I came up with the idea of a “topless barber shop” and my old man scolded me and gave me a line of BS about “being realistic” and shit. A guy opened one up in Vegas when I lived there and made boucoup money.
Think about: no liquor or gaming license needed, the customer has a sheet covering him (to keep his hands off the “barber” and other side benefits) and you are providing a legitimate service for a fee.
Oh well. I got the old man’s money when he died, so I don’t have to work too hard anyway!
Fagjunk Theology: Not just for sodomite propagandists anymore.
I came to the realization that I was immortal. This is based on the idea that everytime something could happen in two ways, the universe splits in two, one where it happens one way, one where the other possibility happened. Now, since the only universe that is fixed into reality for me is the one I am observing. Since I can’t observe a universe in which I am dead, anytime something happens that could kill me, I’ll die in some alternate universes, but my consciousness will continue in the ones where I survive. I’ll live forever, probably through an increasingly improbably chain of events as I get older.
Turns out somebody came up with the exact same idea in the 1950s.
I’m another one. Had my brainstorm back in 1995, when I was a senior in high school and was browsing through a computer catalog. They had TV capture cards on the page next to the external hard drives. Mine had a VCR built into it, though, so you could transfer programming off the hard drive.
It appears most of the people here are talking about inventions, but I had an idea that seemed crazy but turned out to be true.
Several years ago, I had an argument with my boss. It ended with him threatening to destroy my life by any means in his power. Considering the low regard I had for his power, I dismissed his threats.
In the next few years, I experienced a number of problems. Obviously everyone has an occasional run of bad luck. But once and a while, I would find myself thinking that maybe my boss was behind it all, secretly arranging all my misfortunes. But then I would think, “No, that’s ridiculous, there’s no conspiracy out to get you.”
Last year it all came to a climax. Not only did my boss finally get an opportunity to attack me openly, I also found out that he had in fact been spending hundreds of hours in the last few years working on ways to cause me trouble. And because he is a fairly high ranking man in the business I work in, he was able to influence other people to join him in these shenanagins.
So on the one hand, I was incredibly angry to find out the depths to which this man would sink. But more than that, I was vastly relieved to find out I hadn’t been slowly succumbing to paranoid delusions.
A small plane with an electric motor and solar panels on it’s wings. I thought it would be a cool toy and save kids money on batteries…NASA built one to use as a medium term test platform sort of like a weather balloon you could steer, with additional uses as a short term telecomunications sattellite. you know fly one over a big event or disaster area and use it to bounce signals off of until new towers could be erected…or the event was over. I came up with that in the 5th grade.
WHile on a two day amphetimine high in 1993 I pondered a business that gave people their time back by standing in line for them at the DMV. Then it came to my town about 5 years ago. Damn!!
Also the idea for the movie where Keanu Reeves is hired by the devil played by Al Pacino, played in the theater of my mind in 1986.
When I was a kid, just after I moved to Montreal, I had a crazy and impractical idea that they should extend the yellow line metro (yes, I was a metrophile back then) directly under Mount Royal and build a long elevator to take people all the way up to the top, right to the cross.
Years later, when I visited Bilbao, I found out that’s more or less what they have at Casco Viejo station: an elevator that goes to the top of the hill under which the station is built. (It’s not as big a hill as Mount Royal, and there’s a street-level exit as well.)
I’m constatly inventing things that not only already exist- but that are everyday objects. One day, I came up with an elaborate plan to build a casing and battery powered supply for my CD-ROM drive and rig it up so I could listen to music on the go. Then it dawned on my that portable CD players have been common for over a decade. Doh!
Oh man. Amen to this. For Dopers that don’t ski or otherwise don’t follow this kind of stuff (i.e., aren’t geeks like me) runaway straps represented kind of a compromise. They wouldn’t fly down the hill and cream other skiers, but there was the very real danger of them windmilling about and hitting you when you fell. A swinging 5 pound chunk of wood and steel can do a lot of damage.
Anyway, you should have at least made your dad patent the thing! You’d be rolling in royalties by now.
Anyway, as for myself, I thought of an automatic gear shifter on a bicycle, inspired by an uncle of mine with cerebral palsy and retardation. He finds shifting difficult, and I thought it would be nice if the bicycle would do it for him.
I found out, however, that such devices already existed. However, I also found out that they suck. Apparently they rely on centrifugal force to work, the result being that they apparently are much harder to shift in one direction than the other (don’t remember which).
So I hope one day to make a better one. I think I know how, too…
Back during the energy crisis of the '70’s with its attendant gas shortages, I came up with what I thought was an ideal solution. The obvious power source that everyone seemed to be overlooking in their quest for alternative energy was: the Passenger. As far as Human Powered Vehicles went, however, we basically had the bicycle–which had two problems:
It only had two wheels, which lets it fall over.
It only uses the legs (and to a lesser extent, gravity) to power it.
I solved the first by making it a tricycle, and solved the second by replacing the pedal design with a rowing machine idea to utilize the entire body as a power source.
As it turns out, a few companies have made these in the past, but the one in this country ( http://www.rowbike.com )discontinued production before I had my money saved up.
When in my alphabet/language design phase, I came up with the idea of adding a “zero” letter to my alphabet; figuring if it could revolutionize mathematics, it could potentially do the same for language. It turns out the Koreans thought of it about 500 years ahead of me. I kept mine anyway.
Sometime in the mid to late 80’s, when Nintendo (the original) was popular, I’d go to my friend’s and play MegaMan I ('course they didn’t call it I, just MegaMan) for hours. I was fascinated by the amount of information you could store in a small plastic box. A single cartridge, full of computer chips.
Wow, you could put MUSIC on computer chips! Imagine storing an album in digital form! You could make a portable player, just plug the computer chip into it! With no moving parts it would never break, the batteries would last longer, and you could take it anywhere! Unlike records, 8tracks, or cassettes, it would never wear out, either!
Yep. I invented the mp3 player. Then I went on to invent the internet, and fail in my bid to become president… but that’s another story.
I didn’t know the Olson Rowbike was discontinued - when did that happen? You can still get the Thys Rowingbike though, it’s a much better design anyway - I have one and love it. But bear in mind that pedal powered HPVs are more efficient than leg+arm machines; the only reason to get a row bike is to achieve a more balanced workout.
When I was about five or so and just learning to read, I used to read the signs on the London Underground about people falling onto the tracks and to stand back when the train was approaching. I told my parents that they should have a glass barrier between the platform and the rails, with doors in it that lined up with the train’s doors that would only open when there was actually a train in the station.
A couple of years later I was in Paris and saw that was exactly what they’d done on some of the Metro stations.
A few years after that, they finally got around to doing it on at least one Underground station - Westminster.
When I was a mere lad of 6 or so (thirty years ago), I remember arguing with my dad that one day, music would be recorded on small solid blocks of inert plastic with no moving parts. Of course I hadn’t the slightest idea about how this would be implemented.
Whiloe I was a physics student, I had a vague idea for a ‘neutrino telescope’ after reading about the landmark experiment that first detected neutrinos, well recently someone won the nobel prize for buildin such a thing .
I had an idea once, that I thought would make a good drawing - a person standing in front of a large globe of the world, touching the surface with a finger, and the view out a window next to him showing a gigantic hand coming out of the clouds, index finger extended.
Years later, I saw a cartoonist’s work who had the exact same idea.
I once thought of a way to cure spinal injuries by detecting which nerves were firing above the injury and using a device to fire the correct nerves below the injury. Turns out that’s the way Christopher Reeve is being helped.
Also invented a transponder technology that could be fitted to cars so that if they were stolen they could be tracked easily. Now I’ve found out that the UK government means to put a similar technology into cars soon : but to bill them for road tax
I’m curious. What would be the function of a zero letter? The only thing I could think of that would analogous to its mathematical role, would be to indicate the spaces, currently left blank, where there is no letter.0So0it0would0end0up0looking0like0this.
Back when I was a kid in the early 80’s, I came up with an idea for a sneaker where the soles were inflated like a tire, to provide more cushioning and protection. Now of course there are all kinds of athletic shoes with air chambers in the soles.
