and a silencer attached to the exit).

#1279: Namemory

There is a real problem that people aren’t yet opting-in, in large enough numbers, to donate their organs after (brain)death.

Today’s invention is a web-based mechanism which makes it easy for a person to assert online that they’d like to donate in this way.

The website would also make it a very easy requirement for the recipient to change their name to include that of the donor. So Joe Smith who lives on after a donation by John Doe would be immediately and officially converted, in all official documentation and correspondence, to Joe [John, Doe] Smith.

In this way, a donor and his/her family could feel that their memory lived on and was fully appreciated by the recipient.

#1278: Ringseats

I read today that people sitting within five rows of an exit have a greatly improved chance of exiting a plane unscathed in an emergency.

Today’s invention is to equip new airliners with benchseats arranged in circular arcs around the doors of an airliner. This allows everyone to be sitting within only a few rows of an exit (it might be possible to sell sets in row five from an exit at lower prices than seats in rows closer to the door).

The seats would be colour-coordinated with the doors so that everyone would know which to exit by.

Some people would end up sitting facing backwards (but that too is safer, usually).

#1277: Airshield

Modern snipers can kill people who are up to two miles away. To do this, they use some very advanced calculations to adjust their aim according to the anticipated effects of wind, humidity, altitude etc.

These influences are so great that snipers may have to aim at a point 2m to one side of their actual target.

Today’s invention is a defence mechanism against such attacks. The blue force roll out a camouflaged line of sensors B, using eg a radio controlled robot vehicle. These lie on two parallel tracks, so that the passage overhead of the shock wave of a high-velocity bullet can be detected and its direction estimated.

This information is sent wirelessly to a line of air blowers A (faster than the bullet can travel). A few of these can issue an upwards jet of air in a random direction, from underneath the passing round.

This deflection can be more than enough to cause the shot to miss with very high probability; alerting the blue force to red’s position and undermining the sniper’s confidence.

#1274: AirPads

Given the enormous cost of buying soccer players and their hypersensitivity to injury, I’m surprised to find nothing like today’s invention in the patent databases (although there are 750,000 applications still waiting to be examined at USPTO, so it may already have been applied for).

Shin pads with automobile-like airbags which inflate explosively on impact.

It’s true that these would occasionally inflate when the ball was miskicked and they might cause opposing players’ legs to spring apart violently on impact, but since everyone would be wearing these, and the amplitude of inflation would be small, the protection would be shared.

Once one’s pads had fired, they would be quickly replaced from the sidelines with a new pair.

#1273: BackFire

One of the arguments for allowing people to keep handguns is that these are needed for home defence purposes. There are (usually) legal limits, however, to what a householder can do to defend themselves and their property.

One of the common indicators to a court of an appropriate defensive response to being attacked is when the self-defender can prove that they tried their best to get away and avoid physical violence.

Today’s invention is a low-velocity handgun round for home defence purposes. As well as a reduced charge, each such round contains a small accelerometer sealed inside. This will only allow a bullet to be fired if it has first been moving in a backwards direction for some prespecified interval.

Such bullets are therefore very difficult to use in any attack, so that anyone attempting to buy the ordinary sort can be identified as having some kind of offensive behaviour in mind (without limiting anyone’s legal rights to carry weapons).