#802: Swellsuit

Muggers and hoodlums seem to sense when someone is vulnerable to attack on the street.

Taking a leaf out of nature’s book, today’s invention is a coat which senses fear on the part of the wearer (perhaps by detecting hairs suddenly standing on the back of one’s neck at the same time as palm sweating). It then gradually releases the contents of a small cannister of compressed air into specially placed bladders inside the coat.

This causes the coat to swell strategically, making the wearer look bigger, brawnier and much less like a potential target for attack…something like a cat arching its back to deter rivals.

#801: PaniCan

When there’s a fire, or you need to stop a train in an emergency, you are often supposed to crack a pane of emergency glass. This can be confusing, time wasting and a possible source of injury in itself. It is also possible to activate accidentally by bumping into it.

Today’s invention is to replace all such switches with a modified drinks can ring-pull.

The top of such a can would be embedded in a backplate and an electrical ribbon pasted onto the rear surface of the metal so that when the ring is pulled, the ribbon on its back face is snapped -generating an electrical signal (to eg call the fire brigade or alert Underground platform staff).

This is an intuitive, common interface and operable by anyone without much force or required dexterity. It’s also cheap and tamper-evident. For anyone concerned about misuse, the aperture caused by pulling the ring could reveal a small networked camera lens which, by that stage, would have recorded the user’s face.

#800: Legorithms

According to the latest E&T magazine, Lego bricks get sorted first in the factory into foil bags before being boxed. This prepacking involves weighing a collection of components, in a bag, to within a few mg. If the total weight is wrong, they may have injected some bricks of the wrong shape…but they can’t tell which without a visual inspection.

Today’s invention is a way to tell, from the total weight of such a collection, the numbers of each type of part present.

Maths tells us that any product of prime numbers is unique to them -ie 2x2x3x7=84 can only be reached by multiplying this particular combination of primes together, no other set of primes will do.

We also know that Ln(2)+Ln(2)+Ln(3)+Ln(7)=Ln(84) and since Ln(x) is monotonic, this means that the only way to get to Ln(84) is by adding together the components on the left hand side. If we manufacture each design of brick so that it weighs a unique, prime number of milligrammes, then we can tell exactly what combination of brick designs are contained in a bag -just by weighing it accurately. This assumes of course that the brick manufacturing is undertaken to very tight tolerances in weight (which is true).

Any significant difference in weight from the expected total and we can then diagnose what the rogue bricks it contains (or which are missing) are.

#799: Denchewered

Inspired by the sandwich bag with the fake mould printed on it, today’s invention is a more general way to reduce food theft from communal storage.

A hinged, denture-like set of simulated teeth is used covertly to make a very realistic, but germfree, bitemark in each of the elements of one’s packed lunch.

When this food is placed eg in a shared fridge, almost everyone will be deterred from eating stuff which already has toothprints embedded in it.

#798: Artedge

I’ve been baulking lately at the prices charged by picture framers. If you want an alternative to a bog-standard clipframe in a standard size, the process of getting anything bigger than a postage stamp framed is likely to be as costly as the artwork it contains.

Today’s invention is a frame made of sections of a standard strip material, as shown. The strip is constructed from plastic or aluminium, for example and comes in the form of symmetrical lengths, one half with ridges running diagonally upwards and the other half with ridges running downwards.

Grooves formed in the rear faces of the strips allow them to be snapped neatly to the correct lengths, as in this type of propelling knife blade.

Four such snapped-to-length sections can then be glued and or screwed together using the integral ribs on the rear. Sections can also be joined in parallel to create a frame with a wide section.

Such wide frames could be used to accommodate almost any available piece of glass (smaller than the overall frame dimensions), without cutting (ie simply locating the glass on the lower lip behind the frame and allowing it to spill over the frame aperture, as seen from the front.

#797: VideO

Vari-focal glasses are all very well, but I’d like to see something a bit more adaptive.

Imagine a pair of spectacles fitted with a rangefinder of the type supplied in autofocus cameras. Each of the lenses is circular and can be driven by an independent motor to rotate in a housing which only allows the eye to see through a portion of each lens (think CD drive control, here).

In today’s invention, these lenses would have optical properties which varied with circumferential position (12 o’clock might have a much greater refractive index and/or curvature than 3 o’clock).

The lenses automatically and independently react to the distance signals given by the rangefinding mechanism, so that the retinal images remain in focus as one’s viewing direction changes.

#796: Cutour

Today’s invention is a simple device which enables someone to create for themselves a snug-fitting, low cost storage or carrying case for objects which need a higher level of protection than a simple box provides.

The object to be stored is placed on eg a redundant telephone directory, a block of waste wood or a pile of used printer paper clamped to a desktop. It is manually drawn around using a suitably fat felt tip pen, leaving a closely fitting outline.

An electric drill, fitted with a hole-saw attachment (of an appropriate radius) is attached to a small ‘turtle’ like cart with crude contour-following capability. This moves around, drilling to a fixed depth inside the contour, until it has been hollowed out.

A smarter version would be capable of also drilling some isolated holes outside the contour, in order to reduce weight eg for shipping/carrying purposes.

#795: Paintbank

I have numerous part-used cans of paint in my garage…most of which will lie there until their contents solidify. I suspect that this is a common enough phenomenon.

Today’s invention is a facility to which all such residues could be taken and donated. As well as lessening the chance that this material just gets dumped into a drain, the bank would assess the age and chemical compatibility of deposits.

Many people and local organisations have a need for utility paint -without a strong preference as to colour. The bank would be able to supply them with a large enough volume, by mixing donated paints, at a small enough price, to satisfy their requirements.

#794: RobotiQ

Queuing: not only is it hard to spell, the very concept is a pain in the ear.

Today’s invention is a small, roomba-like robot, whose only function is to wait in line on your behalf.

These would be cheap enough so that you could drop one on the end of several queues. Each would have a hook which would engage with the device in front’s rear loop. This connection would only be released when the bot ahead had finished queuing so as to maintain the correct order, despite attempts by people to interpose their machine and thus jump the queue.

Each bot would also have your mobile number displayed and a push-to-lock cabinet on top, so that whatever was being waited for could be confirmed, placed inside, locked and only opened by the owner when his/her bot(s) returned to them (directed e.g. by on-board gps).

#793: TippleTop

You buy a bottle of some delicious (perhaps expensive) drink but don’t want to consume it all at one sitting: what can you do?

Today’s invention is a bottle design which allows a certain amount to be drunk and the rest saved, whilst limiting access to the remaining contents by air.

The hour-glass-shaped bottle would be of plastic and contain several constrictions. When one has removed content to the level of any one such neck, the upper part is twisted so as to close the narrow gap above it and then pressed downwards so as to partially crush the upper portion of the bottle.

Reattach the lid tightly to prevent air entry and the bottle stays in crushed mode, protecting the contents. Untwisting and extending the squashed neck again allows pouring the next glassful.