Back when I was a kid, in the early 1980s, I had the idea that it would be great to store music and video on solid state memory chips….

I remember Going Live (I think) coming up with that idea. Philip Schofield demoed a new music player which took little memory cards.

It was an April Fool’s hoax.

cheesewipe

You may need to work on the name 😉 but loving your work there.

This article about water counter weights discusses other reasons why it isn’t necessarily a great idea to use them in washing machines…

https://www.appliancehelpline.co.uk/news/new-washing-machine-counter-weight-innovation

Loofinder.com

I think it speaks for itself tbh…

I had this great idea when I was a kid for a new sort of car.

The car would have effectively a steam engine for drive, with the steam produced by a microwave.

And the microwave would be powered by a generator which in turn would be powered by the car’s wheels going round.

Sadly my Dad talked me out of pursuing the scheme, which I’ve never forgiven him for. I could be rich beyond my wildest dreams by now.

Many years ago a friend at school came up with the idea for a service which delivered fast food items like pizzas directly to your door. He sensibly didn’t take it any further when I pointed out to him that this was a ridiculous idea, there would be no market for it and nobody would ever want that sort of service 🙄

A sat nav with an accent that is always local

Have you tried using Google maps abroad, but in English? My pronouciation is perfect compared to that.

Back when I was a kid, in the early 1980s, I had the idea that it would be great to store music and video on solid state memory chips….

Oh good point. About 17 years ago, using ITunes, I thought this is shit – why do you have to download music to keep control of it? Keep it online and have an application that just tracks what you’ve bought so you always have access to it. Y’know, like, Spotify, or something else that’s struggling to rub two pennies together. It was too obvious probably, but I don’t think it had actually been done then.

About 20 yrs ago I used to store a homemade battery for my BLT lights (remember them?) inside my steerer tube, using a lockable headset preload ring, which I think was from Middleburn, instead of the star-fangled nut as I thought it was wasted space & hated the cables flapping down to the bottle cage battery.
Always thought it would be the ideal place for a multitool…

I often think it would be good to have a giant read out of weighing scales at an airline check in desk.

When you book you agree the price per kg (up to a limit), and on arriving at check in you stand on the giant weigh bridge with your luggage and the total weight will flash up on the screen behind the airline assistant. Not only would it stop my better half packing unlimited shoes for a weekend away, it might improve public health as everyone watching in the queue can see the weight of the businessman with only hand luggage tipping 100kgs. Need to think of a snappy name for it.

Jam flavoured butter, cut the effort in half!

Reverse the way energy companies are paid.
They get paid a flat rate per m2 of residential, factory or office etc.
If they can save energy, they make more profit.

Round about the turn of the millennium.

How about a website where people can upload little video clips that they’ve made? Could be a way to showcase creative work without the “old economy” of agents, galleries, distribution etc – straight to the audience, unfiltered. Could just be a bit of fun. People could comment on others’ videos and maybe even network. Ad revenue to support, maybe ads on the page, maybe short little ads before the video itself plays. Videos that got popular would bring in more ad revenue, so maybe a revenue share to the content creators would incentivise people to keep adding more content to it.

Decided it wasn’t a goer at that point, we were all on dialup narrowband at this point, and even a 10 second video took a while to load.

£800M. That’s how much the founders of YouTube got when they sold it. £800M.

I was quite sad that I invented the cog hog with my mate Gez. Mr Crud took it to production for us and then Avid did the rollamajig and now there’s a roller in most SRAM rear mechs.
Hey ho.

A remote control jacket zipper.

We have remotes for suspension, seatpost etc but I reckon the remote jacket zipper would be ideal on those changeable days, especially on the road when there are interspersed climbs and descent, and you have one of those jackets that need the zip held firmly at the bottom while pulling the zipper up.

Right handed tape measure.

Tape measures are handist.

A right handed person wants to measure an item. Takes out tape measure with their right hand, extends the tape with their left hand, measures item. All fine and dandy. Now the left handed person does the same, except the tape measure is in their left hand. The numbers are upside down.

But the opposite happens when you come to marking out. You’re doing a bit of woodwork, or whatever, right handed person measures as the above, but your pencil is now in left hand, I can’t write with my left hand, so you turn that tape measure round so it’s in your left hand and measure from the other end of the piece of wood, etc. Now the numbers are upside down.

So you need two tape measures, one for measuring, one for marking out. Each now works for the other handed person. Ta-da! You can now sell everyone two tape measures! Untold riches!

we were all on dialup narrowband at this point

Point of pedantry here, “not broadband” isn’t narrowband, it’s baseband.

Standardised electric car batteries, genius, but been done in China. You drive your car in, robots replace your flat battery with a fully charged one. You drive off.

Water tank in washing machines instead of concrete block. Been done. Young lad on the TV years ago won an award for it (I think). Not sure if it caught on. My Miele machine has two enormous cast iron horseshoe type things over the front and back of the drum. Works brilliantly and is recyclable. Makes the machine weigh damn near 100kg though.

Gym machines like cross-trainers, running machines and rowing machines running small turbines which help power the machine therefore reducing the amount of electricity required to run them – any excess energy produced could be exported to the grid or used to contribute power other things in the building.

Right handed tape measure

vise-versa tape measures by Advent (from toolststion) can be read left or right handed and also are printed both sides of the blade

I used garmim to track my runs but wanted the ability to compare parts of each run, to see how fast I was up certain hills etc.without using the lap function. Ie segments.

I contacted garmin about it but never heard back.

3 or 4 years later strava was born.

I could have held such power!

Peer to peer bike rental, like easy car, but with bikes. I think it would be great for mtb. Good way of trying different bikes on your local trails. Let your bike earn you some money back.

Turns out it already exists. Spinlister. Although it hasn’t caught on up north. I searched Sheffield and it found two road bikes. I’m guessing it’s more popular for proper cities around the world.

I came up with the idea that Hazards should flash at a different rate (maybe a double blink gap, double blink) to distinguish it from an indicator.

When I first saw an Audi with dynamic indicators I thought “great, they’ve finally solved that problem”.

Then I saw one with its hazards on. Each side just scrolls outwards exactly the same as an indicator. What a missed opportunity.

Almost every bike ride I come up with a great idea that I then forget when I get home. Sometimes I re-remember it when riding and refine it a bit. But I never put them into practice. Sometimes years later someone does, and I think ‘hey, I thought of that ages ago’.

A couple I can remember:

1) Now that we have hybrid cars we could harvest electricity from all sorts of things. Electromagnetic dampers might only contribute a bit so probably not worth it. A better idea would be to harvest energy from the engine coolant by having the pressurised hot water spray steam out of a nozzle into a turbine to generate some power. You’d have to keep the other side cold though and your water pump would need to be a high pressure job to keep the hot coolant under enough pressure, but it might be worth pursuing.

2) A dropper for road bikes – yes I know it’s been done, but my idea would be a parallelogram arrangement like a Thudbuster but replace the elastomer with a compressible thing like in a dropper. So it goes down and back which would be much better for road descents.

Gym machines like cross-trainers, running machines and rowing machines running small turbines which help power the machine therefore reducing the amount of electricity required to run them – any excess energy produced could be exported to the grid or used to contribute power other things in the building.

Been done, read about it a few years back. But I think loads of machines power themselves – if you stop, you get about 30 seconds before it goes off. And they have no power lead.

Standardised electric car batteries, genius, but been done in China. You drive your car in, robots replace your flat battery with a fully charged one. You drive off.

I had that idea years ago but it’s not ideal – the only way you can get a decent amount of batteries in a car is to package them under the floor which means they are buried deep in the car, so too hard to make a cartridge option.

A better idea is liquid flow batteries (they already exist) where you just drain your tanks of reacted fluid and re-fill with fresh reagents in minutes like a petrol pump.

Re video websites, circa 2002 I designed a peer to peer system for video sharing that would have allowed youtube type service without requiring a gigantic hosting operation. At the time we had enough bandwidth to watch videos but no-one had enough bandwidth to host such a service. My plan would have solved that problem. I never got around to learning enough about video codecs to code it up.

I remember pitching to my parents as a 13 yr old who thought he’d mastered science that a hat which picked up brainwaves and then transferred them to the doctor who wore a corresponding hat would be good.

They could diagnose more accurately based of feeling the same symptoms. They looked at me as though I was a genius.
Did **** all about it so obviously not.

Handlebar grips bound with det cord. Digitally operated of course.

I reckon sales to the Middle East would have been enormous.

Foolproof I reckon. 🙂

Charging £100 a time for 2 wheelie bins lashed together to make a, crap, shelter for a homeless person.

Looks like I was beaten to it…

A multimillionaire invented bin pods for the homeless and was widely rubbished

I came up with the idea that Hazards should flash at a different rate (maybe a double blink gap, double blink) to distinguish it from an indicator.

Yeah I have often thought about this one.

When I first saw an Audi with dynamic indicators I thought “great, they’ve finally solved that problem”.

Then I saw one with its hazards on. Each side just scrolls outwards exactly the same as an indicator. What a missed opportunity.

And this too!

Years ago I developed a bearing dryer with adapters for all the popular sizes, but didn’t think there was a market for it.

When 10 yrs old I invented a time-machine based on an LED watch.

All you had to do was wait until a minute before the HR, set it to ‘secs’ and watch/wait the countdown until it displays ‘59’ secs.

Here’s the clever part:

Get ready with your finger on the button. As the display flicks to ‘60’ or ‘00’ then quickly press the ‘HR’ button to return to the HR:Min display. If you went fast enough you should see the display change from 59mins to the HR. If it’s already on the HR then you were too slow.

Imagine if you are so fast that you switch back to ‘HR’ and it’s still displaying ‘**:59’?

You just travelled back in time a whole second. To go further back in time just get faster on the button.

I also invented a bed-headboard dispensing-machine that had electronically-operated drawers that would open just by power of thought.

(Thinks) ‘Mars bar’
(Drawer opens) Collect Mars bar and enjoy.
(Thinks) ‘Scalextric CR106 Walter Wolf race car’
(Drawer opens) ‘etc…’

Furthermore, the items to be dispensed needn’t be refilled as they used the same technology that Star Trek used in order to transport stuff, combined with an (possibly floating) off-site 3D printer which manufactured things directly from the Universe, rather than from a bothersome, noisy factory.

Eventually ditched these ideas as ‘frivolous’ and invented a coastal wave-turbine that circumvented the problems of salt/corrosion by engineering upwards curving tunnels under the cliffs that would conceal air-turbines. These would be driven by air-pressure forced through by the wave-action half a mile away. Sounds rubbish now.

* Addendum: I do feel the need to remind potential investors that the bed-headboard drawers also detect where exactly you are lying, and so don’t bump one in the loaf whilst opening/dispensing Assorted Spangles, Action Men, Squirmels etc

14 year old me invented a shop without a checkout, where everything was bought and paid for using a QR/barcode scanning app linked to PayPal. Was doing a week of work experience at the time, and the design manager put it forward for the internal pre-patent process. It got approval, so my dad got a tasty payout (he worked at the same business in a totally different department). Within a year, PayPal themselves announced a near-identical product…

Led in hospital in 2014 I watched nurses struggle to find veins for IV lines and injections on lots of patients. Then I remembered the blue lighting that they had in the loos at Tesco and train stations, it makes it harder for junkies to find their veins so they go somewhere else to shoot up. All that was need was a suitable bulb (opposite of the blue one) to go in a cheap headlight and hey-presto problem solved!!!!

Then I had an operation followed by copious quantities of morphine and forgot all about it until last year, only to find that the idea had been patented. The pukka ones cost about £2K but you can obviously get cheaper ones on the internet…………..

As a little kid I flicked through an American high school yearbook in a junkshop in the mid 60s and thought what a good idea it would be to be able to print stuff on T shirts. I even looked into silk screen printing methods in my brother’s art books, but it never went anywhere.

Eventually ditched these ideas as ‘frivolous’ and invented a coastal wave-turbine that circumvented the problems of salt/corrosion by engineering upwards curving tunnels under the cliffs that would conceal air-turbines. These would be driven by air-pressure forced through by the wave-action half a mile away. Sounds rubbish now.

I learnt about wells turbines for wave energy conversion at university 25yrs ago. I think there are some operational sites in norway.

While at uni c.1995, cooked brekkie delivered early in the morning. Order and pay for the night before, delivered at the desired time. Left on doorstep if you don’t answer.

Actually using mobile catering van, but I suppose it could have used polish cyclists to deliver.

I like to ‘spark’ up a joss/ incense stick when I visit the loo.

But, like the incense cones, they’re designed to burn for at least 20 minutes. No one needs that much smoke?

Why not make smaller joss-sticks that only burn for, say, three minutes. Just long enough to smother any noxious niffs or minging miasmas.

So, smaller sticks with enough uncoated stick to allow you to light them without searing your fingers.

Btw, I prefer to eschew traditional joss-stick holders in favour of a scented-candle-in-a-tumbler things. Less messy and gives a better grip for the stick.😉

I’ve always wanted to upgrade animals to have road sense, but despite much musing I have yet to really work out how I’m going to achieve this.

Have you considered getting Mr Policeman Badger to give them a stern talking to?