Fair
Geneva Invention Salon: Mobile beach chair and other ideas
Ronald (l) and Robin Brockmann present their mobile beach chairs in Geneva. photo
© Christiane Oelrich/dpa
Inventors are looking for a breakthrough at the inventors’ fair in Geneva. For example, with a portable beach chair or an idea for generating energy from rainwater.
Inventors want to improve the world with brilliant ideas They have the big stage in Geneva every year. The 49th Inventors’ Salon is taking place there, according to the organizer Palexpo, the largest of its kind with an exclusive focus on inventions and the licensing market. A good 1,000 inventions from around 40 countries are a record. In 2023, almost 24,000 visitors came to the trade fair. There are also bright minds from Germany.
The mobile beach chair
Who doesn’t know the problem on the beach in high season: all beach chairs are fully booked, and in general: at up to 15 euros a day, lounging around in the idyllic beach is not a cheap pleasure on longer vacations. Ronald Brockmann, from Kuchelmiß near Rostock, has come up with a solution. The pensioner (70) has invented a portable beach chair, twelve kilograms in a carrying bag, which can be set up in just a few minutes. He asks his son Robin (24) to sit down. The two assure us that it is more comfortable than a traditional beach chair. “You can put it all the way back in a lying position,” says Ronald Brockmann. The trained mechanical engineer is looking for investors who can build his baskets made of wood or aluminum in series and for less than 250 euros.
The clip springer
A mother struggled on the stairs in an old building in Munich with a stroller and shopping. What to do? A group of friends developed a mobile wheel axle with a spring. This means that wheeled loads or a stroller can climb the stairs effortlessly with a little leverage, says Marie-Louise Boisseau, who is part of the circle of friends. Her son Rafael (10) demonstrates that it is child’s play: the front wheels move backwards when you hit the next step. Then the handle of the vehicle is pressed down to bring the wheels to the next level and there they extend again thanks to the spring. The system also works with a walker on the curb, as Boisseau shows. The patent is there, the daughter of the woman with the stroller problem, Clara Sant’Unione (18), wants to market it through the licensing process.
Packing without gaps in the box
Mario Tomiak (53) from Magdeburg wants to save a lot of space with a packing system for parcels. He demonstrates this with a set of building blocks: if boxes are coordinated with each other – the next larger one is always exactly twice as big as the smaller one – every centimeter could be used when stacking them in a larger container or in the storage room at home, he says. Parcel service providers have less damage because their transport boxes are packed to the brim and “nothing wobbles,” as the business process expert at a glass company says. If there is a gap, it can be filled with a light dummy package. Its boxes have a marking for the correct orientation when stacking, so everything goes quickly. His vision: a standard for packages like paper, DIN A3 or DIN A4, only three-dimensional.
Energy from rainwater
Khaled Al-Saho (48) from Lübeck wants to generate energy with rainwater. The Syrian, freelance inventor, as he says, has set up a miniature city scene in Geneva, using cotton wool as a cloud, to demonstrate how it works: the water running off the streets is supposed to be collected underground in his system and drive small turbines in sloping terrain . The electricity could be fed into columns for charging electric cars.
Inventions like those from Germany are the exception at the Inventors’ Salon. For many, it is more about high-tech solutions, for example for energy generation, environmentally friendly processes or medical products. Large companies or research institutes are often behind it. Artificial intelligence plays a big role. What they all have in common is the search for financially strong investors.
The Inventors’ Salon also appeals to new talent: visitors can attend seminars to learn how to develop an idea, find financing and bring it to market. Children can build little robots. As has been the case for years, China is the most represented with dozens of inventions. Only a handful come from Germany. Many inventors also came from Saudi Arabia and Thailand.