#2067: ShadowSeats

I work on trains a lot and I’m often irritated by the sun shining in on my laptop and making my screen content almost invisible.

Today’s invention is therefore a program which helps with seat booking.

You enter details of the journey including your preference for a table or sitting facing forwards, the preferred angle of your laptop screen and the departure time.

The program then looks up the weather forecast and will evaluate, for every available seat, the angles at which the sun will hit the carriages at numerous positions along the route.

It is therefore just a matter of geometry to indicate those seats which will allow your laptop screen to be most visible for most of the journey.

#2066: TubeTanks

Today’s invention is a new form of fuel tank for commercial aircraft.

This would take the form of aerodynamically-profiled rings attached to the front of each jet engine. These would increase drag only marginally whilst lessening the dangers associated with pumping fuel.

Tanks would simply clip into place from a truck equipped with a small lift. Less fuel loading time has to be popular with airline schedulers too.

Wings could concentrate on providing lift and the tanks would be much more easily inspected and maintained.

The number of rings would be increased for longer flights and there would still be internal pipework to allow transfer between tanks for trim maintenance.

#2065: SteerSpare

Cars often carry a spare wheel which is narrower than the normal ones in order to save space.

Today’s invention takes that idea to an extreme by using an ultra-thin spare wheel as a part of the steering mechanism.

In an emergency, the airbag (orange) would be removed and the spare wheel extracted and fitted on an axle.

Refitting the airbag container would allow this to continue to fulfil the role of temporary steering wheel.

#2064: ScrollScreen

In open-cockpit motorsports and motorcycle events each driver’s helmet has several layers of see-through plastic film covering the visor, which can be torn-off as it gets dirty during a race.

These sheets of plastic although flimsy, add to the bucketloads of detritus that end up on the track (such as the rubber crumbs shed by tyres).

It’s also possible for one of these sheets to get sucked into an engine intake…no laughing matter at approaching 200 MPH.

Today’s invention is therefore a new racing visor which tilts up in the usual way but which has two small canisters (orange) fitted near the visor hinges.

One of these contains a roll of transparent film and the other a small motor. This moves the film across the visor gradually throughout a race so that no build-up of dirt can occur and no driver need be distracted by removing a tear-off strip.

The film would be retained safely within one of the canisters (and might later be analysed to assess the variation in insect and road dirt accumulated as a function of race time.

The transparent material might even be preprinted with information useful to the driver at a particular time in the race. Providing an extra length of film would allow the motor speed and direction to be remotely controlled to generate an overlay specific to some tactical instructions.

#2063: AirAnchor

It’s very hard to land a helicopter safely on a highly non-horizontal surface.

It can be harder still to hold it there, especially if the surface is moving -as in the sloping deck of a sinking ship, during a rescue mission.

Today’s invention is a set of rotor blades which have a larger than usual variation in their angle of attack.

This allows them to be electronically controlled, during the last stages of descent onto some slope, so that the blades, still rotating in the same direction, begin to supply downforce, rather than upthrust.

The aircraft would thus be pinned securely to any surface, making the exchange of material easier. Personnel would have to battle with airflow away from the machine, but in an emergency, that shouldn’t be impossible.

This approach could be modified to allow eg helicopter drones to attach themselves to vertical surfaces if required.

#2062: Delivehicle

Online shopping still suffers from the need to be present to receive items when they arrive through the post.

Today’s invention makes use of the fact that our streets are full of parked cars…even during normal postal delivery times.

Car owners would mark their house address somewhere on the outside of their vehicles. They would also each buy a barcode scanner kit and mount this facing outwards through a window.

When a post person holds up a package bearing a special code to the car’s scanner, it opens either the bonnet or the bootlid only.

This allows the delivery to be left hidden within the vehicle and easily re-locked.

#2061: Sheathandle

Today’s invention is a better handle for penknives.

The yellow cover indicated in the diagram would rotate about one of the blade axles and lock into this position, effectively doubling the grip length when using the longer blades.

This would make these knives safer and also act as a barrier to dust and pocket lint, when closed over the blade bay.

#2060: VaultFreight

Polevaulters have great difficulty in transporting their poles around the globe.

Airlines don’t like having to take bundles of ten or so at a time into the holds of their aircraft (and they don’t tend to fit in overhead lockers).

Today’s invention is a way to get around this problem.

Instead of carting these devices around, athletes would only have to carry two additional suitcase-sizes containers.

One of these would contain a desktop 3-D printer with a motorised bobbin feeder and the other the various goop and fibres needed to make a pole or two.

Traditional poles consist of glass fibre and kevlar composites wound around a long metal mandrel and baked in a huge oven.

Achieving the required properties using a fabricator would be a trial and error process months in advance and far from the competition itself. Once the recipe had been perfected, this could be carried as a secret program on a thumbdrive.

I’d suggest using a 1m metal mandrel and winding kevlar fibres into a printed matrix on top of this…matrix, fibre, matrix etc.

Each new stretch of pole could be automatically fed slowly along the mandrel and through a small oven so that the whole system would maintain strength. This would also allow pre-bending to be built in, as well as experimenting with highly variable material properties from point to point (I’d be keen to try incorporating a section with enhanced axial springiness for a bit of extra lift in the final phase of the vault).

This approach would work well for exponents of the javelin who have similar transport difficulties.

#2059: Illumineating

So here is an idea not easily findable in the patent databases…

It seems that people serve themselves less food if it contrasts in colour with the plate they are using.

Today’s invention is therefore a bank of lights below a buffet counter. Each light is adjacent to a different tray of food.

As you pick up a serving spoon, a light comes on from beneath the counter which illuminates your transparent plate in a contrasting shade to the meal element you are choosing.

Thus each selection you make is lit in a different, contrasting colour -which limits the amount you pile onto your plate.

#2058: SawStart

When learning carpentry, it’s very easy to waste a tonne of wood by unskilled use of a saw.

Today’s invention should help.

It consists of an extra, fine-toothed blade which clamps over the normal serrations as shown.

This would be accurately located by alignment with the back edge of the main saw.

It would allow a novice to make smallish saw movements to start the sawing process with a well-placed notch. This would then help the main saw to follow the line created by the guide blade.