#1900: PlatePlacation

Licence plates are so very ugly, especially when applied to the beautiful, streamlined shape of a sportscar.

Today’s invention is therefore a system to make your plates visible only when they need to be.

Normally, as you drive along, the plate would be mounted on a sunvisor-like flap on the inside of both front and rear windscreens (thus creating no unnecessary drag).

When you stop your vehicle, on private property, the plate visor would automatically sense its location and fold up against the interior roof of the vehicle, so that its gorgeous lines could be appropriately admired.

The internal plate could even be automatically illuminated, when on display, in proportion to the ambient light level, so as not to invite accusations of law-breaking.

On ideas

Here is an interesting posting about the fragility of ideas…

There are two things in this world that take no skill:
1. Spending other people’s money and
2. Dismissing an idea.

Anyone who thinks ideas are ten-a-penny should perhaps ‘give it five minutes’.

#1899: PageTurner

The operation of e-readers is profoundly unlike actually reading a book.

Today’s invention offers a way to enhance the experience a little -avoiding all that metaphor-breaking button pressing.

Placing the e-reader on a flat surface and opening the front cover (shown as blue), advances the page. Closing the cover and opening it again, repeats the process.

Turning the e-reader over and opening the back cover, attached to the device (red) allows the reader to move back one page.

This is somewhat like the forwards and backwards page flicking that can occur with a regular book.

#1898: Wellinktons

The parents of schoolchildren often get told to buy standard wellingtons for travel in school uniform on wet days.

These will probably all have to be black, which causes a major headache in most junior classes, when kids arrive home wearing two unpaired boots.

When I was five, a parent suggested the clothespeg solution, but this could sometimes result in the forgotten peg problem.

Today’s invention is wellies with left/right sole treads which interdigitate and remain joined as a pair when pressed together (at least until gratefully pulled apart at ‘home time’).

#1897: FreightFoil

Today’s invention is a flying pallet which can be used by transport helicopters to move freight.

Such a system could help maintain an underslung load in a stable orientation.

Its main benefit however is that a wing of this kind will generate substantial extra lift when the helicopter is travelling forwards -as long as it’s far enough below the source of the downwash (and trimmed to the right angle of attack by altering the lengths of the suspension framework).

Although this is no help hoisting eg a shipping container off the ground, once in motion the wing could be made light and strong enough to reduce the loading on the main rotor, especially over long distances.

#1896: BasketStack

After a brutal afternoon at the supermarket and just before I get shouted at by the stupid self-checkout, I tend to get a little frustrated by the shopping baskets.

I try to drop the empty basket on the stack provided but every time one or both handles of the preceding one are in the way, so I have to bend down and adjust them -or fling the basket in the aisle in despair.

Today’s invention is a new handle design for shopping baskets.

Each handle is prevented from falling forward from the carry position (bright blue) by a small stop on the lip of the basket.

When the basket is set on the stack and the handles released, both have no option but to rotate down into the end positions shown (pale blue), guaranteeing that they will be out of the way so that the next basket can nest without obstruction.

#1895: Storedoors

Lots of warehouse-type stores employ sliding doors, partly in an attempt to avoid heating up the outside atmosphere.

These sense the arrival of people (via simple movement detection) and then open completely to admit them -with the effect that a large amount of heat is transferred too.

Today’s invention is a set of sliding doors which can find the overall shape of arriving customers (including those pushing a trolley with a door slung across the top) using simple image processing.

The doors move so that the seam between them is located at the centre of the approaching objects.

The doors then open only widely enough to comfortably clear the edges of those entering (or exiting).

This could cut heat loss via these big doors by 50%.

#1894: Dualarm

It seems that my nightly waking period starting at 3:14am (known domestically as Pi time) may not be insomnia but a natural break in a bimodal sleep pattern that we have mostly forgotten.

This is a period during which I often have a torrent of new ideas. Today’s invention is therefore designed to ensure that I wake up at the right time and, in case I fall asleep without resetting it, again in the morning.

It’s an alarm clock with two settable alarm times: one at 03:14 and the other at, in my case, 06:00.

#1893: PocketSprocket

Today’s invention is a new way to reduce the ease with which thefts of bikes can occur.

Consider the simple case of a fixed-gear machine first.

Both sprockets would have irregularly-spaced teeth, in exact correspondence with the pattern of teeth in the chain, which would be unique to an individual bike.

When an owner leaves his bicycle, he slips off the pedal sprocket and takes it with him.

A thief will be unable easily to substitute for this and would find that even wheeling the bike away will be difficult, due to the loose chain interacting with the rear wheel.

This could be extended to derailleur systems, by removing the two-ring front sprocket.

#1892: JudaShoal

If we can make a robot fish which convinces real ones to form a shoal around it, then today’s invention is one such cyber creature which can support the fishing industry.

A number of robot fish would be cast overboard and swim until they had attracted a sizeable number of fellow pisceans.

Each robot fish would then locate the nets of its home fleet and swim inside.

It would then exit, by homing in on a fish flap in the net -allowing the process to be repeated.