BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Amos
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 09:48 PM

Concert pitch is either A=440 Hz or A=442 Hz. According to a Wikipedia article "A = 442 Hz is common in certain continental European and American orchestras (the Boston symphony being the best-known example), while A = 445 Hz is heard in Germany, Austria, and China["



A

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 09:53 PM

I prefer 441; 440 sounds too low for me, and 442 hurts my ears...: )

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 11:14 PM

My father in law invented the pressure activated paper that you could write on without a pen, the kind that allows contracts with 4 or 5 pages beneath to be all signed at once.

Back then they called it the carbonless carbon paper.

As an employee of Bouroughs, they kept the patent.


Hmmmm I think I got a sinister hmmm from Amos. Oh well, unless you incorporate certain ideas like Jules Verne did with action adventure they seem undoubtedly dubious.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Ebbie
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 11:45 PM

What I really would like to see being developed and perfected NOW is a combined energy that would free people forever from heating and cooling their domiciles. Solar, I undestand, depends on the rays of the sun- but why not heat garnered from the heat of the day? Even in winter daytime brings heat.

We tend to think in terms of either/or but who says that is how it must be or that it is how it WILL be? How about something switching effortlessly and seamlessly between wind, sun and water?

If something like that were developed it would open vast areas of the world that are currently not survivable, climatically speaking.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: bald headed step child
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 01:06 AM

Donuel, on your earlier post you mentioned the spinning rate of the galaxies being as fast at the edges as they were further in.

Something mindblowing I read, I believe on the Hubble/NASA site, is that previously it was thought that the further out from the center of the universe, things would slow down. You know, like they taught us in school, the big bang made everything go out and eventually it will stop and fall back in on itself, and keep repeating the process.

They have taken measurements now and found that objects further out are actually accelerating away from the center. I wonder what's pulling them, or maybe they are just falling over the edge?

BHSC

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 04:01 AM

Trsla's energy from the ether....wireless transmission of energy.

The other innovation would be, thinking without being taxed for it!

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 04:06 AM

Sorry, typo is the other one...

Nikolai Tesla's energy from the ether....wireless transmission of energy.

The other innovation would be, thinking without being taxed for it!

Intelligence infusions for the far left!

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: John Hardly
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 04:54 AM

Traditionally, the season opener begins with some National celebrity throwing out the first concert pitch.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 07:52 AM

We could do with some advances in battery technology. If they had developed at the same rate as PCs we'd have torch batteries that could rival a coal fired power station!

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Ebbie
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 11:56 AM

John H, I finally 'got' your remark. :) Before, I thought you had miss-posted.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Amos
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 12:19 PM

I designed some time ago, based on hypotheticals, a roofing system incorporating embedded actuators on a nanoscale for harvesting ambient energy whether it was mechanical (wind and sound vibration), thermal (ambient heat) or photonic (solar light across the spectrum), etc. (There is also some core resonant frequency of around 10 Hz (according to some) that is a constant motion rate of the planet itself). ANyway all these things--noise, heat, light, vibration--could be harvested IF the cost of doing so were low enough; so the key to such a system as Ebbie wishes for is nano-scale engineering that enables mass production of the kind of devices that can suck up small local surpluses of energy and do it cost effectively. It really makes no sense, for example, to pay for streetlights by burning coal.


A

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Ebbie
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 01:05 PM

Thanks, Amos.

Maybe what is needed - first - is a change of mindset as to cost-effectiveness.

For instance, when (most) people turned to gas/electric lighting, I'm sure that a great many people bemoaned the cost of buying and maintaining the new-fangled stuff. Much more expensive than rolling your own drip candles or inserting a wick into a bowl of bear grease.

I have no idea for how long people resisted switching to the new - which is telling in itself. It kind of implies that it didn't take all that long.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Joe_F
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 09:02 PM

Some scandalously inefficient technologies that we are all used to, that have been made nearly bearable by vast effort, and that *might* be gotten rid of with a little luck:

1. Incandescent light bulbs
2. Internal-combustion engines
3. Dentistry
4. Lead-acid batteries

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 10:01 PM

Ebbie I posted my heating colling system last year.

It is an 17 ft underground saline heat exchanger run on electricty from solar and wind.

heat, cold whatever you need, and it only needs 20 feet of ground.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Ebbie
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 11:17 PM

Describe it again, would you please, Don. I don't remember it.

"20 feet of ground" per home? Like, under the lawn? What about cities? And multi-family units?

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Mr Red
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 05:45 AM

I predict an economic downturn.

And innovations will probably accelerate - as companies find niche products that are cheap but effective, and actually serve the same markets (almost).