#1585: Harnessafe

Young children are, it seems, placing themselves at risk in vehicles by undoing their safety harness buckles.

Numerous patents have been awarded for various fancy devices to screen young fingers from seatbelt release catches.

Today’s invention is simply to reuse the standard ‘childsafe’ medicine container design in this application. Access to the buckle release is limited to adults who can remove the cap, reach a finger inside and press the release button.

Although this would hinder to some extent the already tiresome process of loading children into a car, it’s also a cheap way to prevent serious accidents and thus worth considering.

#1584: BowlBlaster

It turns out that spinach is the hardest thing to remove from plates in a dishwasher.

It may be that such residues are washed off and then somehow stuck back on in a secondary wash phase -no-one seems to know.

Today’s invention is a new form of dishwasher. Rather than dump dishes etc inside and sluice everything about, plates and cups would each be firmly located in separate compartments in a known orientation. Then, a small water nozzle would pass from item to item blasting each with a very high pressure jet.

A camera attached to the nozzle would compare each item against a stored image of it when it was pristine. If differences were detected, the jet would be sent back until each was spotless.

Given that water jets can cut steel, there is no way that some surface vegetation or coffee grounds are going to remain in place. This might actually allow less water to be used than the conventional random splash approach.

#1583: SocialShelf

I’m a bit annoyed by the multi-billion dollar greetings card industry which pumps out expensive pap-verse, based on chopped-down trees.

So anyone can send an e-card and that’s good, if lacking in one essential element of such cards. You can’t easily create a mantelpiece display of them.

Today’s invention is an updated version of the greetings card display. It consists of a number of different-sized electronic picture frames joined together and placed on one’s shelf or mantelpiece at some celebratory time.

As people send you e-cards, for eg your birthday, these appear in the frames…perhaps slowly cycling from frame to frame; perhaps issuing recorded messages from the senders.

The effect is to raise spirits of the recipient more than the individual cards would and also to display their social standing as someone with lots of friends.

#1582: WindWings

Wind farms are springing up everywhere. Each turbine requires that three huge blades are transported on large trucks, which frequently causes jams and sometimes accidents.

Today’s invention is therefore a reusable kit of components which temporarily transforms a large turbine’s blades into a glider.

There would be a bolt-on tail section and a cockpit/undercarriage module, linking the three blades. Control wires would be fed down the hollow shaft of each blade.

Each glider would be launched using a towline and flown to the windfarm location. At that point, the blades would be bolted to the turbine dynamo and the aircraft components conveniently shipped back to the blade factory by road.

#1581: Sprayawake

According to a recent report, many young people don’t wake when a traditional fire alarm sounds at night.

That’s a very serious problem which today’s invention seeks to address.

It takes the form of a conventional smoke alarm which is secured to the ceiling above each young person’s pillow. This device also accommodates a reservoir which can be filled with tap water (say 3 litres).

When the alarm is triggered, the tap water is released, spraying the pillow area with a stream of water. Very few children would sleep through both the aural alarm and the soaking.

Whilst this may be a problem for houses where false alarms are frequent, it’s much better to soak the bed once or twice than to leave open the prospect that a child will be harmed.

#1580: ShadeSheath

When opening those vertical blinds which can admit light by sliding to one side or twisting in place, two problems occur.

The first is that the cords for the two functions tangle. Yuk.
The second is that no-one can tell which to pull on to achieve the option they want.

Today’s invention is therefore a clip-on sheath for the cords, one for each pair. These keep all the cords from getting knotted and still allow free movement by pulling them. Each sheath carries a clear diagram indicating which set does which.

The two sheaths might even clip together to keep the whole package as visually unintrusive as possible.

#1579: Moovon

Customer service. Sometimes this happens as a result of a real desire to please and sometimes just as a result of competitor pressure.

Having just had the old ‘I’m afraid not’ response to a reasonable request to buy something slightly non-standard, today’s invention is a website for crowd-sourcing, for each company, a list of most-direct competitors. These might be ranked by customer ratings, or whatever, with only say the top three competitors appearing.

Consumers would then know who to talk to next and companies would know they knew.

#1578: FallFin

When you make a parachute jump, the impact as you hit the ground is similar to that experienced when jumping off a 12 foot wall (who would be crazy enough to do that?)

You are supposed to do a parachute landing fall, but even so, many professional jumpers still get hurt on landing (especially when the terrain is rough and there is a crosswind).

Today’s invention is a device to help cushion the impact. It consists of a springy foam keel or blade in the shape of a wishbone. Before landing, the user would slot his feet into the footrests, lock his bent knees into the blade sides and hold onto the two handles.

This helps ensures the correct landing position is adopted and the blade absorbs a huge amount of impact energy when the ground suddenly rushes up.

If the blade is not broken, it could even have a small wheel fitted to allow eg soldiers to transport a significant weight when the wishbone becomes reused as a form of wheelbarrow.

#1577: TurnTorque

I’ve always been a bit underwhelmed by the way in which vehicles steer. There is such a lot of mechanical complexity and tyre scrubbing on tarmac which seems inelegant.

Today’s invention is a change of direction in changing direction.

A vehicle would have all four wheels fixed in the forward direction. To turn, the rear pair would be subject to a sharp accelerative torque, causing the vehicle to ‘pull a wheelie’. This would only need to raise the front wheels off the ground by a few mm.

Whilst the front two were airborne, one of the rear wheels would have a small extra torque applied, rotating the body of the vehicle so as to point in a new direction when the front wheels descended.

All of this would be under computer control for safety and for eg parking, the process could be repeated in reverse; applying the torque first to the front pair of wheels.

#1576: HatchTop

Lots of open-top sportscars used to have a tonneau: a glorified tarpaulin which covered the cockpit except for a gap through which the driver’s head and shoulders would protrude.

Today’s invention is an updated tonneau in which the normal hard roof of a car can be automatically raised or lowered on pillars as shown. The windows raise or lower as normal, except that their upper edges are connected to the roof.

When driving with the roof down, a large axially-split sunroof is opened like a pair of hatches, allowing either the driver or the driver and passenger to have their heads in the airflow.