#1248: BioTick

Some cells divide in correspondence with a circadian rhythm.

Today’s invention is a wristwatch which makes use of this fact. A transparent duct containing suitable cell food substrate on the back face is formed into a spiral. This is lit from beneath to enable photosynthesis in eg cyanobacteria.

A small number of bacterial cells are located at the centre of the spiral. As the bacteria divide throughout the day, and feed on the substrate, they expand along the spiral in a deterministic way, passing gradations marked on the duct wall which indicate the time. The marks could even be spaced linearly by varying locally the width of the spiral track.

The spiral becomes filled over a 24 hour period…at which point, a small defined area of the bug population is scraped into the start section of a fresh spiral and the rest (carefully) discarded.

#1247: BinaryBinding

Today’s invention is stereo books, for secure reading.

A bookmark, shown in grey, can be cut to comfortably fit the brow of a user. This is placed between two pages (as shown).

Opposite pages each carry one of a stereo pair of images. The bookmark enables these images to be more easily ‘fused’ by the user so as to generate a 3-D image.

The book could be full of such images. It might also be used as a simple way to allow secure reading of confidential text eg on a plane or train, since each page could be composed of an illegible set of letter components.

#1246: Fruitstand

I’ve ranted occasionally about the stickers that seem to get attached to many forms of fruit. Today’s invention turns this problem into an advantage.

A new form of fruit-identifying label would be a thicker-than-normal ring. This would be sticky on one side, as usual, but the added depth and hole in the middle would allow the part-eaten fruit to be set down on a flat surface. This would avoid the problem of having an apple or pear roll over and collect eg dust, crumbs etc.

The sticker would still carry the inevitable advertising, of course.

If you wanted to encourage the consumption of eg five items of fruit a day, these rings could each have a part-message printed on them so that assembling five of these into a cylinder would spell out some additional message or web address on the side.

#1245: Heavyhitter

I know almost nothing about the sport of Baseball (apart from the fact that it seems a lot more engaging than cricket or golf).

Undaunted by ignorance, today’s invention is an adaptation to the baseball bat.

This consists of several microphones embedded in the bat surface. When they sense that a ball is nearing for a hit, they cause a weight to be driven axially within the body so that the impact point becomes the centre of percussion. (The weight movement might be effected by eg compressed air).

This allows every impact to occur on a new, specially engineered ‘sweet-spot’.

Even if it doesn’t conform to the rules of competition, it might be useful to novice players, removing the jarring and pain caused by hitting the ball with the wrong part of the bat in training.

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#1244: Spacears

In space, no-one can hear you scream…so today’s invention is 3-D hearing for spacewalkers.

The number of people who work in the near vacuum of space is set to increase. These people hear only radio transmissions, the sounds of their suits and their own physiology.

First, equip each spacewalker’s helmet with stereo headphones. All astronauts, and anything movable, would be fitted with a small transmitter sending out a chirp of radio every second or so. These transmissions would be unique to the source person or object.

A processor aboard the Astro’s helmet would receive these and translate them into characteristic, realistic noises in stereo (an approach from the seven o’clock position by a friend or a passing robot arm could be perceived in advance, thus boosting safety and general ‘situation awareness’.

Toolboxes drifting off would soon be detected by their simulated wooshing into the distance as well as an occasional plaintive cry of ‘help’.

The headphones would also drown out one’s stomach rumblings when it’s time for that dehydrated stew, again.

#1243: BaggageBand

I was recently intrigued by a movie of someone breaking into a locked, zippered suitcase with only a ballpoint pen.

There are numerous ways in which baggage could be made to resist such (casual) attack. Today’s invention is one such approach.

A case would be made of tough, flexible plastic (one or both sides could be made transparent, to lessen the need for a full search before eg boarding a plane).

The top half is pushed down on top of the bottom section until the chamfered lugs (I love that engineering talk) engage with the holes in the lower part, as shown.

Then, a steel belt (like a carpenter’s tape measure) is threaded through the lugs and secured by a padlock (not shown).

This is pretty inexpensive and makes it almost impossible for anyone to access the contents quickly and without using tools to inflict serious damage.

#1242: StepStore

Today’s invention is a way to improve the use of storage space in both homes and offices.

Shown in filing cabinet form, but adaptable to other types of furniture, it consists of drawers which are deep enough to provide access to other drawers which extend almost to ceiling height.

Each drawer is fitted with an internal step enabling a kind of staircase and the whole cabinet is bolted to the wall to limit any tendency to toppling.

#1241: iPath

Today’s invention is a toy which works with one’s iPad (remember when everyone thought that was a stupid name?)

The toy is a bristlebot variant which carries an optical switch pointed down at the screen.

As the bot buzzes about and lands on a dark region, it presses the screen causing regions to change their lightness/darkness. If the screen is locally light, the bot buzzes off somewhere else. Thus, the whole thing behaves according to nonlinear feedback (with some visual noise added).

Should be fun to set going in a browser window (with the screen adjusted to high contrast).

#1240: Optomisation

I’ve been reading about how to save a fortune by changing my printer font so as to minimise ink usage.

In this spirit, today’s invention is a printer which presents a small optometrist’s chart on a touch screen control pad.

The user selects the line which contains the smallest readable characters, whilst standing over the machine, and the printer reformats all the pages in the current document to produce printed text which occupies the least space (saving on ink and paper).

For uberzealots, I’d also propose that the printed documents use a hybrid font (in which eg the ‘a’ is the one which uses the least ink from among all fonts, etc.) I suspect this might be a bit like an uneven version of Arial.