#1247: BinaryBinding

Today’s invention is stereo books, for secure reading.

A bookmark, shown in grey, can be cut to comfortably fit the brow of a user. This is placed between two pages (as shown).

Opposite pages each carry one of a stereo pair of images. The bookmark enables these images to be more easily ‘fused’ by the user so as to generate a 3-D image.

The book could be full of such images. It might also be used as a simple way to allow secure reading of confidential text eg on a plane or train, since each page could be composed of an illegible set of letter components.

#1240: Optomisation

I’ve been reading about how to save a fortune by changing my printer font so as to minimise ink usage.

In this spirit, today’s invention is a printer which presents a small optometrist’s chart on a touch screen control pad.

The user selects the line which contains the smallest readable characters, whilst standing over the machine, and the printer reformats all the pages in the current document to produce printed text which occupies the least space (saving on ink and paper).

For uberzealots, I’d also propose that the printed documents use a hybrid font (in which eg the ‘a’ is the one which uses the least ink from among all fonts, etc.) I suspect this might be a bit like an uneven version of Arial.

#1238: Blink-Ink

3-D is the new 2-D. If you are fed up though with having to wear those cardboard and cellophane specs to watch the latest movie, today’s invention can help.

It consists of a double-ended aerosol filled with organic dye. This is used to spray a small patch of semipermanent red dye on the inside of one eyelid and a small patch of greenish blue dye on the inside of the other.

When you close your eyes in front of a suitably coloured stereo pair of images on a screen which has the illumination ramped way up, you can not only see shapes on the screen through your lids but they will, in addition appear to be 3-dimensional.

This would allow you to watch 3-D movies whilst appearing for example to be asleep (should that ever be necessary).

#1223: StoreStare

Mobile phones typically have 8+ megapixel cameras built in.

Rather than have to raise these to one’s face, I’d like to be able to just record what I see. Today’s invention therefore is to mount one such camera in the frame of some spectacles.

The rest of the electronics, including power supply, could be held on a pocket unit which would also accommodate a remote shutter release.

When you want a record of whatever you are looking at, simply stare at it and press the button.