The world is full of new ideas these days; there’s something new to please and surprise us virtually every day.
Either it’s a new telephone that will double as a camera, computer, diary, notebook and games machine, or it’s a fridge that knows when you’re running out of something, (and it orders replacements from your local supermarket too!), or a car that is quite capable of parking itself, with little or no help from the owner!
All brilliant ideas. Some that someone has designed, which he/she now has to convince us that we actually need.
Like the latest craze for coffee machines that do everything by themselves, but only work with some highly expensive little packages of ground coffee, only supplied by the manufacturer of the machine.
I find my old coffee plunger works just as well, if not better – and each cup costs a fraction of the price from these new machines, and I can make more than one cup at a time as well.
All this inventiveness is fine, and I’m sure we are all grateful for the washing machine, the electric kettle, the air conditioned car, the fountain pen, the CD disc and the laptop computer, but I am sure there are many areas of our lives where we all say “I wish someone would work out how to make grass stop growing when it’s an inch tall!”
or “Why don’t they incorporate a mirror into mobile phones, so I can check my hair at a moment’s notice, should I need to?”
Very often, I’m positive it’s the simplest things that inventors and designers forget about, when they produce their grand ideas, and I got to wondering, what suggestions we could come up with to test the mettle of these designing boys and girls!
So, I’ve listed a few that have occurred to me below, and I’m wondering now how many bright ideas the readers of ‘My Life-My Story’ can come up with, which would make things easier for us all, or add a new dimension of pleasure or even make us live longer or something.
The very fact that you people are readers of this excellent site tells me your minds are still active and efficient, so how about listing some ides of your own and sharing them with the rest of us, (you don’t need to be too serious if you don’t want to!)
Anyway, here are a few of the ideas I’ve had myself – I’m sure a lot of you will be able to come up with some much more imaginative projects, but these are just intended to be a starting point…
- Why doesn’t someone invent a type of plastic that can be used to make toothpaste tubes that stay rolled up like the old metal ones? The present ones waste an awful lot of toothpaste, unless you have a special gadget to clip onto it, (which will obviously cost money).
- How about designing car dashboards that incorporate a pull-out shelf, to act as a table for the passenger, with a raised edge like on tables in yachts, to stop items falling off. I know my wife could use one of these, when she’s applying makeup as we hurtle along the freeway, her eyebrow pencil poised, about three millimeters from her left eye!
- This one isn’t so much an invention, but more of a suggested correction for a design fault. Why don’t they put the serial number of computers, printers, fridges, and all manner of other, mostly heavy, articles, on the front instead of hidden away at the back?
Then, when the inevitable moment arrives that you are on the phone, talking to the manufacturer about the fault that has developed, you don’t have to get a removalist in to assist you in turning the item, so you can see what the serial number is! It would also help enormously, if they printed the number in larger than six point type, especially when it’s we old-timers trying to read it, with our failing eyesight!
As an added help, it would also be nice if the model name and number of the piece of equipment could be shown on the front as well. (I’ve had numerous HP printers on my desk over the years and I believe all of them had that important piece of information hidden).
Those are just three ideas, to get the ball rolling, (or whatever other method you can come up with for moving things!), but as I have said, I’m sure you good people can leave me in the shade with the ideas you will have.
So thinking caps on folks – perhaps we can form a “My Life- My Story, Think Tank”, and show all these professional inventors a thing or two!
© 2022 - Brian Lee
