Ed – 28May: Sorry folks, turns out this was a repeat of a question I had asked earlier (I was convinced I’d asked it in a live quiz and not BB, but I guess I was wrong. Oh well :( ). I’ll replace this with another question soon.

What invention?

Cracked by: badideabear , Urthstripe , Ananth , shrik , Rogi , Raghuvansh , shrey and dineshk

Answer:
SGI’s patent for a random number generator that was seeded by the state of a lava lamp. Most likely, many trees were smoked in the invention of this device :P