This one’s mainly for school stationary. Remember when you were a kid at school and your annoying teacher made you neatly cut out A4 handouts and stick them into your exercise book or note book? Not only did you have to waste your precious time cutting things out and wasting paper, but you also had to get your hands dirty with glue.

My invention idea for today is an exercise book that solves both these problems.

Firstly,  the book is slightly bigger than A4. This means that you don’t have to cut off the top, bottom, left, and right sides of the A4 page to get it to fit. It will just fit by itself. And the difference in size won’t make any difference to it fitting into your bag because the size difference will be negligible.

Secondly, you’ll be able to pull off small bits of white plastic imposed into the top and bottom, left and right of each page which will reveal a sticky surface. This will allow you to stick the page down without needing glue. A more advanced solution may be to create static charges on the paper surface, and somehow create the opposite charges on the paper surface, thus producing an attraction.

There are potential short-term issues with such an invention, as schoolkids may soon be using cheaper, more advanced and more marketable versions of the now defunct Apple Newton or the still on the market Palm, thus reducing the need for paper. However things like these don’t often move as fast as we think. I read somewhere that someone predicted in 1997 that by 2007 we’d use half the amount of paper. Well I think the opposite is true (I’ve been trying to find statistics on this but alas). Therefore I think this idea still has some life potential. At least another 5-10 years.

It’s also possible that the glue part of this idea won’t be liked by many stationers (and stationary companies), as it would theoretically mean a reduction in the purchase of glue. As is sometimes the case with inventions, industry sometimes prevents them from coming into being.

But let’s be hopeful.