I invented the original iPod (the first generation MP3 player). I had an early, portable MP3 player in the late 1990’s but it would only hold about 6 songs before it was full. Tiny hard drives already existed back then with many times the capacity so I drew an engineering sketch showing how you could easily make a portable player that held thousands of songs that fit in your pocket even just using existing technology. I promptly forgot about it but someone else didn’t.
I invented integrated circuits.
When I was about twelve I had opened my parent’s transistor shortwave radio, about the size of a breadbox, and was looking at all of the transistors, resistors, capacitors, and such arrayed inside. I suddenly thought, “You know, that transistor can is about as small as can be easily handled but the transistor itself is just this bitty piece of silicon inside it. What if we put a whole amplifier circuit or oscillator in the can?”
Of course, I was thinking analog circuitry rather digital and rather underestimated the number of transistors you can fit into tiny spaces.
When I was just a kid, I wondered why they didn’t make a razor with two blades in line with each other so you could get a closer shave. Shortly afterwards, Gillette came out with the Trac II.
I also invented roller disco. Fortunately, no one can pin that on me.
I invented Gingko Beeroba, the leaf-infused brew that gives you tons of holistic health improvements. “For the nights you want to remember.”
Sure, you haven’t heard of it on the market now, but some day…
I invented Gingko Viagra. It’s for people who need to remember what the fuck they’re doing. 
Back in the early 80s, I was trying to get lint off a coat when I suddenly had an idea: an inside-out roll of masking tape, with the sticky side facing out. You could roll it over your clothes and remove the lint! My girlfriend at the time said that was the stupidest idea she had ever heard. Later, when lint rollers appeared in stores, I would point at them and say “I invented that! I thought of it first! I could have been a millionaire!”
Many years afterward, I learned that lint rollers had actually been invented and patented long before I had my idea. Being an unsung inventor was fun while it lasted.
Me too. Probably just Little Richard.
I invented removable flash media (e.g. SD cards) - I must have been about 10 (so 40+ years ago), I was talking to my friends about records, cassettes, cartridges etc and how in the future, these could all be replaced by a tiny, solid square of plastic that would just plug into a slot. I guess I might have just subconsciously stolen the idea from Star trek TOS - the ‘tapes’ props were just squares of acrylic.
Okay, all of you S-Dope Futurists need to come up with the next big thang.
You can use this thread to announce it to the world (we promise not to rush out to beat you to the patent).
I’m serious. Don’t say “Oh, look how creative I was as a kid.” YOU STILL ARE! Stop clicking on crap, go for a walk and THINK!
Mid to late 80’s I ran a BBS and was active on early internet Usenet (alt.talk.bizarre was one hangout). Some of my college housemates and I wanted to add graphics and formatting to the standard BBS and Usenet interfaces, but realized it would have to be done in a way that would work on any terminal no matter what the screen resolution so we couldn’t use fixed locations and sizes for objects on the screen. We decided that instead of just having VT100 connections or whatever we’d need a client running on the machine that was calling the BBS and it would get instructions for drawing shapes for placing text areas based on percentages of its screen size. The instructions were sent in a basic text format with tabs and newlines being important for structuring the instructions. We got as far as a rudimentary client and server sending a couple shapes and text blocks before we graduated.
About 10 years ago I was going through some old papers and found my notes on it. Realized that we’d essentially created a rudimentary version of HTML and a browser; if only we’d thought to use XML for formatting the instructions.
I bet there were 100s of systems out there doing stuff similar to what we did that predated our little experiment, but I still thought it was kinda cool that we foresaw the WWW.
Holy cow, I already gave up Gingko Beeroba. What more could you possibly want?
…with the taste you try to forget.
Go! Get some venture funding! Wish I knew some Eccentric Swiss Plutocrats…
Sure, but I’m not posting my latest inventions on a public message board; you’ll see them when they’re ready.
In the early 1970s, I was a high school student into photography and video production. (Anyone else remember the 1/2-inch reel-to-reel Sony PortaPak?)
Our video cameras had zoom lenses of course, and I realized that a zoom would be very useful on a still photo camera as well. For all I know, there already were zooms for SLRs, but I had never seen one. Much later they became very common, but I invented the concept independently.
Missed the edit window: I just checked, and I was about 12 years late to the game