Inventions

A few weeks ago the subject of inventions came up in discussion by my family. The discussion didn’t revolve around things that have already been invented, but rather on things that should be invented. It began with a call from my sister who had decided that there needed to be a GPS system that you could personally carry that connected to your car. In that way you could never lose your car in a crowded parking lot. This is a very useful tool, especially as members of my family get older an tend to forget where we leave things more often than not. Of course I would need this GPS tracking device all over my house for all sorts of things I own. The car issue isn’t too much of an issue for me. Whenever I lose my car in a crowded parking lot, I tend to wander the lot in the general direction of where I think the car might be and hold down the panic button on my remote car opener. The panic button is actually the same as the locking button. I’m not sure if all remote car openers have this. If you hold it down longer than a few seconds it sets off the car alarm. Once I hear the alarm going off, I generally can figure out where the car is.

Another invention came up as my family was in our car driving to one of my sister’s houses when the usual conversation arose about the state of speeders on the highways and local roads. My wife tends to get very frustrated with speeders as she has to deal with all of these impatient, rude drivers every day going to and from work. To resolve this problem she decided that something needed to be invented to deal with them. Her idea was that when you start to speed that your car would allow a certain amount of time in which you could correct yourself, say 5 minutes. If after that time period you have not reduced your speed, a space portal would open up and immediately place you and your vehicle back at the spot where you began to speed. The interesting part of this invention is that though you will have been transported through space, you will not have been transported through time, hence you will lose all the time you expected to gain by speeding. I thought this was a pretty good idea, but thought that actual speed that you consider speeding should have some leeway. I don’t think we have much issue with people going 5 or so miles an hour above the speed limit. Most of us do that. It’s the drivers that choose to go 10 miles per hour plus over the speed limit that this device might be the most effective.

Driving with obnoxious drivers on the roads reminded me of an invention I have written about before. I want everything that people throw out of their car windows transported through space to the center of their own living rooms. I would love to see the scorch marks on the living room carpets created by those that flick lit cigarettes out of their cars onto roads and sidewalks.

I sometimes invent things in my dreams. At about the same time that we were discussing all these other inventions I had had a dream about a soundproof room invention. I know that there are soundproof rooms already in existence. My design utilized advanced computerized electronics. The enclosures of these rooms would be a few inches thick of a material that was cheap and easy to build with. The trick of how these rooms worked had to do with the electronic device installed on the inner part of the walls. Sound waves that hit the outer wall would automatically trigger the creation of unidirectional sound waves on the inner part that was the reverse of those waves hitting the outer wall. It would be like mixing an acid at a ph of 4 and a base at a ph of 10. If I understand the theory right mixing those two should neutralize each other leaving neither acid or base. With my invention when the sound waves from the outer wall reached the sound waves from the inner wall somewhere in the middle they would neutralize each other and there would be silence. This would be great in our house when one of us wanted to do some writing, reading or other quiet work and there was a television playing, music sounding from a radio or video game, or someone was practicing for an upcoming storytelling performance, which I have been known to do on occasion.

These are all great ideas. Unfortunately we’ve had some difficulty finding people to support these ideas with either the cash or ability to make them a reality. What about you? We promise to give you some credit for your help. That reminds me of another invention . . .