Category: Whimsical inventions

I remember reading, in one of Orwell’s books I think, about how buskers make more money if they maintain a small number of coins in the hat on the ground.

This seems to cue people to follow suit and make a donation (online donation buttons might therefore be equipped with a numerical feed from the target paypal account, indicating how much had been given by the last donor).

Today’s invention takes this to a new level by creating public waste bins which have some prominent items of rubbish manufactured into them and rendered highly visible through the basket mesh.

I’d suggest luminescent orange Lucozade bottles and Subway sandwich wrappers since these are a) prominent and b) everywhere underfoot.

Urban dwellers are increasingly under pressure to live in smaller spaces. Beds take up a huge amount of room.

Today’s invention is a bed which consists of a team of robotic trolleys.

You position the padded bedbots under your body and they provide all the necessary comfort and support. When you roll over, or change position, these little devices know enough about the geometry and dynamics of such movements that they can anticipate exactly were to relocate in order to provide an effectively continuous sleeping surface.

When you get up, the machines automatically form a neat, space-saving stack in the corner.

I remember watching Jonathan Miller on TV, years ago, talking about how his consciousness gradually came to include the rear corner of his car, so that he could reverse park more effectively.

It seems that we now have experimental evidence that when using tools our minds adopt them as temporary bodyparts.

In order to help technicians, especially those with demanding dexterity requirements (such as astronauts on spacewalks) today’s invention is flesh coloured tools.

The idea is that the brain will adopt these items more rapidly and completely if the visual system sees them peripherally as not physically separate.

There would be a range of spray-on skin shades (and masking patches), allowing an individual to colour their entire toolbox.

I use a variety of swiveling office chairs, which must each rotate by a few hundred*Pi radians each day.

In order to make some use of this spinning, today’s invention is a coffee bean grinder which can be fitted to any such seat.

It consists of an annular can which fits over the central axis of the base (by detaching the seat) and which has a hatch into which beans may be poured. At the bottom of the can, another hatch with a chute allows the ground coffee to be tapped into one’s cafetiere.

The seat is equipped with a fixed arm on the end of which is a roller. This wheel penetrates the annular lid of the bean can and, as the seat rotates relative to the base, so the roller grinds the beans.

This makes a graunching noise, but fills the office with a lovely aroma. A more advanced version would allow hot water to be added to an integrated cafetiere.

When I see people in banks with taped bundles of notes I wonder if they’d miss one or two.

Today’s invention is a way to ensure that there is the correct number of notes in such a bank-fresh wad.

Each of the notes would be printed with smoothly sequential images of a face in motion (I rather like the idea of asking the queen to say “These are all tenners”).

Since we are hyper-sensitive to facial movements, the bundle of notes could be riffed, like a child’s flick-book, and any discrepancies would indicate an attempt at short-changing.

People increasingly have mobile phone ringtones that drive me just a little nuts, especially when they take an extra second or two to answer when sitting next to me on the train.

Today’s invention represents a tiny particle of revenge, as well as a way for those of us who hate phones to express our (introverted) personalities.

It is a sound effect which fires up when one’s laptop is opened (or closed). This would create a kind of aural ecosystem in a big office environment…a bit like the dawn chorus, signifying that everyone’s work day had begun.

It might take the form of a recording of one’s child giggling, or a creaking castle door or birdsong or whatever. In any case, a market would be created something like that for ringtones. One’s machine might even select the opening soundtrack based on the time of day (or the gps-determined location).

Come to think of it, context-based based ringtones, may be a better idea…

I read recently about an absurd machine which recycles office paper into toilet rolls; very inefficiently.

Today’s invention is an improvement on that slightly crazy theme. A4 sheets are taken into the washroom by an individual and are there shredded very finely; with strips << 1 mm wide, forming a suitably soft, and flushable, matted fuzz.

The shredding is achieved by placing one’s sheets in a hopper on the back face of the door and levering it into the closed position. Only a few sheets would be needed each time to create a usable volume of mat (which will be highly unlikely ever to be pieced together again).

Today’s invention is a new form of toaster.

This consists of a section of a metal sphere which is heated on the inside and to the outside of which is applied a piece of bread. This is then clamped in place by an external spherical shell which is also heated.

The result is a piece of toast which is a section of a sphere. Buttered on the concave side, if dropped, it will naturally fall on the floor butter side up -like an inverted parachute (its centre of pressure being above its centre of mass).

If it doesn’t have time to right itself in flight, it will land corners-down and these can be snipped off and discarded -without sacrificing all the precious slice.

Given that F1 race cars can generate greater aerodynamic downforce at 200kph than their own weight, today’s invention is a Mobius strip-shaped racetrack.

It would be easy enough to create a track and support it on pillars, so that cars could pass each other side by side or belly-to-belly. See this to help visualise the event.

The start would have to be on a conventional, right-way-up section and the radii would have to be big enough everywhere to avoid braking to speeds less than 200kph (look out for that first corner).

Perhaps it’s therefore more a hybrid Nascar/F1 opportunity.