Invention Of The Day – Page 203 – Just another break-step productions sites site

#861: Pirateyes

There has recently been much discussion, in the news media, about the new era of piracy in which we find ourselves -not the digital ‘piracy’ invented by greedy media moguls but the real thing -complete with AK47s and speedboats. (According to the BBC, piracy cost the world $60 – 70m in 2008, so I’m not clear why this is even seen as an important issue, given that banking costs the world this amount every few minutes).

The pirates’ modus operandi is to board vessels without warning and hold their crew and cargo for ransom.

Today’s invention is a way to provide the crew with more notice of an attack. Each ship travelling in a region subject to piracy (maybe a few hundred vessels) would be equipped with a set of cameras capturing both visual spectrum and infra red images. These would constantly scan the ship’s surroundings and beam images to a webpage for the ship in question.

These pages would be displayed 24/7 on screens in prominent locations…(perhaps in railway stations and supermarkets, where large numbers of people have nothing better to do than watch displays as they wait).

This crowdsourced vigilance would result in mobile phone calls to a displayed number in the event that enough people detected some suspicious behaviour and acted to warn the ship in question. Prizes for accurate warnings might be offered.

#860: DryLights

It seems that bacteria do something called ‘quorum sensing‘: they emit chemicals which allow them to indirectly count how many of their little brethren are present.

Some of these bugs can then be made to do smart stuff in response -like glow. Today’s invention exploits this ability, to provide a simple concentration indicator.

Imagine a cereal plant needs to have the water concentration in its root system monitored in order not to dehydrate. Luminescent bacteria are contained in plastic grids set in the earth (each say 1m^2 in size). This keeps them inside, but allows water molecules to move through its membrane.

A transparent side branch from each grid protrudes vertically up through the soil which allows the onset of local dehydration in that part of the field to be detected as the bacteria inside light up.

In order to maintain the number of bacteria within each grid (since they reproduce exponentially) a robotic microwave emitter roves the field and blasts the side branches at the rate required to keep the number of inhabitants constant.

#859: Beadlead

Fed up carrying or tripping over powercords that are too long or finding appliances with cables that are just too short?

Meet the Beadlead.

Today’s invention is a variable-length power cord which is made up of insulated beads.

These stab into one another to form a chain…just like a child’s necklace. Internally, they each contain an electrical conductor so that electricity can flow along the internal conduit they form.

This design also provides cords with a high degree of flexibility.

#858: Carpetputt

Personally, I don’t get golf at all, but today’s invention is intended to increase the challenge it presents to its devotees.

Many parts of the world seem to be warming to the idea of using synthetic turf on their putting greens.

My approach is to place a subtly-contoured clay layer on a green-sized tray embedded in the earth. This would be covered by a carpet of synthetic turf and include a cup.

After each competition, the tray could be rotated to some random position (using a tractor) and re-embedded.

This would create much more variety within the game and require players to be able to ‘read’ the 3-D surface of each green more rapidly.

The clay layer could itself be remodelled and returfed at the end of each season.

#857: Doorestraint

Car doors are supposed to keep us safe -but sometimes they can be highly dangerous.

The drag of a passing vehicle or a strong gust of wind can whip a slightly open door into the path of another car, or someone’s face, or inwards onto the fingers of a child (this says nothing about the damage to the car caused by doors being snapped backwards and forwards).

Today’s invention is a relatively simple modification to car doors. It is an internal locking mechanism which only allows the door to be moved when the handle is being held in the open position.

This might best be implemented as a frictional brake device, located at the hinge axis. A similar approach might be applied in domestic doors to lessen the chance of crushing children’s fingers in the hinged edge.

#856: Speech-balloon

It’s possible to compound the effects of a ‘difficult’ phonecall by dropping, or slamming down, the handset when one party decides the conversation is over.

Like the inflammatory email sent on a Friday afternoon, this careless gesture is almost always taken by the listener as a sign of petulant disrespect. Spleen venting usually does nobody any good (not to mention the damage to the hardware and the reaction on Monday morning).

Today’s invention is simply an add-on to all existing landline phones in the form of a small, self adhesive resilient, bladder (shaped like a partly-inflated lifebelt and with a single inlet/outlet duckbill valve). This would be centred around the mouthpiece grille, so as not to interfere with the disconnect button near the earpiece.

When the phone unit is set down calmly, the lifebelt becomes slightly flattened as a small volume of air is expelled.

Dash it back into place, however, and the bladder will resist the sudden efflux of air, so that no crashing noise is generated and the phone settles back into its cradle gradually under the weight of the handset, as before.

#855: Grinvestors

I read in New Scientist that
…even a fleeting exposure to a smiling face makes people more likely to make risky (investment) decisions.

Today’s invention couples this with the view of Edwin Land (inventor of eg the Polaroid Camera) that he only ever had accountants on the board to quantify risks, not to decide about taking them.

It takes the form of modified boardroom portrait photographs. These would actually be digital images -each set in its own frame and with a number of different versions stored: from scowling to beaming.

A non-executive director would sense the mood of each board meeting and, if he or she deemed it unnecessarily risk-averse, the portraits would be surreptitiously modified to show slightly more smiling faces -and thus improve the willingness to take a punt.

(Although the possibility of competitive interference with these pictures exists, actually, I’d like to see the images controlled directly by the shareholders).

#854: Twistiff

Toothbrushes, whether electrical or mechanical, come in different stiffnesses (although dentists seem to disapprove of anything which is firmer than cotton wool).

Today’s invention is a mechanism whereby a standard toothbrush can benefit from some variation in the stiffness of its bristles.

As shown, when the wing nut on the back is twisted, the yellow plate is drawn downwards, making the brush more flexible.

No such thing as a free idea?

I frequently hear comments such as “Oh, ideas are a dime a dozen, it’s only the moneymaking application that counts.” All we need, it seems, is a surefire way to screen out any dud ones quickly and we can generate advances with almost no mis-hits.

I’m an avid admirer of those who develop and deliver great products, but only a tiny fraction of inventions is even distantly capable of being profitably deployed -just look in any patent database. Does that mean that the vast majority of invention is hardly worth doing? (We used, by the way, to expect this curiosity-driven discovery from Universities, but then we started hiring people for conformity rather than creativity).

Well the point is that, sadly, there is no algorithm for producing insights that are guaranteed to make a buck -or even work. We simply need to have lots of ideas and try out a large subset of those, before we start any serious cherrypicking. This undertaking can’t be reliably short-circuited and it therefore isn’t usually a cheap process.

Just having the the simplest of ideas always costs somebody, however. It takes a huge amount of effort (and surplus resource) to educate someone to a position where they have the experience (and spare time) to think up anything genuinely new.

All ideas cost, even if they aren’t, individually, of any value.

This doesn’t of course mean that you can’t give ideas away. Here’s a scheme which allows people to do so after they have died. I say, why wait?

#853: Metatrain

With all the talk about transcontinental bullet trains, I thought that the whole subject merited a more ambitious approach.

It’s quite difficult to accelerate a train using only the friction of drivewheels on a metal track…especially as reducing the weight of the rolling components is a good thing for fuel efficiency.

Today’s invention is therefore a railway on which a very long train runs which consists of a series of low profile, lightweight carriages (something like those trains which I’ve seen crossing Canada which take half a day to pass…except very much longer).

On top of them, a set of lightweight rails allows another layer of carriages to operate at increased groundspeed (a short train running on a train which is say, half the length of the track, will run at three times its normal speed).

This approach might be extended, given very low-cost rolling stock and in the absence of low bridges, to allow speed multiplication by higher factors.