Unsought Input

I found an interesting article today that says the acutal inventor of the iPod is not Apple but some furniture salesman named Kane Kramer from the UK.  Apparently his invention was patented in 1979 (I believe he calls himself a revolutionary) but since he couldn’t afford to pay the costs to keep the patent, it fell to public domain where Apple more than likely found it and gobbled it up .  I do admit, it’s a great design and years ahead of it’s time.

I am borrowing this picture from his site that shows his early patent drawings.

What I also find interesting is that no mention of this guy would have ever come up if Burst Patents hadn’t tried to cash in on Apple’s sucess by trying to claim the iPod violated it’s own patents.  In Apple’s defence they said, wait, no, you don’t have the patent, we stole it (legally) from this British Bloke over here.  Oh, and thanks for the good idea, buddy, here’s a free iPod for your trouble!

Too bad his iPod broke after less than a year.  I feel kinda bad for this guy, I mean, if he had been able to hold onto his patent would we all be listening to music on our Kane Digital Audio Player?  Or would Apple have found another public domain patent to copy? It’s always interesting to me how these things turn out.  Any comments?

Lately we have been uber-enviro-nerds with the talk of wind turbines, deep lake cooling and environmentally friendly roller coasters. I just felt the need to put up another nifty energy saving device that was invented by a Bloke from the UK named Peter Hughes. He has created a ramp that absorbs kinetic energy from breaking or slowing down while driving your car over regular roadways. The idea is simple, use the cars wasted kinetic energy to power the streetlights and stoplights. There are a series of plates installed under the road which the cars will drive over, more than likely around stop lights or other areas where the traffic will be slowed. The weight of the car slightly shifts the plates, causing kinetic energy to be created. The energy is stored and then used to power whatever. It is better described on the official site, so I will just do you a favor and quote it here.

The ramp is unobtrusive, silent in operation, causes no
discomfort to the vehicles occupants and is entirely safe in
operation. The Ramp is designed to require the minimum
of maintenance and may be used for generating electricity
to power street lighting, traffic lights, road signs, with
the surplus being fed into the national grid. It also has the
capability to store electricity within a storage battery
facility.

I also found a video that you can watch that shows this in action.

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