Category: Whimsical inventions

If you are deluded enough as a national leader that you want to build nuclear submarines, rather than invest in friendship, then today’s invention is for you Generalissimo.

Every inch of the planet surface is now inspected minutely by satellites so that when a new naval vessel is being built, everyone knows about it.

Today’s invention is therefore a factory for building and launching submarines which is itself a submarine.

This would be a semi-automated production line, fitted inside a sub the size of an aircraft carrier (which would have to be built in a land-based dockyard, but disguised as a conventional ship).

This would navigate to random rendez-vous and be supplied with watertight containers of materials and parts dropped over the sides of ships.

In this way, a sequence of new submarines could be launched like torpedoes, wherever was tactically optimal.

Formula 1 racing is many things but one of the things it isn’t, despite its protestations, is in any way green.

For each of the races hundreds of tonnes of equipment and people are transported all over the globe by routes that no travelling salesman would think even close to minimal.

Today’s invention is twofold. Rather than trample across local religious festivals and traditions, as now, the schedule of races would be reorganised to allow them to occur in some sort of sensible, distance-minimising sequence around the globe.

This process would be served by a single large ship, especially configured to allow the various teams to undertake separate activities on board.

The vessel could be an adapted aircraft carrier, allowing the drivers to appear on deck using their own helicopters.

As well as enormous workshop facilities, there would also be a large, oval roadway attached to the runway and protruding out over the sea on both sides. This would allow cars to be tested en route (and provide an extra advertising opportunity).

The ship would allow each team a small number of container trucks to drive from docks to track, thus lessening the huge logistical issues of parking and accommodation.

Today’s invention is a pendant containing a screen (a little like a small iPod).

The pendant would be worn on a chain around the neck, so that it could move only within a limited, arc-shaped locus.

It would be worn on bare skin (in private) to start with so that a camera on the skin side would record a series of images of the user’s skin texture at a large number of stored locations (and orientations).

When later worn over clothing, the wearer’s natural movements would cause the pendant to revisit its former locations and seamlessly display patches of the skin beneath the clothes.

Today’s invention is buttonholes in the back of one’s tie -or more specifically the label at the back.

Why? Well the flapping tag on the narrow end would have a number of different buttonholes sewn along its length.

The tie would be put on and the narrow end fed through the loop in the back of the wide end as usual.

Then, one of the buttonholes on the label could be attached to one of the shirt buttons.

This would keep one’s tie in position (even if being pursued across fields by a malevolent cropsprayer) -but without the need for any ugly tiepins (or tucking it into one’s shirt).

So many things are now being gamified -in the sense of having ongoing performance ratings displayed publically.

Today’s invention applies this concept to anyone with the urge to wear a uniform.

Scouts, soldiers, police officers and royalty would be equipped with uniforms on the outside of which there would be the outlines of all the awards, badges and decorations they could be awarded.

A corporal would thus wear a single stripe attached within the outline of a sergeant’s three.

All personnel in an organisation would have the same complete set of stencilled markings in order to communicate the idea that even the lowliest member can gain all the available rank badges and bravery decorations.

According to recent research, the left sides of faces are more emotionally expressive (and therefore, it seems, more attractive).

This suggests today’s invention -a software tool which automatically creates an online avatar image by joining the reflected left half of one’s photo to the original left half.

Given that the most beautiful people tend to be the most symmetrical, in theory, two left cheeks should be more attractive than the usual pair -but I’m not really convinced by the neanderthal experiment indicated on the left 😉

It seems that scrunched-up paper is immensely strong (whilst also being very lightweight).

Today’s invention is a bicycle helmet based on this information.

On the left a two-part waste bin is used to hold scrunched paper only.

As the day progresses, the bin fills and before the ride home, the outer part is pressed into the paper so that a helmet is formed with a layer of impact-absorbing material.

Today’s invention is a new kind of chessboard, offering a new version of chess.

There would be no squares, so that pieces would move in a more generalised, analogue way. Each piece would be able to move in the same general pattern as in old-chess.

Knights for example could move to one of four zones each centred on the 10, 2, 4,or 8 o’clock positions. Attempted movements of any piece outside their permitted range would be signalled by the board itself as invalid.

Pieces would take each other if one landed within a certain radial distance of another.

This would heighten the tension between pieces trying to dominate territory and ‘fearing’ that they might themselves be taken.

It would interesting to program a simulation of this using eg Netlogo (programming pieces to advance on the opposite king, but avoiding hotspots on a continuous heatmap consisting of the areas under most threat by opponent pieces).

With some built-in memory, perhaps the pieces would develop an ability to act together in creating, say defensive strategies.