Oversights

wetware

You are focusing on the wrong stuff:-)

I am thinking more of things that are ---DOH! I could have done that......

pet rock

folding milk carton

intermittant wiper blades

cruise control

Not exactly in the same category, but there were a few things in electronics that I would have produced, if I had the facilities, some time before anyone else did. These are mainly blackbox type ICs that need few or no external components: like 3-terminal regulators (fixed and adjustable), audio and rf amplifiers, and the like. This is not in hindsight. I was long frustrated by ICs that need almost as many external components as their discrete counterparts, and spent a lot of time working out how the externals could be eliminated by on-chip techniques.

Another category is first-person 3-D video games. I didn't have the detailed technical knowledge to design everything myself, but I often worked out the principles in my mind.

The cosmic microwave background was discovered only by accident, almost

em.

Also forgot about putting an imbalanced motor inside a small platic housing ----- YEEEEESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!

The phonograph could have been invented in the medieval times or perhaps even ancient Rome or Greece.

...then there were the ideas that sat on the shelf for nearly 2 millennia.

There were home hobbyist- gadgeteer-type DIY articles on these topics decades ago.

Cheers! Rich

Rich Grise wrote:

Patent filing date: Dec 1, 1964 It could be argued that Ford and Chrysler tried to screw the inventor.

...or it could be argued that this was an obvious notion.

:Modern cruise control (also known as a speedostat) :was invented in 1945 by the blind inventor :and mechanical engineer Ralph Teetor. :[...] :The first car with Teetor's system was the Chrysler Imperial in 1958. :

Good one!

IIRC laser action was predicted in 1917 by Einstein

Dirk

Yes - never heard of that one before. Electric batteries... ? Some say they were invented millennia ago.

Some decades ago, I read an article that they'd found some relics in ancient Egyptian archeology sites that are very suggestive of electric batteries.

Cheers! Rich

The problem with three-terminal voltage regulators is the thermal design. Widlar famously published a paper apparently proving the impossibility of integrating the pass transistor on the control IC, shortly before his LM109 was introduced.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Ancient Egyptian electric lights!

Dirk

Iraq. The so-called "Batteries of Babylon". Dubious claim, but they were said to include 60/40 solder and copper. The relics were apparently looted during the American invasion.

I'd like to see that. BTW, those ideas of mine were from 35-40 years ago.

Things that should, or could, have been invented /discovered long before they were.

hanson wrote: There are heaps, thousands of the items you are looking for in the world's patents libraries, all fixed ideas only, but epoch making in the minds of the inventors including this one from Einstein:

I think you're confusing Egypt with Iraq.