Category: Whimsical inventions

Today’s invention is a way to provide almost any old bicycle with two-wheel drive.

Both the front and rear wheel would be fitted with a drive sprocket on the end of each axle and the ordinary chain removed.

A couple of chainsaws would be clamped to the frame and forks as shown, so that the above sprockets engaged with the distal wheel on each saw.

Throttle cables would run from both machines to the handlerbars, where the rider could learn to maintain some control as the bike traversed even slippery and uneven terrain.

Today’s invention is a wedding ring that fits securely behind the knuckle.

This is held irremovably in place by a small combination lock, as shown.

Only the wearer’s spouse knows the combination.

Who said romance was dead?

One reason that people cite for disliking bicycle and motorcycle helmets is that they wreck one’s hairdo.

It seems a small price to pay to keep your cranium intact but today’s invention attempts to reduce this disincentive by preserving the shape of one’s hair.

A composite outer shell would contain a layer of impact-absorbing foam, as usual. This layer would have radial holes in it. In each hole, a stiff, round-ended rubberised prong would be free to slide.

Depressurising the rear face of the foam, using a small bladder, would cause all the prongs to withdraw. The helmet could be donned and the foam repressurised.

This would cause the huge number of prongs to move radially inwards, making contact with the wearer’s scalp but without disturbing their coiffure.

The prongs would all lock in position, providing improved fit and thus excellent impact force distribution in the event of an accident.

To remove the helmet, depressurise the foam once more.

I read today that Google can use the regional preferences of other people in your area to respond to your search input with locally tailored results.

This allows autocompletion, based on a single character, which is characteristic of the country you are in. That is a little spooky, but it also offers the prospect of today’s invention.

If you happen to be unsure of where you are in the world (perhaps having been kidnapped or hijacked), you can simply type in an alphabet and arrive at a reasonably good estimate of your national-level domain (among 178 or so).

This would be done by activating a very simple app on your phone which would ignore your personal search history and output the name of state in which you found yourself.

Given that search companies increasingly record people’s GPS location and correlate that with search history, this autocomplete technique could be used for even finer-grained determination of where you are.

Everybody is keen to avoid skin cancer but the beaches are still full of people attempting to get some kind of low-level sun tan.

Rather than insist that everyone wears an all-over bodysuit including a rubber mask (fashionable in China) today’s invention is a beach umbrella that gives its user a controllable exposure to the sun.

Alternate segments of the umbrella are free to rotate as a set and thus allow sunlight through in the form of flashes (2 sets are shown, but several might be necessary for an even illumination).

The segments would be driven by a motor in the handle.

Enter one’s sun lotion factor, latitude and the time you want to spend in the sun and the umbrella would spin at the correct rate to enable only a light tan.

On the spot fines are deeply annoying. Especially for traffic offences. Especially if you don’t have any form of payment available.

Today’s invention is a pump/flowmeter unit carried by traffic police. This could be used, with the driver’s grudging agreement, to safely and rapidly extract a fine in the form of fuel from a vehicle which had been pulled over for some offence.

This would be taken back to the station, checked that it didn’t contain any illicit or explosive additives and used to power cop cars.

Given the price of fuel, this approach could accommodate some pretty serious roadgoing transgressions.

I’m told that housebreakers are happy when the snow falls, because they can detect, using footprints, any egress from a property which hasn’t yet been followed by the return of the homeowner.

Today’s invention is a security enhancement for anyone lucky enough to be away from home during the winter.

It consists of a wheel and handle device with shoe soles attached.

When you walk to your car, you run the wheel alongside your outgoing tracks to give the impression of another set -of incoming ones.

The magma-filled channels within a volcano’s caldera can be vast. Today’s invention is a submarine that is capable of travelling within such a flow of magma (and making detailed pressure and temperature measurements).

This might be useful for vulcanologists or just adventure sports enthusiasts. In reality, it’s much more likely to be an unmanned drone.

To withstand the sub-surface temperature and pressure, such a machine would need to have the structure of a heavily-insulated, spherical vacuum flask, made of carbon steel.

Even with an evacuated layer and other insulation, the molten rock temperature of say 1500 celsius would allow only short-duration ‘dives’ until the interior temperature rose to dangerous levels.

Such voyages would have to take into account significant buoyancy and viscous forces, and could thus be propelled by a large, slow-revving screw mechanism.

I really dislike travelling when I can’t see where I’m going.

Today’s invention addresses this issue for train customers.

The carriages run on a track which is deliberately curved. This would make journeys longer by a factor of Pi/2 and allow only slower moving trains, but the attraction of facing forward is not to be underestimated.

In addition, seats would automatically swivel so that passengers would always be facing forward (as they look ahead out the windows along lines like the red, dotted one shown).