Category: Whimsical inventions

Einstein once said that an hour talking to a pretty girl seemed to pass more quickly than usual. Time feels different depending on one’s level of attention/commitment.

Today’s invention is a computer system clock which knows, from one’s calendar and the applications in use, the kind of activities being undertaken at any point throughout the day.

It also has a record, made earlier by the user, of how boring certain types of activity are for that individual.

The clock then indicates subjective time -so that lunctime seems over in ten minutes and that 20-minute PowerPoint presentation by your boss seems to take an hour.

The last thing the US needs is more handguns, but their manufacture is a big industry which employs thousands of people.

Today’s invention is a novelty aftermarket handgun grip for proud residents of elongate states -such as California and Florida.

The grips would be manufactured to resemble the distinctive shapes of the states themselves on a map.

Given that the lifetime of current storage media is less than 100 years and the possibility of planetary devastation is non-zero (by asteroid impact, nuclear war, global warming, creationism, etc), today’s invention is a way to perform an ongoing off-site backup for all our digital information.

I envisage mooring a transmitter/receiver at the Earth’s L2 Lagrangian point (reasonably well protected from earth-centric disasters and it makes the geometry simple for a long, long time).

I’d also have a small reflector craft orbit the Sun (way outside Earth’s orbit).

We beam all our important information via radio to a receiving dish at L2 which resends it to the reflector craft and back to L2 in a continuous loop (pausing only when the Sun gets in the way).

Electromagnetic signals in vacuo are not attenuated (if you avoid solar flares and pulsars and ignore the inverse-square law effects) so placing all our data in space transit is a way to ensure that almost no bits are lost. 1bit for say 10 wavelengths would eventually allow an enormous amount of knowledge to be accommodated by this virtual tape loop.

It’s always been suspected by research students and now it’s been proven correct. We judge the value, or weightiness, of a book by its physical mass.

Today’s invention is to apply this to all documents which must be taken seriously. The prime example is the card handed to witnesses in court from which to read whatever oath they have chosen (this is currently a bit of laminated paper, if you are lucky).

I would have such oaths printed on a steel plate and make witnesses hold them aloft whilst swearing to tell the truth -thus discouraging perjury.

Today’s invention is a simple distraction from the normal irritations of kitchen life.

It comprises a stainless steel kitchen sink, the base of which has carefully flattened facets, just like those in the drums of a Jamaican steel band.

Water from the tap can be directed, using a small hose, onto different areas of the sink, and a tune played. The timbre of the notes can be varied by altering the water flowrate.

Amazingly, Netflix are now providing data about exactly which regions of the US rent which movies (they have almost street by street resolution and I’m sure other such rental companies have similar information).

There are many homefinding apps, but today’s invention is to exploit the Netflix type data sets from the point of view of deciding which neighbourhood to move to.

I’m convinced that a householdl’s preferences for films paints an accurate picture of their personality. Use of these movie data will allow people to move somewhere where the neighbours will have similar values and viewpoints to themselves (and help people avoid living next to Tarantino fans).

When you talk to someone first on the phone, you automatically form a mental picture of what they look like.

Today’s invention is a simple game which allows both parties in such a exchange to choose, from a large number of faces fed to the screen,
a) which one they deem most like their current partner in conversation
b) which one they deem most like themselves.

The ‘winner’ would be the person who matched his a) to his opposite number’s b).

This is a potential ice-breaker which would not require anyone to upload any photos (but which might also enable that later).

For trainee military types, it’s often difficult to know who one is supposed to salute. If you make the wrong choice, you get in trouble (and with low-visibility rank markers now commonplace, as well as joint operations between different services of different countries, the task is becoming harder).

Today’s invention is a bluetooth button which clips to one’s epaulette (or brassard or gorget, or whatever).

When you approach a similarly equipped soldier or sailor or airman who is of higher rank, your button buzzes your right shoulder -prompting you to salute his/her uniform (and helping you avoid peeling another 1000 potatoes).

Today’s invention is a table in the form of a sheet of glass. This is intended to simulate the surface of a pond.

The table legs are made of simulated reeds (made of metal wires or tubes) which are bent at the glass surface to mimic faithfully the effect of refractive index change.

(Not shown is a pair of model ducks, attached to opposite sides of the glass sheet to give the impression of reflection in the surface water).

Today’s invention is a way to help launch rockets.

Instead of ‘reusable’ solid rocket boosters, why not attach an array of fighter jets to the outside of any space-born vehicle? These would provide many of the benefits of normal boosters, avoid any o-ring-related difficulties and operate using proven technology.

You would need about 30 conventional planes to match the Shuttle boosters’ thrust, so they would have to be arrayed carefully on an external frame and coordinated electronically.

At a determined speed (still within Earth’s atmosphere), the jets would decouple themselves and fly back to base. These machines could be remotely piloted, but more likely be flown by astronauts-in-training who would provide extra data about launch related physiology.