Professor Stavros Georgakopoulos (pictured above) exemplifies FIU’s inventing culture. The College of Engineering and Computing faculty member started with a novel idea: integrate the principles of th…
invention – read more
Every invention starts out with an idea, but you cannot patent something that is merely an idea. In order to obtain a patent, the idea must mature into an invention. Think of it as crossing over the i…
invention – read more
Summary
The introduction of the Poor Law in the late 16th century, which introduced principles that would later become par
|
Posted: Dec 27, 2018 11:16 AM
Necessity is not the mother of invention, contrary to what the well known adage says. Everyone suffers under the same necessity for a given circumstance or relevant state of technology, and most people just accept the limitations of the present, adjusting their lives to them. Most people don’t invent, they just make the best of a situation. Others, however, are not satisfied with the way things are and want to find a better way.The real mother of invention is vision. Inventors don’t just see what is, they see what could be. Perhaps “inventor” is too restrictive a term. Innovator is a more generalized term, someone who makes anew, who doesn’t follow the old pattern, but makes a different, hopefully better one. It might be a consumer product, but it could just as well be a new business process to make a company more efficient or effective. It could be a scientific breakthrough that opens up whole new avenues for progress, but innovation itself doesn’t have to be ground shaking. The way that most products improve from crude but usable ideas is through tweaks and adjustments.I recently came upon a little gadget by accident, but it caught my attention. Guitar strings need to be changed periodically, and the process of turning the tuning keys is long and tedious by hand, having to turn the key many times. Hand winders that attach to the key and make the winding easier have
Screenshot: NetflixHave you watched the new Netflix movie Bird Box starring Sandra Bullock yet? It’s been divisive, with some people saying they love it and other people claiming that they hate it. But I absolutely loved it, and I have a theory about one of the most difficult questions of the entire movie: What are the monsters, exactly?First, this is your chance to abandon this article if you haven’t seen the movie yet. I loved it and it reminded me of some fantastic 1990s limited TV-series adaptations from Stephen King like The Stand and The Langoliers. And if you want to see it with unspoiled eyes, go ahead and do that now.Again, this is your last chance to abandon this article, because there are major spoilers ahead. Last chance…Screenshot: NetflixOkay. Are the spoiler-phobics gone? Let’s get started.The monsters of Bird Box are social media. Seriously.Think of Bird Box as a new entry into the old-fashioned 1950s monster movie genre, but instead of the midcentury fears about the Cold War, nuclear weapons, and communism we’re exploring the New Cold War and fears of what social media is doing to our brains. By putting on the blindfolds, the characters of Bird Box are protected from the monsters, which are actually the influences of social media.Films like The Thing From Another World (1951), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (both the 1956 and 1978 versions), The Blob (1958), The Day of the Triffids (1962), and Them! (1954), are ostensibly monster movies—but they’re actually about the fear of communists infiltrating America, even though the movies don’t talk about the Soviet Union explicitly. The monsters of those old movies were stand-ins, just as the unseen monsters of Bird Box are stand-ins for one of our greatest fears today, the poisonous influence of social media.I know you might be thinking that I’m only seeing what I want to see in the movie—that the monsters are just a thing that I’m forced to think about every single day,
Chaminda Jayasinghe with his invention
A technician from Kottawa in Galle has invented a signal system to prevent wild elephants from being run over by trains. The new inventor Chaminda Jayasinghe said that he had already received letters patent for six out of 52 new inventions. He was of the opinion that Sri Lanka Railways and the Department of Wildlife and Conservation could examine the installation and improve its efficiency or modify it so that it can be used to make railway line trouble-free of elephants. He said that it can be used first on an experimental basis. He said the system could be turned out at a cost of about Rs.50,000.
He has named the new invention as a safety system to save wild elephants from train accidents. He said that he used soild conductor plates, a sensor, an Arduino circuit and inverter circuit to turnout the safety system.
“Two good conductor plates should be placed in between the rails and the sensor is fitted to a rail. Power is them supplied to them. A control box with Arduino circuit and the invertor circuit is installed by the railway line and power is supplied to it with a solar panel. Ar