GENEVA (dpa) – A device to take the top off a breakfast egg, a mechanical dog turd remover or a portable solar generator.
They are all there for the admiring at the 30th International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva.A host of useful, practical things along with offbeat devices which people never knew they needed will be also there to entertain visitors. And who could resist novelties like the “intelligent and interactive football robot”, just in time for the June World Cup, or the ultimate winter sports machine, the “Snow Bike for the Third Millenium”.Inventors don their thinking caps with the aim of making life more pleasant and earning some money from their ideas at the same time, said Jean-Luc Vincent who founded the fair and has organized it ever since. From May 1 to 5 inventors from five continents will be on hand for this bumper expose of 1,000 new things from 645 exhibitors.The fair is a premier marketplace for new techniques and products and is designed to bring together the boffins and companies who may be interested in marketing the fruits of their labour.The devices on display do have one thing in common: they have to be patented and can only be exhibited once. Old hat inventions that have been gathering dust on workshop shelves are unwelcome in Geneva.Romania boasts the most inventions on its stand, with Germany’s 26 innovations only enough to give the country sixth place. Israel and Ukraine are taking part for the first time.Categories range from alarm systems to machine-tools, production processors, foodstuffs, cosmetics, sports articles and musical instruments, not to mention telecommunications equipment, furniture and all sorts of everyday aids. There are 36 prizes for items judged to be the best in their class.The emphasis in Geneva is not on the weird and wonderful but rather on technological solutions which can be produced economically and made to earn money. On average one in two of the novelties in Geneva makes it into production.The fair aims to help inventors overcome the kind of hurdles that often put off people from coming up with bright ideas in the first place. Inventors are frequently seen as eccentric, even obsessed and many a proud boffin has little idea how to market his idea. For that reason members of the general public are in the minority at the Geneva fair. Most of the visitors are businessmen, dealers and potential investors.
