[Closed] What did you think of first?

Not quite first, but I was on a winter hillwalking course years ago and all the instructors were using ski poles. After a while, we asked about this and they said it was for better balance in white-out conditions and to save wear and tear on the knees. We all tried them and thought they were ace but a pain to carry around when not being used. I asked if there was such a thing as a telescopic version. I subsequently managed to track own some in Austria and had to import them myself 😯

Remote central locking. Years before it was commonplace, I thought it'd be a great idea to remove locks from cars and have the central locking operate by remote.

socks

kellogs did a special day at our school, learning about advertising, product development, market research etc. It was quite fun. We had to invent a product, establish that there was a market etc.

I suggested cereal bars. With powedered milk that would give a milky texture when chewed, creating the ultimate on the go breakfast. This must have been, about 1993?

Mind you, my granddad invented the automatic razor long before remmington, only his used petrol,and blew up, scarring his face for life.

Blue steel.

1st job as a researcher in polymers & starches we looked at putting laundry powder/liquid into starch balls that would dissolve in washing machine.
12 months later...

The internal combustion engine. But I forgot to write it down.

I hold a patent on rectangles with rounded edges but unfortunately it's landscape 😥

Hydraulic cutters for emergency services when I was about 7, battery powered garden tools about 20 years ago (even had my electronics engineer dad do calculations on the power required but battery technology at the time made it impossible) and more recently darts with GPS transmitters to be fired from rifles to aid police in car pursuits.

Wish I had the balls or know how to have implemented any of my ideas through the years.

i thought somewhere cool where people could posts photos, stories, jokes or general info on one easy site so their friends and relatives could see and comment, would be cool. Can't see it taking off which is handy as have no skills to get it started.

Ohh and retrofit remote lights in houses - IR sensor built into the switch on the wall.

Concentric rear axle/pivot placement.
Dave Weagle nicked it off me,then trek nicked off him.I'm going to go round to Trek's house tonight and nick it back.

Ohh, and another - a price comparison website - even bought the domain www.bargainhound.com, started designing the site and my brother was researching technology. A few months later Pricerunner was on Breakfast TV having just launched.

Aged twelve I thought it would be ace to have a system which would adjust the tyre pressure on my exciting new All Terrain Bicyle on the fly. I even drew some pictures of my amazing innovation, but my dad said it was a crazy idea and a huge amount of weight, complication and hassle for no real benefit.

Twenty-two years later I am astonished to see someone is trying to bring a similar system to market.

[url= http://adaptrac.com/ ]http://adaptrac.com/[/url]

I'd be intriuged to see if it works, but deep down I know that my faither was right 🙂

iphone, yes really, design, specs etc - told not possible! damm me they brought one out a year later !!

I'm not sure anyone has done this yet, but it's only a matter of time - A sick air measuring device. I had the idea when I visited Llandegla recently.

What three things do middle class mountain bikers of means love doing?

1. Getting sick air on the jumps.
2. Measuring things.
3. Spending money on useless shit.

Put these three things together and they point to a very simple device for recording height gained as you throw down a big move. The technology is simple optics that can be ported over from numerous applications in other industries. Early models will probably be hire-out from a tent-like structure at places like Llandegla. After a few development cycles it will be suitably miniaturised to buy as a consumer unit. The analogy with strava is then obvious - except we're on a new axis here. Z-Strava.

johndoh - Member
and more recently darts with GPS transmitters to be fired from rifles to aid police in car pursuits.

Pedals coated in stealth rubber, then spikes in your shoes. No more pizza shins... 🙂

further to "What middle class [s]mountain[/s] bikers of means love doing?"

a phone app to link up as many strava segments as possible into a ride and then increase your recorded speed by a stated percentage

I thought of a strava like app six months before it became massive, even drew up some screenshots and discussed with app developer friend, nothing came of it, then all of a sudden strava was everywhere. It was probably already around when I had my idea.

A website where you could upload video clips and anyone could watch them. It wasn't really a goer at the time, when home internet access was dial-up with per minute call charges and it took five minutes to download a picture.

I believe the original owners of YouTube got 800 million for it.

Bugger.

I invented the internet. This was after I was a helicopter pilot with the SAS, but before I became an astronaut.

£50 avalanche transceiver*. I'm convinced it could be done but won't happen while confined to the mountain guide market willing to pay £150+. So mountaineers and skiers that aren't willing to pay that risk being killed in avalanches. A pack of 2x£50 devices would sell volume if marketed right IMO.

* I'm no electronic whizz and have not designed one.

I had a dream about pine lodges in a forest with an activity centre and swimming pools and then six months later some sod came up with an advert for centre parks.

Shame I was my 8 at the time and had no money other than about 30p pocket money destined to be spent on Juicy Fruit bubble gum.

a phone app to link up as many strava segments as possible into a ride and then increase your recorded speed by a stated percentage

More legitimately, could an app exist that analyses your max power over given time periods, then flags up local segments that you should be able to win. Preferably linking several of them via flat-ish (but well ridden as it could look at every strava ride, therefore picking out good cycling roads/trails). Thus producing the ultimate KOM bagging rides?

Back in the early 70's, as a young dj, I used to mix discs together to form seamless never ending dance rythms. I got the sack 'cos nobody liked it and it would never catch on. 🙂

back when video projectors were as big as a car, cost more than an house, had 3 separate CRT lenses / colours and took all bloody day to set up..... I used to make my own LCD projectors using little 35mm screen portable LCD TVs from the free-ads, carefully taking the screen out and fitting them inside kodak slide projectors. It took less time to build one than it took to focus the old CRT ones

when I was 14 (1969), the idea that you could ring your house and send it a message down the phone line to put the lights/heating on. British Gas are now advertising this - 43 years later. An underground bunker with special lighting so you could grow food and last out a nuclear attack (the Cold War years), more recently I have an idea for a crane with a boom that moves in and out to counter balance itself. I have ideas all the time.

Girlfriend needed a project idea to remarket something that already exists. I suggested sports bottle tops on bottled water. She got a good mark and twelve months later, they were everywhere. Neither of us got rich.

Never 'invented' anything new, just thought of new applications for existing gadgets.

Those rolling LED text diplays you get in post offices, a&e etc: as a child in the post office queue I thought it would be great to have one in the back window of your car that had butons on the dash for "sorry". "thanks", "back off a bit will you?" etc. Someone did make and market that but never took off.

Also years and years ago I thought a tiny hi-res digital camera mounted inside your windscreen on a 5-minute loop (to save memory) that you could use in motor accident disputes and eventually get discounts on your insurance premiums. Of course buses do so now, and is hugely popular with city cyclists here and motorists in eastern europe (see that thread about near misses/accidents that was on here the other day.)

I know someone who swears that infra-red sensor "terrain following" suspension is the future for motorcycles though. 😆

I used to sell fruit flavoured alcoholic water to friends at school. This was in 1989 well before alco pops were invented.

I had many happy customers as I moved onto gassing the liquied using a soda sttream and adding in no end of different fruit extracts. Pineapple was a hot seller.

We used wine yeast also that got the abv upto cira 14%, many piles of vomit outside school friends house parties was due to me

My ex is a buyer for a company which makes and owns a load of brands.

I suggested incorporating a bottle opening shape into the metal at the back of the webbed belt buckles.

Seems to have caught on.

Now i don't have to bite the tops off beer bottles 🙂

A superfast and compact winebottle cooler that I recollect worked by sudden pressure drops.

Oh and when I was young a digital wwatch that made you go invisible if you pressed a secret button. Loads of fun with that (in my head).

Crisps made from root veg other than spuds.

Teenage mutant ninja turtle backpacks in the shape of turtle shells

Mountian biking, I was offroading all sorts of crap long before fat wheeled wonders.

Internet cafes. A friend and I who were big into gaming realised that there would be a big market for gaming warehouses where there were loads of computers set up and big gangs on people would come on corporate events and kill each other en-masse in all the big games. As we discussed the idea (and I still think there's an untapped marker for corporate/stag party gaming warehouses) we realised that it probably had a short life span since people would prefer to play from home eventually so we talked about how we could expand the idea and give it some longetivity.

We hit on the idea of smaller places that were run as franchises where people could get a cup of tea and some sandwiches and do whatever they wanted, not just gaming. Of course we never really did anything and about 2 years later they were everywhere.

Plus there's my shower in a bag idea which I've never seen anyone else come up with yet, I'll keep that one a secret for now. Don't tell anyone.

edit: how many times did I use the word 'big' in that first sentence?

I did a project while on my first uni work placement to improve the removal of water from cans after they are 'cooked' so the best before date doesn't get fired into large drops of water, rendering them illegible (exciting stuff).
Ended up using the plant compressed air hooked up to a load of air knives which got me thinking that they would work really well as hand driers in public loos as it was the speed of the air, not the temperature that provided the best result.

This was early '97 I think. I looked for 2nd hand driers to cannibalise, but never got anywhere with it. Then, was reading a paper in about 2006 and saw an article about a revolutionary Dyson hand drier that used air knives....

Bit gutted. Serves me right for procrastinating so much!

I wrote a (bad) story about an evil goldfish back in 1990 ish.

Now Cartoon Network has a show called 'My Goldfish is Evil'. 👿

GRRRRR. Those riches could have been mine.

RE this:

Pedals coated in stealth rubber, then spikes in your shoes. No more pizza shins

I have often thought - flat shoes where the grips mirror the pattern of a flat pedal, so the pedal fits within the grips.

Pros are: Your foot would drop closer to the axle, your foot would be in a single optimum position (pro and con), much better traction.

my dad and a friend when working in special effects for the film 'rollerball' (the original) had the task of making the BIIIG TVs you see in one of the houses, they came up with the idea of using a flipped projector in the rear and essentially created rear projection flat screen.

i'm fully willing to be proved wrong on that one as i have no idea how much of what my dad told me growing up is true 😆 but he definitely did work in special effects when he was younger, on the film rollerball and then went on to work on big 'screen' projects like that pink floyd show with the lasers and the massive oval screen