#1392: LogiClock

I’ve always had trouble dealing with analogue clocks. Having two hands on a central spindle, both measuring the same thing but at different rates, is just confusing.

Enter today’s invention. This is a clock consisting of two of those ubiquitous electronic clock units, with their minute hands bonded together. The right hand clock rotates in space about the fixed left hand one, once an hour. The left hand clock also carries an hour hand in the usual way.

When you want to know the time, it’s indicated as a sequence. Look at the fixed clock for the minute hand position and then to the moving clock for the hour.

#1333: DigiDial

I have just seen one of the latest Breitling wristwatches: a mechanical masterpiece with an electronic display but with a dial that looks designed by someone who works on fast food packaging or maybe matchboxes.

Today’s invention is a dial in the form of a digital display fitted to high-end mechanical watches. This would allow a user to choose an alternative backdrop to the clockwork-driven hands from a very large number of combinations of colour, numeral size and font etc.

This would provide effectively a whole new look every day and add extra value to a very expensive piece of machinery/jewellery.

#1306: QorQuit?

Today’s invention is an app which allows a smartphone user to decide whether his waiting in a queue will allow him to be served before some deadline by which he has to be elsewhere. If it does, he stays, if not, he can save some time by leaving early.

After entering data about departure deadline, level of impatience and desire to be served, the app would continually evaluate the stay/go decision based on manually registering every time someone gets served or chooses to leave the queue. The longer the queue, the more reliable the model of whether to stay or leave.

There would also be incorporated the effect of mental inertia ie the tendency to want to stay in proportion to the waiting time already ‘invested’.

At the very least, such an app would make the waiting seem less onerous.

#1248: BioTick

Some cells divide in correspondence with a circadian rhythm.

Today’s invention is a wristwatch which makes use of this fact. A transparent duct containing suitable cell food substrate on the back face is formed into a spiral. This is lit from beneath to enable photosynthesis in eg cyanobacteria.

A small number of bacterial cells are located at the centre of the spiral. As the bacteria divide throughout the day, and feed on the substrate, they expand along the spiral in a deterministic way, passing gradations marked on the duct wall which indicate the time. The marks could even be spaced linearly by varying locally the width of the spiral track.

The spiral becomes filled over a 24 hour period…at which point, a small defined area of the bug population is scraped into the start section of a fresh spiral and the rest (carefully) discarded.