Five Inventions We Still Need

There have been precious few real inventions or discoveries in our history, if you think about it. Fire. The wheel. The lever. The inclined plane. The screw. The steam engine. The turbine. Electricity. Radio. Video. The Macintosh.

Despite our own Patent Office giving out patents for things everyone else would laugh at as an invention, the real invention is a rare and precious jewel.

Here are five inventions we still need, and which no one seems to be able to even find an approach to inventing.

ONE A way to store electricity. Our current power is supplied real time over a power grid, running full tilt with maximum power. We take what we want of it, and then it goes away. There is no storage option for electricity. What is needed is a buffer – a temporary storage medium close to the power sources, which can hold an untold amount of electricity and supply it as it is needed. Such an invention would allow the power companies to fill the buffer when they are able, at a much slower rate, while the buffer would supply the grid as needed. No more peak usage worries. No more brownouts or blackouts. This invention would save our country a third or more in annual fuel savings, most of which is oil.

TWO A way to gain a much greater efficiency in our automotive engines. Face it. A lot less than half of the available power in our fuel is extracted for motive energy. The rest goes out the tail pipe. Why is that? It has always been that way. Sure, car and truck engines have grown more sophisticated all the time, but still, the basic design is flawed, since so little of the energy is used. If someone invented a new way to extract power from fuel, our cars would be getting 300 miles to a gallon. Better yet, we could fill our tanks with water, and the available hydrogen and oxygen in the water would run our vehicles for a month.

THREE A way to tap all the free energy in subspace. Subspace, by definition, lives in the all-connected nano dimensions on a quantum level. Supposedly, there is an infinite quantity of free energy there, just for the taking. If anyone ever invented a device that could tap into that energy, there would not be the need for petrochemical fuel, steam turbines, internal combustion engines – none of it. Such power could be connected directly to generators in the power grid and in our vehicles and private homes. I suspect (and so do a lot of others) that such a device would resemble a radio.

FOUR A way to utilize the magnetic fields of the planet and/or universe, in order to overcome gravity. Some few people maintain that the military already has such aircraft. You can easily imagine what such a vehicle might be like. No motors. No fuel. Just receptors built into the hull of an airtight, self-contained vehicle. Want to travel anywhere on earth? Just grab the controls and go. Want to go into orbit? No problem, just travel at any suborbital speed and in an short time, you are there. Want to come back? Again, no problem with excessive speed of re-entry. Travel back at your leisure. The same would be true of going to the moon. You could get there in a day or so, stay as long as you want, and come back when you are ready. No rockets. No toxic rocket fuel, burned in the atmosphere. No high G’s. No chance of burning up on re-entry. The magnetic forces are there. The energy they contain is more than enough to do what we want with it. All we need is an invention to make use of it.

FIVE A way to gently transmute energy and atoms into more complex matter. I know, I know. A Replicator, you say. Already been invented – in Star Trek. But the invention I am talking about is a non-violent way to make simple carbohydrates (sugars) and lipids (also sugars) out of any form of energy applied to water and carbon dioxide (CO2). The formulas we already know, from (left handed) simple sugars to complex carbohydrates, amino acids and proteins. Why do this? Such an invention would supply the world with food for everyone, even cattle, for a fraction of the cost and toil that comes from growing it. Think of the world’s population being liberated from the capriciousness of planting, watering, and harvesting seasonal crops, of being freed from the labor, power consumption, and the necessary use of fertilizers and pesticides. Of course we would still grow our food and raise our herds and flocks, but nobody would ever have to die of famine or lack of nourishment. (Imagine how this would solve the need to supply food on a trip to the planets.) Sure, maybe someday there would be Replicators that supply us with all the dishes we love on the spot, but first, let someone invent the countertop box that will duplicate what every living cell can already do – produce complex matter (sugars, amino acids and proteins) out of energy, water and air.

OK. These are the five new inventions we need before this new millennium ends. Preferably, a lot sooner, please. Say, in the next 94 years? Or, how about in the next dozen years? That way most of us would live to see it.

We need these, you know. Most of us are still miffed that we were promised (but not given) flying cars, vacations on the moon, and jet packs. Not getting the future we were promised really sucks, no matter how good all these new Macs and iPods are, and how much we love them.

Regards,
Roger Born
“Laws of physics cheerfully broken upon request. *Void where prohibited.”

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