Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
h a l f b a k e r y
This would work fine, except in terms of success.

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Auto-leveling Picture Frames

Picture frames use small motors and an interal level to straiten themselves.
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By using a glass tube bent upward with a ball of mercury inside, a cheap level can be built. Lectrodes along the length of the tube connect the circuit when the bead is on them and make the motor spin in one way or the other to level the picture. An attachment can be made to the picture frame to shine a red light from behind the frame onto the wall when the device runs low on batteries.

Please don't replicat this idea without my express permission. You can reach me at superlou@comcast.net

SuperLou, Jun 12 2002

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       //Please don't replicat this idea without my express permission. You can reach me at superlou@comcast.net//   

       Only ideas concerning steering wheel spikes get replicated here.   

       Your e-mail add. would be better shelved on your user page.   

       Welcom to the 'bakery Sup-dave.
[ sctld ], Jun 12 2002
  

       sorry SuperLou, we are all replicating this as we speak. croissant to you. as thingy above said, your email is best kept on your account page.
po, Jun 12 2002
  

       I hope you're not asking us not to replicate the idea under the notion that it preserves your patent rights. Your post here voids all patent rights you might have had everywhere in the world except in the U.S. In the U.S. you have one year from the date of first publication to file the patent application.
beauxeault, Jun 12 2002
  

       'straiten themselves'. Hmmm... Dire Straiten perhaps.   

       Why do pictures move, anyway? I can explain their movement in my house, as the cleaner has a sight defect, so when she leaves all the pictures have a slight left-hand-downness about them, but why do they move when not touched?
drew, Jun 12 2002
  

       underground trains? they can shift stuff. ghosts - of course! or middle-of-the-night humans staggering about still slightly squiffy?
po, Jun 12 2002
  

       Why do they move? I'd guess it's due to Vernon doing gravity research in his basement. Poor guy is sitting there not seeing any results, and all the while tilting pictures half a world away.
quarterbaker, Jun 12 2002
  

       No, It is abhi! Glorious!
yamahito, Jun 12 2002
  

       Got a crooked stile...   

       ...and a crooked sixpence, come to that. Made crooked by being runover by a tram before I was born... Supposedly.
drew, Jun 12 2002
  

       Didn't this idea already appear in Mad Magazine?
supercat, Jun 13 2002
  

       [quarterbaker] It's just the weight of Vernon's prose that's doing it.
drew, Jun 13 2002
  

       Although this is a tremendous idea, and fully in the spirit of the Halfbakery, I'm a little concerned about all this mercury. After all, it was mercury compounds in the wallpaper that killed Napoleon, and also made the Mad Hatter mad. I would like a version in which the level-detector operates the forward/reverse lever of a small steam engine.
angel, Jun 13 2002
  

       The steam would remove the wallpaper, and the mercury is still in the level detector, sooooo...
drew, Jun 13 2002
  

       Use a condensing engine; no steam escapes.
angel, Jun 13 2002
  

       What, and lose that satisfying 'whoosh' at the end of the stroke?
drew, Jun 13 2002
  

       You can't have it both ways!
angel, Jun 13 2002
  

       The mercury could always be replaced with non-congealing custard.   

       The power could be provide by a sterling engine that is powered by the presence of art on one side of the frame and the absence of it on the other. The differential would power the engine until the objective sense of wonder from the art wears off.
Aristotle, Jun 13 2002
  

       Problem is the absence of art is very hard to determine. Many people have won art prizes and distinguished awards for what appears to me to be a complete absence of it.
waugsqueke, Jun 13 2002
  

       If it's a watercolor, use a steam engine, if it's an oil painting, use a diesel.
FarmerJohn, Jun 13 2002
  

       waugsqueke: Maybe the prizes were awarded to peices with an absence of art as part of a cunning plan to drive sterling engines ...
Aristotle, Jun 13 2002
  

       ectoplasm? spirits? ghosts? Fair enough... but 'proven', well, that's going a bit too far.
drew, Jun 13 2002
  

       It is baked(or at least half-baked) in one of those fake humor "advertisements" in an old Mad Magazine, If my memory serves me correctly.
BinaryCookies, Jul 30 2002
  
      
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