About 10 years ago, I noticed that the blind spots for big vehicles are mitigated by these little circular convex mirrors on the passenger side mirror. I wondered why nobody used those for their rear view mirrors, or why not change the entire passenger side mirror to convex. About 5 years ago I was told such a thing already exists for the rear view mirror. Last weekend, I bought this.
I’m sure that I would have invented this if nobody had thought of this idea before. It’s the whole “coming up with the idea of mirrors” that I have a problem with. And don’t let anybody fool you, but I totally thought up the idea of masturbation, it just so happens that I was born a little too late to be the first person to write it down.
Have you ever invented something or thought about a great idea for an invention only to find out that it already exists?
After seeing Return of the Jedi in the theater, I came up a brilliant idea for a video game that would involve a controller shaped like a lightsaber handle that you could swing around to actually phsyically participate in a lightsaber duel. The only video game system I had experience playing was an Atari 2600 and the only controllers were joysticks or paddles.
Fast-forward 25+ years and now that type of game play is common place.
I guess that’s not really the same as what you’re asking in the OP, but it sort of fits…
I once had a thought about something I needed (but didn’t exist) then saw it two days later on an infomercial. I can’t remember what the product was… but I was going to make million$.
A brilliant idea I’ve had, the interpersonal car communicator, has yet to be developed and marketed - just by feeding in the license plate number, you immediately get hooked up to the person in front of you so you can say
“Hey, you gonna make that left turn or what?”
“Jesus Jumpin’ Christ, speed up! We don’t have all day back here!”
“Put that damned kid in their seatbelt!”
Waaayyyyy back in the day when the most sophisticated computer games were played using the number keypad for directional changes, I envisioned a little joystick that one could attach to the “5” key (or which one could install by removing the “5” key and attaching directly to the “post” underneath the key). The joystick would have 4 arms that would hover over the 2, 4, 6, and 8 keys, such that if you tipped the joystick it would press the key that corresponded to that direction. I was something like 12 years old and didn’t have the means (or, let’s face it, the drive) to actually mock one up and perfect it.
A couple of years later, I saw this exact gizmo at a swap meet somewhere. Based on the timing, I’m guessing that this inventor and I had come up with the idea at roughly the same time. He was first to market, though. Just in time for the mouse and proper joysticks to take its place.
Me too. To be able to talk directly to a vehicle on the road would be a godsend for furious road ragers and backseat drivers everywhere! Plus all the rest of us nicer folks
My sister and I liked to invent games based on various scenarios. We had one we used to play that involved a superhero duo. For some reason she called herself Julie. I put a plastic cup on my hand and called myself Punch. We were Punch and Julie.
Some years later a group of us played a game based around a tree that had a convenient sitting place with a pair of branches that looked just like the yoke of an airplane. We used the tree as our pretend spaceship. We decided to call our game Lost in Space.
We had no idea that either Lost in Space or Punch and Judy existed.
A few years back I had the great idea that with so many internet radio stations, I could build a box that uses wiri in a house to produce a radio that can get stations from around the globe. A little bit of research found that they already existed. However, I bought one for my wife for Christmas, and it has been one of her favorite presents ever - since she listens to a station from Philadelphia all the time, and never imagined that a box like that existed.
Decades ago I was involved in disassembling athletic shoes for repair. I started injecting silicone gel into them for comfort long before it became common in expensive running shoes.
I invented a literary parody genre – backslash. It’s fanfiction written with aggressive, explicit homoerotic overtones in which nothing actually erotic ever happens. I wrote a three page proof of concept in which Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy both think, erroneously, that the other is coming on to them, and then awkwardly back out of the conversation.
A couple years later, I stumbled across soem fanfics written with an extremely similar MO, but not, I believe, intentional parodies. Broke my heart.
Also, I won’t quite reveal it because I don’t know if it’s been invented and maybe I’ll think of a good use for it, but I designed a simple, cheap-to-make apparatus to allow motor oil to be poured into the engine without spilling or needing a funnel.
Then all the major companies, for some reason, switched to widemouth oil bottles which won’t work with my solution.
When I was a kid, back in the late 60s sometime, I came up with the idea of a razor with two blades mounted next to each other to reduce the number of strokes needed and give a closer shave. Being only about 11 or so, and not yet shaving myself, I kept the idea to myself. I figured people would pat me on the head and chuckle dismissively. (“Doesn’t he have big ideas?”) Also, I didn’t know anybody who could turn my idea into a patent. Anyway, long story short, Gillette came out with the Trac II razor in 1971 and the rest is history. We’re now up to razors with six blades on them. So, my idea for a twin bladed razor was undoubtedly already in the development stage by others, anyway. But, still, it was a billion-dollar idea no matter who thought of it.
I also invented roller disco, by the way, so not all of my ideas are worth mentioning.
For years I was thinking about how when you string up Christmas lights you always have to bring each strand down to one spot to plug them in. I had the idea of a green extension cord with 6 or so outlets along it’s length and a hook at the top. The idea being that you would snake this up center of the tree and plug each strand in at the most convenient outlet.
I’d never seen anything like it, I really considered getting a patent on it. Around 2001 or so I even went so far as to contact a patent place and get some paper work/forms, but never went beyond that. For the next year or so, I considered filling out the paper work just to see what happens, but I really didn’t know what I was doing and even if I were to get the patent, I would have no idea what to do with it. A few months later my then girlfriend called to tell me she saw one at Walgreens. I’m glad I had mentioned it to her a handful of times over the years. At least I can say I thought of it before long before it actually showed up.
A few years ago, I had a great idea for a drinking fountain that humans and dogs could share. Instead of the human part of the fountain draining directly into the sewer or ground, like normal, it would drain into a basin at ground level, with an overflow drain. So all the water that gets wasted in a normal drinking fountain would be for the dogs to drink. About a year later, the city installed one in a park I frequent.
