Category: Whimsical inventions

Today’s invention is based on a compelling visual illusion known as ‘Mirage‘ which consists of a couple of parabolic reflectors face to face, the upper one of which has a hole in it.

I imagine this being adapted as an extra road safety measure for those people who have to work in open manholes, protected from passing traffic only by a few flimsy poles and signs.

The workers would stand on a portable, shallow paraboloid reflector and temporarily fit another to the underside lip of the manhole. This would give the illusion that their hard hats were actually moving about above the road surface and cause drivers to give them a much wider berth.

This might be supplemented by a conical insert fitted in the manhole from above and which would be bonded to a cowcatcher device which would deflect any vehicles about to drive over the hole. This would be made in a transparent plastic (to enable the illusion to be seen). Any impacts on the sides of the catcher would transmit the load to the cylindrical rear face of the manhole ironwork.

The way food looks affects very much how it tastes. In the world of apples, individuals seem to have a strong preference for certain colours and textures.

Today’s invention is a domestic spray paint booth for repainting apples of one colour in a different shade/pattern. If you don’t fancy those Golden Delicious in their uniform yellow skins, drop one in the spray unit and it will emerge a moment later automatically coated in reddish blotches more redolent of a Braeburn.

The sprays (based on digestible food colourings) could of course be adapted to contain extra flavours (to encourage children) or take the form of trademarks for use in corporate events. With any luck, this might also stop apples having those annoying little sticky labels attached.

Gardens are generally so static, don’t you think?

Today’s invention is a solar-powered robotic cart, big enough to transport a small plantpot about on narrow profile wheels. This is directed by an on board light meter which tends to move the cart away from low light levels.

This allows a small army of plants to migrate slowly about a garden (even across the lawn) following the movement of the sun and avoiding shadows.

Remora or sucker fish usually attach themselves to the bodies of larger, seagoing creatures in tropical waters. They have also been known to cling to small boats.

Today’s invention involves massively scaling-up this behaviour.

Given that the fish are highly streamlined, the approach is to arrange that they attach themselves, in large numbers, to the hull of a ship travelling in warm seas. This would result in a potentially large improvement in the thrust-to-drag ratio for very large seagoing vessels (since the extra form drag caused by adding a layer of such fish to a big vessel is tiny and yet they do each provide some extra propulsion).

This source of extra drive could be powered simply by providing a stream of waste food particles via hoses hanging from the prow. It also has the advantage of reducing the many causes of marine fouling which coat the undersides of ships.

If necessary, the fish could be contained within wire cages attached to the hull, in order to stop them jumping ship and to protect them from predators.

I read in New Scientist that
…even a fleeting exposure to a smiling face makes people more likely to make risky (investment) decisions.

Today’s invention couples this with the view of Edwin Land (inventor of eg the Polaroid Camera) that he only ever had accountants on the board to quantify risks, not to decide about taking them.

It takes the form of modified boardroom portrait photographs. These would actually be digital images -each set in its own frame and with a number of different versions stored: from scowling to beaming.

A non-executive director would sense the mood of each board meeting and, if he or she deemed it unnecessarily risk-averse, the portraits would be surreptitiously modified to show slightly more smiling faces -and thus improve the willingness to take a punt.

(Although the possibility of competitive interference with these pictures exists, actually, I’d like to see the images controlled directly by the shareholders).

With all the talk about transcontinental bullet trains, I thought that the whole subject merited a more ambitious approach.

It’s quite difficult to accelerate a train using only the friction of drivewheels on a metal track…especially as reducing the weight of the rolling components is a good thing for fuel efficiency.

Today’s invention is therefore a railway on which a very long train runs which consists of a series of low profile, lightweight carriages (something like those trains which I’ve seen crossing Canada which take half a day to pass…except very much longer).

On top of them, a set of lightweight rails allows another layer of carriages to operate at increased groundspeed (a short train running on a train which is say, half the length of the track, will run at three times its normal speed).

This approach might be extended, given very low-cost rolling stock and in the absence of low bridges, to allow speed multiplication by higher factors.

For people who are being pursued on foot, eg air force pilots downed in enemy territory, today’s invention provides an additional tool for evading capture.

Each aircrew member would carry an extra pair of clip-on soles for his/her footwear.

When being chased, these would be attached quickly as shown and leave tracks indicating that they had gone in the opposite direction.

Christmas crackers are a significant part of the festive season, just like decorations and holly and all sorts of other stuff which is utterly inessential but somehow comforting for having been around long enough to be considered traditional. At least they provide a pretty harmless icebreaker at festive events: vying for plastic junk and wearing silly hats makes intrafamilial conflict marginally less likely.

Challenged by the IET magazine‘s Vitali Vitaliev, today’s invention is an updated version of the cracker…and of course it’s electronic.

Each table would have only a few cracker devices: basically a plastic tube with a female USB connection at both ends. Diners would bring their own usb memory sticks to the table and insert these in pairs into the cracker. Two guests at a time would then attempt to withdraw their thumbdrives.

Just as with real crackers, the winner would be the guest who supplied mostly nearly the optimal tension vs time profile (Pull too hard or too gently and you come second). This would be monitored by the cracker itself which would release the loser’s stick, generate a loud cracking noise (via eg a .wav file), a short pulse of light and display a message on a screen on the cracker’s side saying “Congratulations.” It would then equip the winner to read a displayed joke aloud and pass a prize url to his/her memory device…allowing a small prize to be claimed later online. It might even take a quick snap of the smiling victor.

Two, preloaded, compressed paper hats would also be spat onto the table each time, made perhaps from sliced paper mesh (as in expandable metal sheets).

Everyone could get to pull a cracker with everyone else and there would be much less cleaning up required of the resulting waste paper.

As if life weren’t complex enough, various cellphone makers are interested in providing people with dynamically changing keyboard layouts (so they can switch electronically between QWERTY and standard numberpad formats).

Well, why not go one better and provide complete user-flexibility, in the form of a keyboard in which the keys are free to slide on a grid -just like the elements of one of those tile puzzles?

This would need each key to be able to transmit information about its identity by connecting to a common underlying bus when pressed.

Generally, I’m against any form of subliminal advertising, but today’s invention applies this idea in a good cause.

A subset of several, big-name glossy magazines would be specially printed to contain a few, subtly-added extra pages.

These would carry stories designed to promote a healthier lifestyle and be reserved exclusively for use in medical waiting rooms.

Ideally, the venture would be funded by extra adverts for e.g. exercise machines and activity holidays. Being much more current than average waiting room reading material, these would receive preferential attention.