What common thing did you invent or conceive of before it was known or commercialized?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

In other words, are/were there commonly used things that you had conceived of long before they appeared in common use?

For example, in my case, in the mid 1970s when I was doing yardwork, I started putting a portable cassette player in a knapsack that I would listen to with headphones. So, with tongue in cheek, I can say that I sort of invented a walkman.

Another example - also in the '70s, I thought that it would be really cool if there existed some giant, super-jukebox (with, let’s say, thousands of LPs) that you could phone in to, and listen to an album being played, somehow connected to the stereo system. So, sort of streaming.

Anyone else?

2

Back when gmail first launched and was invite only I used all my invites on myself to create a bunch of high-storage (for the time) email accounts that I then emailed all my music and ripped DVDs and stuff to.

I’m sure it wasn’t really the first “cloud storage” system but it was definitely before it feasible for everyone. It was also really annoying to make and took way too long

3

In university, I worked for a small environmental nonprofit that was constantly trying to experiment with new things, but had essentially zero resources.

In one project, I wanted to be able to better monitor our solar PV system (which, at the time, was usually not internet-connected). I patched together some random hardware we had lying around, reverse-engineered the control protocol used by the inverter, and wrote a script to talk to it over a serial cable. That became the official data logger for the next decade or so. These days, it’s just a built-in function of any mainstream inverter.

In another project, we wanted to digitally catalog our hundreds of books and 'zines, many of which had no ISBN, having either predated that system or else was put out by small-time publishers who never bothered. With the help of the Dope (Making a 6-digit numeric hash from a string?), we created our own barcode system and indexed them all with an off-the-shelf barcode scanner and a simple script. These days, I imagine that could be done with a trivial smartphone app.

But my proudest “invention” was at a completely different job, where I was doing backcountry trailwork. This was a gig that sent our crew of 20 or so young adults out into the wilderness to build and maintain hiking trails, many hours away from civilization and infrastructure.

Our bathroom was a giant pit in the ground we dug out with shovels, far away from camp and water. It stank, of course, but was more or less fine… on nicer days. But with the frequent thunderstorms, it really sucked having to go poop during heavy rain. There was a small stash of toilet paper up there in a ziplock bag, but in the dark and in the wet, it was very hard to see and manipulate. The roll would frequently end up soaked through and become the texture of paper mache… believe me, that is the last thing you want to deal with after a long, hard day of digging.

One day I was sick at camp with a horrible case of cryptosporidiosis (waterborne parasite causing incredible stomach upsets). It was also raining. I had to make the trek like seven times that day, in the rain, dealing with that mess of TP every single time. I finally had enough and was determined to do something about it.

I looked around our trash pile back at camp… found a Folgers coffee can, one of those giant ones. Some twigs and paracord and a 1970s book on knots later, I had fashioned an outdoor toilet paper holder. It was a simple, jury-rigged solution, but it tremendously boosted morale. Man, the crew wouldn’t stop talking about it for weeks afterward…

(AI illustration)

4

When I was single, I came up with the concept of putting coffee in a bag to make a single cup, kind of like a tea bag, but with coffee. I pitched it to an entrepreneur friend of mine and he discouraged me with all kinds of legal, liability shit (like, what if the bag breaks and somebody chokes on the grounds). Low and behold about a year later, they came out with Folger’s Coffee Singles. I often wondered if he stole my idea and ran with it. I never asked him.

5

Very cool invention, in the 1970’s I discovered snail slime as a cosmetic additive. I was not successful at harvesting it in sufficient quantities, so I abandoned it. I was recently reading about how it was discovered, and the scientist who discovered it did so exactly the way I did. After doing yard work all day and picking up snails, we both noticed how soft and slippery our hands were later that day when we washed them.

I also invented freon filled cannisters to use as greenhouse window openers, not aware that gas filled cylinders were already in use. I think mine was better as it used a diaphragm instead of a leaky seal around the piston shaft.

6

Decades before LLMs were a thing, I was dancing around the concept in my mind, considering how automatically words can just come out of our brain without really consciously thinking of what to say. I thought perhaps there was some deep inherent logic encoded into the syntax of our language itself that just worked like a program running on our wetware. If only I’d written those ideas down…

7

As a young child in the 1970s, I learned about records and cassettes, I had the idea that music would one day be recorded onto tiny plastic rectangles that had no moving parts. I had no idea how it would be implemented other than perhaps ‘electronics’, like what was inside my transistor radio (which of course I had opened to take a look inside).
This sort of happened although not in any mainstream way - some music was and is sold on SD cards - I suppose it could have been the logical choice of popular physical medium after CD/DVD if things hadn’t moved to downloads and streaming.

8

In the early '70’s I thought it would be so cool to put a tiny camera in a little remote control airplane and fly it around.

Well, guess what, you can probably buy that stuff at walmart now. Or just load a flight sim.

9

In the early 1980s, TV remotes were one button = one function. The CH+ and CH- buttons would change the channel, the VOL+ and VOL- buttons would change the volume, etc. I had the idea for a TV that would display a “user interface” on the screen, and the remote would have directional buttons that would navigate the on-screen features and a button to perform the selected action.

10

Beginning of the '90s I wanted to write a book or a graphic novel about a brain implant that provided augmented reality capabilities, with with carbon nanotubes that would organically grow as needed to act as connecting cables inside the brain to directly stimulate the visual cortex. Another idea I was too lazy to follow through.

11

Well, to move off tech things

I was reupholstering a chair. It needed a two color fringe for the bottom. Not available. And believe me I searched.

So I invented a unique, I believe, fringe maker.

Two pieces firm wire. Two double end blocks with wing nuts to hold the wires and a strip of twill tape.

I wrapped yarn around the wires encasing the twill tape. When wrapped sew down the middle with a zig zag stitch. Open the wing nut on one end and slide the fringe off pulling another strip of twill tape up. Wrap again.

Took awhile but it worked beautifully.

Still have the prototype around here somewhere.

I’m sure a mechanized fringe maker in a factory in a similar type thing, just super fast.

12

In the early 1970s I was in high school and into photography and video (anyone remember 1/2-inch RTR EIAJ?) and thought it would be a great idea to put a zoom lens on a still camera. I was disappointed to learn that someone had already thought of the idea. (At the time they were rather rare and expensive, and used mostly by pros, which is why I had never seen one.)

13

Most of these are so high-minded, I’m embarrassed. But I absolutely invented Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. That is to say, I was putting chocolate in peanut butter, or peanut butter on chocolate, before I’d ever heard of the candy brand.

14

Me too! I was walking in my high school cafeteria, holding a Hershey bar when I ran into a classmate holding a tub of peanut butter.

15

Not nearly as grim or violent as the true commercial origin, though:

16

When I was little I invented Blizzard ice cream treats. Sometimes there were only crumbs left in the cake pan, but if you mix them into softened ice cream…

Later I invented the wireless printer. It is so obvious to us now.

17

Back in the mid-90’s I was chatting with my buddy about this cool new thing called the internet, and one of his first questions was, do you think it could be used to share music? And I was like, nah, even on a fast modem it takes like 20 minutes to download one song. Never work.

18

I remember thinking someone should invent a way to connect your mouse and keyboard to your PC without the clutter of cables.

Though it turns out I prefer cables, they just seem far more reliable to me than wi-fi and batteries.

19

A friend of mine in high school in the mid '70s was telling me that music would be stored on chips some time in the future. You didn’t grow up in Ottawa by any chance?:grin:

People’s imaginations and ideas are fascinating and it’s cool how different people come up with similar concepts independently.

20

The Pogo Ball. I was about 5 years old. When they actually were available a few years later I was PISSED, but also asked for one for my birthday.