Inventions that might interest you..

This week was “invention week” on Daily Planet, a daily science show on Discovery Canada. Some of the inventions were pretty interesting so I thought I would share them with you..

The first one is a printer with a special program which automatically prints off a section of a tree, whenever you have printed a tree’s worth of paper. So let’s say 5000 pages = 1 tree, then on the 5000th page a tree trunk section will be printed off to remind you of the amount of paper you are using.

The second one is an invention by the same lady who invented the printer described above. This time it’s a “headcount balloon,” which floats over demonstrations, and using special software, determines a headcount of the number of protestors. This is especially important since news agencies always give a slimmed down figure of the number of demonstrators.

This invention is especially exciting for me, since I worked in the energy efficiency field. Fifth Light Technology is a Canadian based company, headed by Joseph Dableh. The company invented a way to reduce energy consumption of fluorescent lights by as much as 60% without any noticible difference in the amount of light emitted. This invention is not only important from a financial point of view, but also from an environmental one as well. According to an article on this website

“Lighting represents at least 30 percent – and more often greater than half --
of a building’s electrical energy costs. With each Fifth Light dimmer saving an
average 350 KWh of electricity per year, if the technology were installed in 200
office towers, it would replace the output of one large coal-fired generator or
80 percent of an average nuclear reactor.”

Now that’s innovative!

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