They Invented What? (No. 27)

JW Note:  One would likely find the “resetting” feature to be most useful.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,031,161:  Life expectancy timepiece.

 

Background: 

Life expectancy has been a major concern of people throughout the ages . . . .   Heretofore, there has been no way of automatically monitoring one’s own life expectancy, based on factors such as actuarial tables, contemporaneous events and heredity. . . .   It would also be advantageous to provide a timepiece that would allow one to be apprised of the probable time remaining in one’s life.  It would also be advantageous to monitor the probable remaining time left in one’s life on a yearly, hourly, and even seconds basis.  It would also be advantageous to provide a lifetime monitoring timepiece that could be resettable by the user.

Claims:

1. A time monitoring apparatus for monitoring and displaying an approximate time remaining in a lifespan of an individual, said monitoring apparatus programmed to decrement time units from an actuarially determined lifespan and to shift a projected lifespan value as the individual grows older, said time monitoring apparatus comprising:

(a) processing means for monitoring the passage of time, and programmed with an actuarial table algorithm for projecting a lifespan value for an individual, said program further shifting said lifespan value as the individual grows older and said time is monitored;

(b) a resettable memory operatively connected to said processing means for storing data representative of years, days, hours, minutes, and seconds;

(c) display means operatively connected to said processing means for displaying data stored in said resettable memory; and

(d) means operatively connected to said processing means for entering and changing said stored data based upon characteristics specific to said individual, whereby an approximate time remaining in the lifespan of said individual can be reset by said individual.