Category: Whimsical inventions

I hate umbrellas. As well as being really hard to deal with in windy weather and threatening eye injuries to everyone in range, they really are a burden to cart about and so, usually, they are in the wrong place when it starts to rain.

Today’s invention is a new way to stay dry.

Don’t just ignore those guys selling Big Issue magazine (because you don’t want to read that politically active stuff and you know they drive home in a Merc each day). When it begins to rain, seek them out. That’s because in future they will sell you a low-cost poncho.

Each of these will be preprepared on days threatening rain by stapling sheets of the newsprint together to make a poncho shape -including hood). Each poncho would get a quick spray of cheap, environmentally friendly, waterproofing agent. They could cut costs even further by using yesterday’s old newspapers -or, better still, use those dreadful free copies of ‘Metro’ that litter stations everywhere.

Naturally, the sheets of newspaper would be joined in such a way that the text could still be read by the wearer when eg sitting, dripping, on a train.

When the weather dries out, you can then ditch the cape in a bin.

Carrier pigeons used to be used as one pretty effective means of long distance communication. One of the problems is that they are really capable only of flying back to a home roost from which they have been displaced. It’s thought they achieve this feat of navigation mostly by using magnetic crystals within their brains as a form of compass.

Today’s invention is a revival of the carrier pigeon messaging service, but with greater control over the outward direction of travel. This approach is based on reprogramming the navigation crystals, by exposing them to a strong magnetic field at some angle to that of the Earth’s, and then taking the poor creatures to an unfamiliar location. They will then fly off in the direction chosen for them, whilst thinking they are heading home.

One possible use for this idea is to use the birds to supply messages to some country in which other forms of communication are heavily censored or jammed.

Amazingly, it turns out that elephants can identify different herds miles away by using their feet to sense their neighbours’ characteristic, low frequency rumblings. These sounds are transmitted through the earth as ‘infrasound’ waves, which are only mildly attentuated in transit and which are too low for humans to hear.

Although these noises aren’t experienced by being heard, people do react to infrasound. It tends to create a strong feeling of fearfulness and awe -often associated with apparently ghostly phenomena.

Today’s invention is to use this psychological reaction to encourage motorists to decrease their speed.

Sections of roadway identified as the approaches to accident blackspots could be coated with textured paint (of very low spatial frequency) so that car tyres rolling along would gradually begin to generate infrasound waves and scare drivers enough to make them slow down.

I frequently give talks on a variety of subjects (including entrepreneurship, creativity, robotic vision…) It always takes an extra effort to coordinate some images with the material I’m trying to put across via Powerpoint presentations. What is sometimes lacking, though, is an element of extra spontaneity.

Today’s invention is a tool to make talks more attention-grabbing and possibly memorable.

As the presenter speaks, his words are analysed by a computer undertaking rapid speech-to-text analysis. It then performs a realtime image search and displays on the screen one image from, say, the first page of results. With suitable filtering in operation, the scope for embarrassment would be limited and the process might even result in some interesting feedback -if the presenter were to watch the images and comment on them too.

For many talks, it wouldn’t matter if the translation wasn’t that accurate or the recognition rate was low -just as long as images appeared broadly in synch with the main words. This might have the added benefit that speakers would be encouraged to enunciate more clearly (try Googling ‘eh’ and ‘um’).

Finally, this technique also represents a way to add some extra interest to radio broadcasts -it’s a kind of pictorial stream of consciousness rather like the one which visual thinkers naturally adopt.

Ants are remarkable creatures in that they exhibit certain cooperative behaviours which ’emerge,’ based on the interactions of some very simple internal rules. Some can, for example, count the numbers of steps they take, in each direction on some irregular route, in order to compute the distance and bearing of the most direct path home.

Certain species of ant, it seems, are able to measure themselves against the size of holes in the path of an army and pick appropriately-sized individuals who can then use their legs to plug the potholes.

This behaviour might actually be exploited commercially.

If you have a natural product, as the sponge fishing industry does, it’s often quite hard to gauge the quality objectively (certainly, doing this by imaging techniques is fraught with problems). Given the prices which individual sponges fetch ( >$30 each) , this is a significant issue.

Today’s invention is a pore size measurement technique. Allow an army of ants of the pore-filling variety to march across the surfaces of the product, leaving those ants with legspans equal to pore sizes in the (sponges’) surfaces. These creatures can then be dislodged and measured (either individually or by a statistical analyisis of post mortem leg length.)

I was astonished recently, when browsing the content of a weekend woodcarver’s manual, to discover how many different woods there are which are suitable for making everything from furniture to musical instruments.

The only trouble with wood as a material is that it comes in a wide range of natural colours from light brown to dark brown.

Today’s invention is to supply growing trees with a constant flow of coloured vegetable dye. This would be taken up through the xylem (in the same ways as natural brownish dyes are) and gradually perfuse the entire inner structure of the wood. After logging, the timber which emerges from a given tree would all be of a uniform shade (and more colourful than nature’s basic palette).

It might even be possible to introduce different colours to different regions of the growing tree and thus create shading and mixing effects.

This would save significantly on subsequent painting bills and introduce a more modern, colourful perspective to the design of wood products.

I’m a devotee of black coffee. I find that Sainsbury’s Continental is the best buy, but it takes about four tablespoonsful per cup to achieve the state of zen-like heightened awareness which allows me to stay awake in meetings.

My problem is that’s it’s very easy to keep drinking the old trimethylxanthine all day: probably not good for various bodily systems, or one’s ‘sleep hygiene’ (to say nothing of the effect on the wallet). Drink enough coffee and your pupils eventually dilate significantly -but exactly how much is enough?

The amount of caffeine per cup varies a lot from source to source. Counting cups isn’t very reliable. Today’s invention is therefore a personal caffeination monitor.

Each paper cup would have attached to the inside, at a uniform height, a small reflective sticker on the surface of which would be imprinted a grid of dots. As the drinker holds the cup to his/her mouth, the reflection of one eye can be seen on this surface and the width of the pupil measured in dots.

This process would be repeated (if necessary on several different cups) these data providing a sign that it’s probably time to have some water and a nice lie down in a dark room.

Even the cleanest public washroom is used by people who fail to wash their hands….it’s a fact that occurs to me when I’m just about to push the main door open as I leave. Not much point having disinfected my own hands if I’m then going to make contact with the skin fauna of 1000 insanitary males -let’s not even mention the peanuts-on-the-bar-story.

You could always have an automatic body-sensing, proximity-detecting sliding door but that is apparently not acceptable for public toilets (to say nothing of the cost associated with installing all this kit or the effects of halfwits playing chicken with it).

So, today’s invention is a way to use public toilets without getting an infection. The solution is to have a heavy conventional slamming door on the mensroom, but only to house lavatories and urinals in there. Have all the washhandbasins in an antechamber –with no external door. Then, even if you get covered in bugs from contact with the throneroom door itself, you get to sluice down properly afterwards.

The huge numbers of people who don’t wash can continue on their merry way to hepatitis, as usual.