Invention Of The Day – Page 197 – Just another break-step productions sites site

#921: Swatstraps

Getting rid of flies is an increasingly technical business (I particularly dislike filling a room with insecticide vapour: that stuff can’t be good for people to inhale).

So today’s invention is a new form of fly swatter. This consists of a pistol grip handle at the front of which is tethered a pair of elastic straps.

These are gripped by the other hand and stretched taught. One strap is slightly shorter than the other, so that as the stretching hand is gradually withdrawn, this strap is released first.

Being made in a high visibility pattern, it encourages the fly to react and begin to jump out of its way. In doing so, it will fail to notice the arrival, milliseconds later, of the low-contrast (longer) strap, which it will have just failed to outjump, and be killed by impact with it.

#920: AutoKnot

It’s hard for people to learn visually to tie effective knots. After a while under instruction, they tend to absorb the knowledge directly into their cerebellar motor memory (can you describe how you tie a tie, or your laces, without actually executing the movements?)

Today’s invention is a way to get the right knot for a given situation taught correctly.

A transparent plastic sheet has a regular matrix of clear rods standing on its surface. The sheet is made to fit one’s laptop screen and the spacing between the rods is a bit more than the diameter of the rope to be knotted. A user would be asked to select the knot’s application details eg ‘quick, release, safety-critical’, etc. The laptop’s program would decide the best knot and load the correct instructions.

A moving arrow then appears on the screen and is visible through the sheet. This draws a snake-like pattern on the screen, gradually showing the path the rope must follow between the rods. When one end of the rope needs to go over another section, the graphical snake changes briefly to red (under–> blue) and the machine might even say “Over”.

The rope is thus pulled between the rods and around itself until a loose knot is formed and can be slipped up off the rods.

It’s just possible to imagine rods which could be made to vibrate (or a small robot tug) so that the rope is automatically transported around the correct path. Similarly, the sheets might be made with different spacings between the rods to accommodate variation in rope diameter.

#919: SweatBox

When you are overweight, for example, lots of things get in the way of starting to do some exercise (even a tiny amount is very much better than none). Going to a public gym is just too difficult for anyone who has become sensitised to how they look.

Today’s invention is a 1-person gym. This is in the form of a crate-like, self-contained cubicle with a credit-card door entry system. Without windows or mirrors, there would be just enough space to undress, exercise using a built-in stepper machine and then shower. The shower might even double as a spraywasher for the entire interior, after use.

These cubicles would be placed, using eg a forklift, in quiet locations, walkable from town centres. They would also record the level of usage of the stepper -allowing them to be relocated to the most effective sites and to provide encouragement to the users (identified on entry).

#918: FlyFiles

As a paranoid plane passenger, it concerns me that the flight safety recorder from any crashed plane might just be irrecoverable.

Airlines seem to fit one or two of these systems to their aircraft (at the rear, where the damage sustained under impact is usually less). Why only two? Is it to save money?

Today’s invention a connected system of several such ‘black boxes’, each of which contains exactly the same data at any time when fitted into a single aircraft. This means there are simply more copies and thus more chance of discovering the data describing the causes of the problem.

One of these boxes (made to be both highly robust and buoyant) would be jettisoned automatically if it detected a sharp descent to zero altitude (thus avoiding the loss of data on the sea floor or due to fire in the fuselage during a crash on land).

#917: Vibox

It’s about time the world had a new musical instrument that anyone could play (even the Stylophone was too hard for many of us).

Today’s invention is a wooden box (an old guitar body or even a cigar box, if you must). To this is attached an eccentric weight and a motor to rotate it. The motor is controlled by an external, rotary switch so that the frequency of the resulting vibration is variable.

In this way, a loud guitar-like noise can be made using only a single dial (rather than having to cope with all the usual plucking, pecking and bowing).

#916: DataWipe

I read recently about an absurd machine which recycles office paper into toilet rolls; very inefficiently.

Today’s invention is an improvement on that slightly crazy theme. A4 sheets are taken into the washroom by an individual and are there shredded very finely; with strips << 1 mm wide, forming a suitably soft, and flushable, matted fuzz.

The shredding is achieved by placing one’s sheets in a hopper on the back face of the door and levering it into the closed position. Only a few sheets would be needed each time to create a usable volume of mat (which will be highly unlikely ever to be pieced together again).

#915: Roombot

I’m amazed that hotels manage to sell rooms without any assurances as to size or lighting or view.

Today’s invention is a way for luxury establishments to differentiate themselves for the purpose of boosting online bookings.

A small robot equipped with a webcam moves on each floor. When someone wants to book a particular room, footage from the webcam is made available (during room cleaning) via the hotel website.

In this way, potential guests could see that their window faced only a wall and ask for a change or a discount. Equally, this acts as a competitive weapon against hotels which are too scared to show anything other than their showcase rooms before bookings occur.

#914: Hermetimer

In order to allow a mechanical watch to stay as waterproof/dustproof as possible, today’s invention is one such watch with no winding crown to penetrate the case.

In fact there would be no route between inside and outside because the case would consist of a crystalline, transparent shell, formed by a process of computer-controlled deposition around the movement.

Setting the time would be done by having one of the hands made of soft iron. This could be rotated, using an external magnet applied to the front face and turned (This might also be used to wind the watch spring up, if turned anticlockwise).

#913: AgePages

For multi-leaf paper items, such as calendars and novels, today’s invention is a way to build in a representation of the passing time between the first and last sheets.

This takes the form of paper which is a pristine white on eg the January sheet but with each successive leaf increasingly wrinkled, stained and torn as the December page is approached.

#912: ButterUp

Today’s invention is a new form of toaster.

This consists of a section of a metal sphere which is heated on the inside and to the outside of which is applied a piece of bread. This is then clamped in place by an external spherical shell which is also heated.

The result is a piece of toast which is a section of a sphere. Buttered on the concave side, if dropped, it will naturally fall on the floor butter side up -like an inverted parachute (its centre of pressure being above its centre of mass).

If it doesn’t have time to right itself in flight, it will land corners-down and these can be snipped off and discarded -without sacrificing all the precious slice.