What did you 'invent' then discovered was already a thing?

[goingback]

When i was young i stayed in a tent watching my dad fishing and some people were on a boat fishing and i invented a floating cabin you could fish from and stay in . Years later saw someone had beaten me to it.
Also remember being told i was daft for suggestion using the vacuum cleaner to dry up the shower.

As a small child, pondering how some people had more than others and how if the government allocated jobs and gave everyone the same, life would be much fairer. In my late teens I realised I had come up with Communism.

Moulded t shirt bras.

I remember being a skinny teen hating that all bras had the stupid centre seam and looked awful under my tight fitting tops. If only they had smooth bras with slight padding to hide the nipples....

Also trainer socks.

Age 9 I realised you could use the energy from car wheels turning! Thought I had invented something very near perpetual motion. Age 13 I found out about alternators and then hybrid cars and my world just crashed and burned. I never actually told a soul in case my idea was stolen..

LMAO !!
That would be a hilarious presentation on dragons den.
I now have to go and Google how long public libraries have existed

I invented dying white poodle’s various colours to match my outfits.
I’ve never owned a poodle.

When I was about 7 I called my sister a twat thinking I’d just made up a word. I may have subconsciously heard it but totally convinced I’d just invented it. Got such a bollocking..

Everyone has emailed their work to themselves since email was a thing….

I invented the phrase “care experienced”, trying to come up with something that included a lot of groups of children and young people who had time in care, from brief periods to lifelong.
I used it at a national conference and suddenly, it was everywhere.

I also invented Google, years before the internet.

My friend invented the sieve one afternoon after we'd had a smoke.

I LOVE this one!!! I would buy it too! X

Sieve 😂

I invented wet wipes for surfaces and dishes. We were camping and it was my turn to wash up. I said wouldn't it be great to have a baby wipe that had washing up liquid in that you could wipe the worst off and then go rinse everything. I split up with boyfriend and never saw the other friends again. A year or two later kitchen wipes came out. I swear his friends stole my idea and are now super rich. I will never know I suppose....

When I was a lazy teen, walking 30 min to school, I thought it would be great if there were moving walkways instead of the sidewalk, so I didn't have to actually walk. All the way to school, I invented this concept: they woukd have seats, because who wants to stand so long, they would be covered, to shelter you from the rain and they would stop at intervals to allow you to get in and out safely.
Then I realised I had invented the bus.

On similar walk to school my cousin thought it was great if chefs could come and cook for you. But better yet, if you could go somewhere and they cooked for you, so you could actually leave the house. And then we realised she invented the restaurant.

A pre-app era Uber.

I even had a slogan "don't drink and drive, ring 555". You could ring 555 from anywhere in the UK and the operator would sort you a booking with a local taxi firm without you having to call multiple firms / know who to call in an unknown location etc.

in the early eighties, when there were 4 channels on the TV, my Dad said "one day, we'll have hundreds of channels and will be able to watch what we want when we want and pause it when we want to pop to the loo etc. Yes, my Dad invented Netflix
(shame he died in the eighties and didn't get to try out his invention)

I am positive I invented Love Film. And online grocery shopping.
I remember being 8 and thinking - what if you could order movies to your house instead of having to go to Blockbuster? And what if you could just make a list of the food you need and someone brings it to your house?
Typical, only good ideas I ever had and someone beat me to it 🤣

I've been doing embroidery lately and when I couldn't decide which colour thread to use on a particular flower, I took two strands of white and one strand of red.

I've seen a billion embroidery YouTubes and Instagrams but never seen anyone mix threads. Maybe I have actually invented this 😂

Just remembered another one. This is industry specific but I am still a bit upset thinking I could have made some good money out of it.
It was years ago, just after Uni. I was working in a tiny B&B in the middle of nowhere and had to manually input the room prices on all websites where we were advertising (Booking.com, Expedia, etc). It took ages! I remember thinking how great would it be if there was a software that could be used to send the prices to all these websites. So you would only input the prices once and it filled the little boxes on all those channels. Imagine how much time and money this would save large hotel chains who surely had to have dozens of people just doing this job.
I actually thought I needed to find someone in IT to help me develop this idea.
Then I moved to London and working in a larger hotel discovered someone had beaten me to it. Is called a channel manager and there are loads of them now.

Someone needs to open drive thru cashpoints.

The phrase 'bitter and twisted.'

Not that recent - I took them on a hiking trip after A levels when I was 18 - I turn 50 this year…

Instant risotto that you just add water too and mix and it's cooked straight away, kept telling DP what a good idea it would be then saw it in Sainsbury's and was gutted

Already a thing when I was a child in my town.

I'm still semi-convinced I invented putting your hands/fingers together to make a heart shape. Probably not though.🫶

Southern Comfort with lemonade and lime cordial. We called it the Haribo drink, I was upset when I realised it was already a thing.

😂😂😂😂😂😂