#584: Overseer

I’m told that using a look-down viewfinder is very strongly preferred by many photographers. One of the biggest advantages, apparently is that when taking portrait shots, not being looked at by the snapper directly puts a sitter in a more relaxed frame of mind.

Today’s invention is a simple variant on the standard compact camera LCD display back.

In this case, the display faces the rear of the camera and can be hinged outwards to allow a photographer to look down on it and see the scene in the correct orientation. A wider range of hinge rotation might be provided to allow for conventional positioning of the LCD display on the back face of the camera, facing the user.

#583: Smellcells

You can buy a lot of different necklaces which carry perfume within them. One of their advantages is not having to put perfume onto potentially allergic skin.

Today’s invention is to extend the idea to provide each wearer with a small wallet full of plastic ‘bubbles.’ This would take the form of a matrix of cells, just like many small contact lens cases. Each cell could contain a foam pad each to be extracted and sprayed, by the user, with a small amount of a different perfume and then closed using a press seal.

At each different event in a day, the wearer could open one of the cells and thus tailor their scent for maximum impact (given that the olfactory system rapidly stops being aware of a given smell, very soon after first encountering it). This could be work discreetly in a jacket pocket, without the need to splash organic solvents on one’s skin.

Adventurous types could try creating smell cocktails by opening more than one cell at a time. An electronically controlled version might even allow the wearer to communicate subliminally in real time by opening cells exuding attractive or repulsive scents.

#582: Gas Gauge

Ever since carbonated drinks were invented, people have had to accept whatever level of fizziness was supplied by the factory. Today’s invention attempts to allow consumers to control this according to their personal taste.

Each bottle would be full to the top -with no air gap. The contents of each bottle would be injected with the same quantity of carbon dioxide. A consumer could reduce the amount of fizz in the bottle, from the maximum, factory-gate level, by unscrewing the cap a small amount -as indicated by the relative movement of marks on the cap edge and the bottle neck.

This would be arranged to occur without breaking the seal, so that a fraction of the gas would come out of solution, in response to the low pressure region and in proportion to the amount of initial unscrewing. A region of carbon dioxide would quickly form above the liquid surface and in equilibrium with it.

Opening the bottle would then allow the excess gas to escape at once and enable drinking the custom-fizzy liquid in the usual way.

#581: Ant-entropy

Leafcutter ants (Atta) are adept at managing the division of labour between the 8M or so individuals undertaking different functions within a nest.

Garbage collection is done by several specialist types who identify anything foreign within a nest and transport it to an external garbage heap. No-one coordinates this work but the ants behave according to simple rules which govern their interactions with each other and their environment.

Today’s invention is to exploit this behaviour by applying it to the separation of mixtures of leaf-like cellulose and inorganic particles (eg glass fibres). This would allow vehicles, and other engineered systems, to be largely constructed from fibre-reinforced cellulose. Parking a scrap vehicle on a nest would result in it being gradually broken into two separate sets of material particles, allowing a new car to be formed from these recycled elements.

Prior art

IOTD is a source of prior art, whatever you may think of its value. Amongst those of us who would rather compete in the spheres of ideation and product development than in the courts and who think that worthwhile research has to be publicly available, such defensive publishing is becoming more widely accepted.

Alternatives to the Patent Arms Race: An Empirical Study of Defensive Publishing

This article by Joachim Henkel and Stefanie Pangerl is based on an empirical study of defensive publishing. It relies on 56 interviews with intellectual property experts and finds that 70% of the companies in its sample make use of defensive publishing. It argues that defensive publishing will be used more actively in the future since it can contribute to solving the aggravating problems of the patent arms race, of an increasing likelihood of inadvertent infringement, and of patent trolls.

#580: Sprue love

I have to admit to an interest in building models…aircraft, tanks…almost any kind of warlike machinery interests me enough to want to recreate it as a plastic miniature. I don’t understand it either: but at least I’m not alone.

There is a subset of model buyers that likes to keep their construction kits in-box, pristine, unassembled. That’s fine (if a little obsessive) until they happen to own a very rare (and valuable) kit. Today’s invention is a way to build it without ever having to separate the components from the virginal sprue.

The contents of a box of parts would be laser-scanned whilst still attached to that holy sprue. This would result in the creation of a 3-D computer model of the components which could be ‘detached’ and assembled in silico to build a virtual 3-D model.

This could then be passed to a rapid prototyping device in order to create (and sell) unlimited reproductions of a very rare model design.

Another nice feature is the ability to make those versions at different scales…so if you only have a 1/24 scale model of the 1973 Airfix Hawker Hurricane, you can use that to create a highly-detailed 1/72 squadron.

#579: Bladeblower

I’m tired of throwing away lots of disposable razors, without even knowing whether the blades are blunt. I use a razor once or twice and the whole ‘system’ clogs with a concretion of stubble, skin cells and old soap -making it effectively unusable, even after running it under water at high pressure.

I’ve talked before about the blade cleaning problem…hard-to-clean blades are actually a feature of their underlying business model.

Today’s invention is a washable mouthpiece which snaps onto the rear face of disposable razors. The user blows hard into one end. Air travels in between the blades and dislodges whatever residue there is into the sink (Probably best to do this before everything has dried to a fibre-matrix composite material).

The short passage between mouthpiece and razor would be filled with small-diameter tubes -so that the pressures at their outlet ends would be uniform (thus avoiding the problem of air simply by passing parts of the gap between razor blades which are blocked by gunge).

#578: Happier meals

Children seem to develop a taste for less than healthy food partly because of the visually exciting packaging in which it is often served them.

Today’s invention is a pre-printed cardboard roll of highly-coloured, comic-like images -containing puzzles, links to interesting websites, competitions, factoids, stories, games etc. This material would be age-indexed so that one could buy a roll designed specifically for 8-10 year-olds for example.

The rolls would embody serrations to allow the pressing out of sections which could then be folded into food containers. In this way, fruit and other healthier edibles might be supplied to youngsters in a wide variety of attractive, exciting wrappers.

This certainly saves on running the dishwasher and, using edibles dyes and cardboard, the containers can themselves be eaten.

#577: Lead-light

The AC adaptor on my laptop is woeful, from many perspectives. Let’s leave aside the fact that it runs hot enough to fry an egg…even the latest generation of transformers are way too heavy for a device that is supposed to be mobile.

Part of the weight is in the adaptor cable. A fat one runs from wall socket to device and a thin one runs from device to laptop. What determines the relative lengths of these sections? Well, it’s important to have enough total length that one can work without being right up against the wall and enough flexibility at the wall end that the plug can actually get in the socket.

Beyond these factors, there is freedom to reduce the weight of the adaptor system by minimising the fat cable length and maximising the thin one. Today’s invention is to create adaptors with a few cm of input cable and around 2m of thin output wire. Much less to cart about, marginally less wasted resource and significantly less annoying to roll up.

#576: Partypieces

Middle class Victorians, schooled in the social graces, would have had the ability to provide, at soirees, some kind of small personal performance or ‘turn’.

Today’s invention is a website which allows people to resurrect this tradition by uploading a small film of themselves doing a single, 30-second turn (direct from eg their mobile phone).

This allows people to show a different side of their personality than might be apparent in the office. Individuals who wanted to could enter their email address and postal region so they could be invited to perform again at forthcoming social gatherings in their area.