Invention: Throw-away parachutes

Technology 3 July 2006
New Scientist Default Image
The new chute cuts down on fabric demand, yet slows cargo descent to a safe level

(Image: ASSC)

For more than 30 years, Barry Fox has trawled through the world’s weird and wonderful patent applications, uncovering the most exciting, bizarre or even terrifying new ideas. His column, Invention, is exclusively online. Scroll down for a round-up of previous Invention articles.

Throw-away parachutes

Dropping emergency food and supplies into disaster zones may be humanitarian, but it is too expensive, says the US government’s Army Soldier Systems Centre in Natick, Massachusetts. Money is wasted on costly parachutes which cannot be recovered for re-use.

So the ASSC has developed a disposable chute which is as effective at cushioning a dropped cargo as existing designs, but at one-third of the cost.


Conventional parachutes are made by laboriously sewing several dozen suspension ropes to a large “umbrella sheet” of nylon, which is itself made by sewing many smaller sheets together.

In contrast, the new chute is put together using a dozen strips of polypropylene, each a metre wide and 30 metres long. The strips are arranged in a square criss-cross, like a giant raffia mat, and lightly stitched together where they cross.

The ends of each strip are tied to a short rope, and all the rope ends are gathered together and tied to the load. When the cargo is thrown from a plane the contraption billows into an umbrella chute.

Tests with cargo loads dropped from C-130 aircraft demonstrated that the budget chutes descend at well below the safe rate, of 25 metres per second.

Read the cost-cutting parachute patent.

Ding-dong merrily

It’s like Dance Dance Revolution for bell ringers: a system that tells players when to shake their instruments.

In a handbell choir each member holds two bells which produce different notes when shaken. To play melodies and chords the choir must learn which bells to shake and when. This takes time and skill, limiting the number of tunes choirs can learn and deterring children from joining choirs.

Now three American inventors have developed an electronic system that they claim will help old-fashioned bell choirs stay in tune, and allow players to learn more melodies, more quickly.

Each time a note is played on an electric piano, the system converts it into a digital code describing its pitch and timing. This information is sent to a wristband worn by each player using radio or infra-red signals. Vibrating pads and flashing LEDs on their wristbands tell the players when to shake and when to stop.

The code can be easily recorded onto a memory chip or disc, allowing the choirmaster to leave the piano and join in with the bell ringing while the recording sends out coded instructions.

The same system could also be used to liven up church bell ringing, the developers claim. Hallelujah!

Read the electronic bells patent.

Quill-inspired printer

The quill pen may be a few hundred years out of date as far as writing implements go, but Xerox believes it could be the future of printing technology.

Ink jet printers use a lot of power to push ink through tiny nozzles. This means the batteries in portable printers quickly go flat, while the nozzles can become clogged if the ink does not have exactly the right viscosity.

So the Palo Alto Research Centre in California (PARC), run by Xerox, has developed a new type of printer with tiny cantilever arms that flip between an ink reservoir and the paper, picking up and depositing a speck of ink powder or drop of liquid ink.

The cantilever arm is around 2 millimetres long and is flipped using electrostatic forces. The main stem of the arm is coated with Teflon, with a bare metal tip that is slit like a fountain-pen nib so that it picks up and deposits a few pico-litres of ink every time it flips.

Multiple arms can be used to deposit different coloured inks, and making the nibs smaller would increases the printer’s resolution.

PARC says the same system can also be used to transfer precise doses of drugs into pills or to automate the analysis of very small DNA samples.

Read the PARC quill pen patent.

Read previous invention columns, including:
