Despite being abandoned in favour of semi-automatic pistols by almost all military and paramilitary outfits around the world, revolvers have their adherents, usually because they are compact and very nearly foolproof, requiring no complicated safety mechanisms yet are always ready to fire with the pull of the trigger. Under a barrel One issue with revolvers…
Continental is working on a new disc brake design for electric vehicles. Getting rusty If electric vehicles are driven moderately, they can rely almost entirely on electrical regeneration (using the motor to slow the car and charging the battery in the process – turning a Blessing into a Disguise). This means that there is a…
Alec Watson is the creator of the YouTube channel “Technology Creations”. His videos are all worth a watch, as they get into the fascinating details of how technology, and sometimes quite old technology, really works. Today I watched his video on how roller coaster design balances the economic need to have a high throughput of…
In his book “The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future” Kevin Kelly makes this provocative prediction of hindsight to come in 2050: Can you imagine how awesome it would have been to be an entrepreneur in 2016? It was a wide-open frontier! You could pick almost any category X and add…
Keeping things in perspective Two point perspective drawing uses lines to create the illusion of space on a flat surface. It’s a fascinating process well described in this YouTube video. The technique involves imposing a horizon line with two vanishing points on it. When drawing horizontal elements, either the left or the right vanishing point…
“Cup Vault is a patented insulating sleeve which utilizes a cutting-edge material that locks in your coffee’s temperature for up to 2 times longer.” Cup Vault This clever idea is an excellent example of Principle 6 – Universality, making a component of a product or service perform multiple functions. In this case, the Cup Vault can hold…
Unilid is a set of silicone lids that are said to form a secure airtight seal on multiple sizes and shapes of bottles, containers – even the open end of cut produce. It is an excellent example of Inventive Principle 6 – Universality, to make a component of a product or service perform multiple functions.…
I recently caught this Scott Galloway interview with the founder of Charity: Water, Scott Harrison. As the name implies, Charity: Water is dedicated to helping people in developing countries get access to clean water. The cause is vital, as they say on their site: 663 million people in the world live without clean water. In the interview,…
Applying “other way round” thinking to architecture Number 13 of the 40 Inventive Principles of Problem Solving is “the other way round”. Amidst much eye-rolling, Google has introduced the concept of the “landscraper”, a skyscraper turned on its side so that rather than being tall, it is wide, a building turned “the other way round.”…
1 or 0 Menu Items Using the Netflix menus with nothing but a TV remote could be a frustrating process, but Netflix has done a great job of keeping clicks to a minimum while making things intuitively obvious. One example of this is adding or removing shows from your watch list. When at the show…