#812: Reflicks

The light-sensitive surface inside a camera (whether digital or analogue) is illuminated, gradually, when the shutter release is activated. The incoming light may thus impinge on some regions of the surface for much longer than others, depending on the type of shutter involved.

In an SLR, with a shutter which pivots upwards and then down again, those pixels at the bottom of the image are illuminated for much longer than those at the top. A rotary shutter largely fixes this potential problem (which might otherwise result in some of the sensors in the bottom of the image becoming ‘burnt out’.

A light, angled mirror (blue) is used to allow through the lens composition as usual, but in today’s invention, this mirror rotates about the axis as shown, driven by a high-speed motor.

This provides uniform illumination of the sensing surface whilst still allowing a direct view of the scene via the eyepiece. The mirror shaft would obviously need to be balanced to minimise vibration (perhaps by using several, petal-like mirrors).

#811: Flickhour

Timekeeping has always fascinated me, as has the difference between appearance and substance (especially in connection with machines that may seem sentient, for example).

Today’s invention is a novel clock display. A conventional clockwork mechanism consists of a spring driving a single spindle via a ratchet. Protruding radially from the spindle are images of the face of a real clock -one image per minute.

As the ratchet operates, so a new picture is flicked into place every minute -just as in a circular flickbook or zoetrope. This allows one to have any clock face on the timepiece, from a hand-drawn one to photographs of Westminster clock tower taken one per minute.

#810: Wingscreen

Flying a light aircraft, where the pilot sits atop the surface of the wings, can be rendered more difficult because of the limited visibility underneath.

It would be a real advantage to be able to somehow see through the wings and thus detect earlier other planes approaching or objects on the runway. Jet fighter pilots can wear experimental headsets which display such a 360-degree view, but today’s invention is a more practical version of this idea for ordinary small aeroplanes.

A video camera (red) is aligned, beneath each wing, with the pilot’s downward view direction as shown. The image from the video is then projected (yellow) onto the wing surface, providing the sensation of seeing through the metal.

#809: Twosday

I always have a problem with certain dates. For example, I find it easy to make mistakes when adding meetings, for Tuesday 3rd or Wednesday 2nd, to my diary…somehow the mismatch between the day’s position in the week and its position in the month causes me confusion.

When under pressure, I’ll assume that that meeting scheduled for the 3rd will obviously take place on a Wednesday, and I will miss the vital meeting by a day. This is, I believe a surprisingly common phenomenon -even among people who aren’t synaesthetes.

Today’s invention is a plug-in for electronic calendars which is programmed with all such possible conflicts and which will both ask for confirmation and issue a special reminder whenever they appear in one’s schedule.

#808: Bugscrub

People can be pretty remiss when it comes to post-toilet handwashing. Most people also tend to have a strong resistance to leaving a public toilet unflushed.

Today’s invention attempts to use the second tendency to overcome the first.

Imagine a toilet flush button (or handle), located within an adjacent basin, which will only work after a sensor (of the type currently used in hand driers) has detected hand movements and water flow within the basin for several seconds. The natural tendency to flush is thus only enabled after a certain amount of handwashing has occurred.

This would also have the advantage that the flush activation mechanism was itself constantly being washed.

#807: 1offchocs

So this is the era of 3-D printing; or at least it will be when the 10 or so major cost issues are overcome.

Meanwhile, today’s invention is to use this technology to allow visitors to a website to design their own items of elaborate confectionery -and have them delivered by express mail.

People could select from a palette of fillings, one of bases and one of coatings or ‘enrobings.’ The setting time for each of these would be used to optimise use of the machinery and ensure compatible combinations. Certain confections might be ruled physically (if not aesthetically) impossible. The calorie content of each design would be automatically computed.

If you really must have peanut butter and ginger chocs, on a wafer base, all covered in 2mm of white chocolate, then this is probably the only way to get them.

Users could of course specify even small numbers of such delights and also decorate the outer surfaces with personal messages/logos. There might even be a vibrant online forum for trading recipes and discussing the best techniques for remotely creating a particularly tasty morsel.

#806: disCord

I’m not sure that I see a real need for landline phones, now that a big slice of the world relies on mobiles.

The manufacturers used to make a huge benefit out of the ability to rove around your house and garden using a DECT cordless handset. The trouble with this idea is that people now leave the handsets down wherever they have concluded a call. Just use the ‘handset locate function’? Oh please…when I have to make a call, the last thing I need is to have to listen for a handful of handsets beeping in the domestic distance.

Today’s invention is a landline handset which can tell (using an internal accelerometer) immediately it has been set down on a stable surface and it sets off an alarm until it is replaced in its holster/base unit.

#805: Wastepress

Domestic refuse needs to go somewhere and today’s invention aims to make better use of it than conventional landfill.

Each railway station would have some special railway cars parked in a siding. Refuse vehicles would dump their loads into one of these trucks, which would be designed to ‘telescope’ -one end being free to slide inside the body of the other so that the space between ends is greatly reduced.

When full, each truck is placed on the track ahead of a train which then pushes it along.

When the train reaches a station where large-scale civil engineering is occurring, the brakes are applied to the refuse truck’s front wheels and the train telescopes this wagon, crushing its contents together. The wagon can then be moved to a siding and its compressed block of high-density rubbish used for projects such as building embankments or stabilising earthworks.

#804: Multimarks

Try reading a book with gloves on (or with limited dexterity) and you will understand how difficult it is to turn pages accurately.

Today’s invention is a desktop cutter which shapes the outer edge of any book into steps, just like an old-fashioned address book (but without the alphabetical labeling). It simply involves clamping the edge of the book in place and chopping out a triangular section -so as to create a thumb-able ramp in the paper.

This makes it possible to turn the pages reliably, even with limited tactile feedback.

#803: Poolpad

One of the most dangerous things a child can do (apart from being driven in a car) is go swimming in a pool.

Today’s invention is a large mat, made of tough, just-negatively buoyant, foam which covers the floor area of a deep swimming pool and which is supported by columns of the same material bonded onto the mat’s underside. The columns hold the mat off the pool floor and allow enough water depth above the mat’s surface for everyone to swim and to support their (reduced) weight when standing on it.

The reduced effective dept of the pool makes it much harder for a child to be overlooked if it’s lying on the mat’s surface (which could be made in a colour such as fluorescent green, to contrast sharply with all human skin tones).

Also, anyone recklessly diving in would avoid neck and back injuries due to being cushioned by the compressible columns collapsing beneath the foam surface.