What's your invention?

[superboyian]

If you were to go ahead and invent something, what would you create and how does it work?

 

[Grumpy Cat]

I'd like to invent a urinal for women - and name it something like the "UrAngie". Idk. I mean men have the greatest invention ever - you can go to the bathroom while still in bed. Can life get any better than that? My pet peeve is that most male patients won't even use one! I don't get it at all, I just don't.

 

[tlc]

I'd like to invent a urinal for women - and name it something like the "UrAngie". Idk. I mean men have the greatest invention ever - you can go to the bathroom while still in bed. Can life get any better than that? My pet peeve is that most male patients won't even use one! I don't get it at all, I just don't.

When I was a kid I saw something like this in this discount refurb catalog we used to get. It was a portable wee wee bottle, but you could buy this accessory called a "female adapter". We thought it was so funny! But I really like your name for it!

 

[Nitro]

I actually designed a method for washing the wheels on airliners that fully automates the process of cleaning them for crack detection before the new tires are mounted...the manual process takes about one hour and is very miserable to do...I knocked that time down to ten minutes with no human intervention...all I asked of my company was to hold the patent...their reply was that it would cost a lot of money to defend a patent...my reply to that was it would cost them a whole lot more if they didn't...we could have sold many of these,placed at least one $150.000 unit in each hub airport worldwide...that company since went out of business and I still have all the engineering I did...the fixture would add $50,000 to an existing $100,000 machine we already built...the cost per fixture was less than $1,000...fools

 

[Grumpy Cat]

I actually designed a method for washing the wheels on airliners that fully automates the process of cleaning them for crack detection before the new tires are mounted...the manual process takes about one hour and is very miserable to do...I knocked that time down to ten minutes with no human intervention...all I asked of my company was to hold the patent...their reply was that it would cost a lot of money to defend a patent...my reply to that was it would cost them a whole lot more if they didn't...we could have sold many of these,placed at least one $150.000 unit in each hub airport worldwide...that company since went out of business and I still have all the engineering I did...the fixture would add $50,000 to an existing $100,000 machine we already built...the cost per fixture was less than $1,000...fools

"Second place is the first loser" Interesting. I like that.

 

[Cerulean]

I used to have a bottle of glue, and the way it was shaped allowed a glue stick to snap on the side of it. Clever. I always wished they would make something like that for contact solution and cases, where the case would snap onto the side of the solution. Because every time I spent the night somewhere I'd forget my case and have to buy a new one, and ended up with a ridiculous number of cases in my bathroom. Or if I did remember it they are so tiny I'd lose them in all the stuff and had to empty my whole luggage to find it.

 

[tlc]

When I was about 13 I drew up these plans for a 2wd mountain bike. Before I ever saw any on the market. I've made lots of odds and ends for my cars and trailers, but not much you could really call new.

One girl I dated had just gotten a pellet stove and even the lowest setting was too hot for her little house, and the only way it would run off factory thermostat mode was to swing from low to high. So I designed this control box that would cycle the soft start buttons on and off based on a cheap external thermostat. So the stove could still do its programmed sequences for startup and shutdown, and run full efficiency when it ran, but could also have plenty of down time and saving a huge amount of pellets too. Some more expensive stoves have this feature built in, but I made this one work like a more expensive one and it worked perfectly. Then the only problem was getting this cheaply built stove to ignite reliably, but I mostly figured that out with the little time I had to tinker with it.

Meanwhile she had an idea for a set of canisters that mounted under the cabinets and pulled out on drawer slides, and had valves (like mini RV dump valves) at the bottom for dispensing the sugar, flour, etc. I drew them up and built them, but she moved on to another guy before I totally finished them. Lots of work welding and grinding stainless steel. Sugar flowed beautifully, flour needed some help. I had some ideas but ran out of obsessionary steam and so it's shelved. One of these years I might go back and try my ideas. Either a small air bed inflator and aeration media, or an additional handle with a little internal auger. Yeah she's gone but I refuse to throw away something I designed and built.

 

[Grumpy Cat]

When I was about 13 I drew up these plans for a 2wd mountain bike. Before I ever saw any on the market. I've made lots of odds and ends for my cars and trailers, but not much you could really call new.

One girl I dated had just gotten a pellet stove and even the lowest setting was too hot for her little house, and the only way it would run off factory thermostat mode was to swing from low to high. So I designed this control box that would cycle the soft start buttons on and off based on a cheap external thermostat. So the stove could still do its programmed sequences for startup and shutdown, and run full efficiency when it ran, but could also have plenty of down time and saving a huge amount of pellets too. Some more expensive stoves have this feature built in, but I made this one work like a more expensive one and it worked perfectly. Then the only problem was getting this cheaply built stove to ignite reliably, but I mostly figured that out with the little time I had to tinker with it.

Meanwhile she had an idea for a set of canisters that mounted under the cabinets and pulled out on drawer slides, and had valves (like mini RV dump valves) at the bottom for dispensing the sugar, flour, etc. I drew them up and built them, but she moved on to another guy before I totally finished them. Lots of work welding and grinding stainless steel. Sugar flowed beautifully, flour needed some help. I had some ideas but ran out of obsessionary steam and so it's shelved. One of these years I might go back and try my ideas. Either a small air bed inflator and aeration media, or an additional handle with a little internal auger. Yeah she's gone but I refuse to throw away something I designed and built.

All those inventions are really nice, but I don't think they're any competition for the "UrAngie", do you?

 

[tlc]

All those inventions are really nice, but I don't think they're any competition for the "UrAngie", do you?

Nope I'd say you're right. Not everybody wants to mess with underhung canisters, and not everybody heats with wood pellets. But everybody's gotta pee!

 

[Grumpy Cat]

Nope I'd say you're right. Not everybody wants to mess with underhung canisters, and not everybody heats with wood pellets. But everybody's gotta pee!

So true. What else does everyone have to do? Hmm. I had another idea, but sadly so did someone else.



Back to the drawing board I guess.

 

[ExplosiveTMT]

I would create a robot that made fart sounds whenever someone walked past. It wouldn't have much of a use, other than keeping me amused!

 

[Sev]

I would invent a psychological war simulation, a mixture of a video game and the system of reality established in the matrix movies. Humans have an instinct for mass conflict and destruction. I think that it would do the world a favor to satisfy this anger within a false reality or simulated environment where nobody has to truly die, that way, we might be able to leave the world intact.

 

[Alex Dame]

If you were to go ahead and invent something, what would you create and how does it work?

Well, that all depends on what exactly "inventing" refers to. My first thought would be a new game or a new character (And/or movie, comic book, or show involving the character), and how each of those would "work" would be basically to entertain people who watched, played, or read about them. Specifically, I'd invent a strategy game, maybe something using cards. And if I were inventing a new movie or show, I'd try and have a good balance of emotion, humor, fantasy, and storyline.

On the other hand, if you mean, like, BUILD something and have it marketed, I'd most like to invent some sort of "flying car" or "flying bike", or some equivalent so I could go great distances faster and without having to deal with earthbound traffic. Seriously, the flying car was my favorite part of Back to the future!

 

[inabox]

I'm still working on how to make it work. There are a few ways that would have the same effect but they are not exactly right.
It's s silence machine. Like a stereo but instead of giving out sound it gives out silence. So the closer you are to it the less noise your ears hear. Since I was very young I've always dreamt of one existing. As far as I know there isn't one yet. Maybe some highly secretive military operation has one, but not to my knowledge.

 

[Beverly]

I haven't quite worked out the details of how to make it small enough and get it working but, I'd like to finish my idea for vibrating wireless headphones for the deaf that vibrate at a different speeds for each note of a song, then sell them to concert venues as well as home users so that even someone who is totally deaf could enjoy music just as much as a hearing person can.

I have to give credit to Professor Graeme Clark, inventor of cochlear implants and, Paul Stanley, of KISS fame, who was born deaf in one ear for the inspiration for this idea.

 

[Destination Unknown]

I always figure that if you are thinking of something, someone else has already done it.
I had a few inventions I came up with that I see others have now done. One was for a waste water heat recovery system. I saw the exact system I designed used on this old house about 5 or 10 years ago.
Another one I did back in 1985 was for a bee hive that harvested its own honey. Recently, I was telling the president of our local honey producers how I had come up with this system. He was telling me how it's not possible. A few weeks later some guys are on yahoo with a similar setup making all kinds of money because it's going to revolutionize honey harvesting around the world. I was just doing it for my own use. Had no idea anyone else would be interested in something like that. Made sure to point out to the bee club president (jokingly) that I could have been someone if I only knew.

 

[umbrellabeach]

View attachment 9461

My mom has a bottle of that stuff... it was a gift from one of her sisters, I think.

I would invent something to put tiny, almost-gone pencils in so you could use them as much as possible until there's really nothing left. I don't know if anyone's done that already though.
EDIT: Yup, someone beat me to it. http://www.amazon.com/Derwent-Penci...id=1436678127&sr=8-1&keywords=pencil+extender
Maybe I'll get some...

 

[Spiller]

I'm still working on how to make it work. There are a few ways that would have the same effect but they are not exactly right.
It's s silence machine. Like a stereo but instead of giving out sound it gives out silence. So the closer you are to it the less noise your ears hear. Since I was very young I've always dreamt of one existing. As far as I know there isn't one yet. Maybe some highly secretive military operation has one, but not to my knowledge.

I had this exact idea in mind since I was a kid too!
I imagined a form of speaker projecting a cone of negative noise - not white noise, which is a combination of lots of sound waves, but a negating wave.. I imagine one stage of the setup would sample the environmental noise then another would build an inverse wave function that would result in an area of silence in front of the speaker. Processing would have to be fast though as ambient noise changes all the time.
Had a similar idea for a black light too - not the UV type you check currency or look for blood with, but a torch that samples ambient light then projects a cone of darkness.
Great minds..

I've also thought about how to build a device that samples your mood through galvanic skin response, temperature, maybe facial expression if linked to your phone, other sensors including a blood sampler.. then it emits a tone above or below the range of human hearing that affects your mood positively.
You could mitigate anger, depression, sadness, bi-polar mania.. you could also use it to feel euphoria - get high without substance abuse.

 

[Mia]

I did invent and make a telescoping snow scraper for myself, its for those plastic garages people put up in the winter here. The ones available are a shovel that's a rectangle, but it only works on soft snow, mine is rounded on one side and has teeth in it and pulls the snow off easily.