Patent Pending Blog - Patents and the History of Technology

Corkscrewed and the Rodenator

There is a new reality show on the tv these days, called "Corkscrewed: the Wrath of Grapes".  In the show the two producers of the reality show "American Idol," Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick, buy a vinyard near Paso Robles California, and proceed to have everything go wrong with their plan to be vintners. Their grape contracts are cancelled, the heat kills their owls, and gophers start to take over the vinyard.  The rodent disaster is saved when an inventor from Idaho drives in to save the day.  That man is Ed Meyers, President of an Idaho company that sells a rodent control product called the Rodenator.

The producers feel a little sorry for the furry critters for a few minutes, then when they think of the $6 million they have  riding on the harvest, they are all for nuking the gophers, at which time Ed is happy to provide the pyrotechnics.  Ed is shown in three episodes of the show that I have seen, and solves at least one of their many problems.

The Rodenator is a portable device which mixes oxygen and propane, and sends a swirling mixture into the rodent burrows.  A spark from the device ignites the gases, and the borrows for up to 300 feet are blown up, instantly killing the gophers, ground squirrels, or other borrowing pest. The Rodenator website has more information about the device, including videos of the device in action.

Lake Moeris of Ancient Egypt

An ancient example of flood control, irrigation, and the use of hydraulic locks is seen in the ancient Egyptian management of water in the Faiyum (Fayum, Fayoum) region, called Lake Kunis or Lake Moeris by later Greeks. 

The Fayum area is lower than the nearby Nile river, and a canal between the river and the  depression was dug before 2900 BC.  King Amenembat improved the canal and built a diversion dam on the Nile. The Ha-Uar dam allowed Nile water at flood stage to be diverted to fill the  Fayum and form Lake Moeris, estimated to be about 17,000 acres in size.  Gates at both ends of the canal were used to control the flow of water, and at flood stage the water flowed from the Nile to the lake, and at other times the water flowed from the lake to the Nile.  This provided flood control, provided water to the Nile system during the dry season, and sustained irrigation around the lake.  From the book the Hydraulics of Open Channel Flow, by Hubert Chanson. 

The Greek historian Herodotus of the fifth century B.C. described it thus:

This lake has a circuit of three thousand six hundred furlongs, or sixty schoeni, which is as much as the whole seaboard of Egypt. Its length is from north to south; the deepest part has a depth of fifty fathoms. That it was dug out and made by men's hands the lake shows for itself; for almost in the middle of it stand two pyramids, so built that fifty fathoms of each are below and fifty above the water. . . The water of the lake is not natural (for the country is exceeding waterless) but brought by a channel from the Nile; six months it flows into the lake, and six back into the river.

The Lake Moeris project and its control dams and canal was abondoned in about 230 BC because the branch of the Nile it was connected to had decreased in size.

The Studebaker Farm Wagon

The Studebaker Wagon Company started when the five Studebaker brothers joined together to form a company in the 1850s.  They had learned wagon making from their blacksmith father in rural Ohio.  Their sturdy wagons were prized on farms, used by settlers heading West, and achieved national fame for sturdiness during the Civil War. 



In 1892 they started building horse drawn vehicles, and their first self propelled vehicles were electric, as shown in the ad below.

Steam Plowing

In the early days of steam, the farm  tractors were huge machines, and were often too heavy to work the fields when they were wet.  One method of using steam tractors was tried in which two steam powered tractors were set up at either end of a field, and a plow was pulled between them.  When the plow reached one tractor, the plow was built to lift one set of plows into the air, so another set of plows would be used on the return trip.  This method was used in England and tried in the U.S. but was soon abandoned as being slow and ineffective. 

The Hand-Crank Ice Cream Maker

In 1843 Nancy Johnson got a patent on a machine to make ice cream by hand.  This was an ingenious device that provided a real treat to everyone in the U.S., if not the world.  Milk, sugar and flavoring, such as vanilla, were placed in the inner can, and a rotating paddle was placed in the milk. 

The inner can was placed in the outer bucket, and ice and salt were placed between the inner can and outer bucket.  The salt lowered the freezing point of the ice, and contact with the inner bucket made a thin layer of milk freeze on the inside of the inner can.  The rotating paddle, turned by a crank, scraped off the frozen milk, and let a new layer freeze.

Sneaky adults let the kids do all the work, but it was worth it because the ice cream was so good. 

When enough of the milk had frozen, it became stiff, and was spooned out to eagerly awaiting kids, like me, my brother Mike, and sister Sue in the photo below, from about 1955, with our Mom and a farm cat watching. .

 

Barbed Wire

In the American West, cattle could not be fenced in because there was not enough wood to make fences, and not enough labor to make stone fences.  Cattle were raised on open range, and driven across many states from their home range to the rail heads in Kansas for transport to Eastern markets.

There were many attempts to make a wire fence, but the cattle were strong enough to break most wires.  Attempts were made to put barbs on the wire, without success. 

An improved barbed wire fence was made by 60 year old Joseph F. Glidden of Dekalb Illinois in 1873.  His fence wire was made from two strands of smooth wire, with one wire encrusted with twisted barbs.  The two wires were twisted together to secure the barbs, and the two wires proved sturdy enough to stop cattle from breaking the wires.  This image from the Devils Rope Museum shows some of the hundreds of barbed wire designs that exist.

It is said that three inventions made settling the arid American West possible: the windmill, barbed wire,  and the repeating rifle.   

Glidden's design from his patent looks like the common type of barbed wire used today, more than 125 years later.   

Drip Irrigation

Drip irrigation is when water is dripped onto or near a plant.  The drip is usually on for a period of time (several hours), then off for a period of time.  Drip irrigation was first practiced in India using bamboo tubes with small holes drilled in them.  Water dripped through the holes onto plants. 

The next reference to drip irrigation was when Dr. Lester Kellar introduced his method of dripping water onto avocado trees from a pitcock in a water line.  This was at a symposium in Riverside, California, in 1917.

In 1956, Ludwig Bass's patent issued, with drip emitters placed on a pressurized line, which dripped 1 gallon per hour or less from each emitter.  The slow but steady drip of water causes the water to penetrate deeper, without spreading across the surface of the ground.  The emitters reduced the flow of water from a pressurized spray to a slow drip.

Ancient Farming Technique for Dry Areas: Runoff Irrigation

In ancient times, one technique for farming in desert conditions was runoff farming.  In many deserts, the land receives far too little water to support a crop or even to sustain a tree.  Usually the rain comes in large quantities when it comes, and there are long periods of time with no rain.  If a desert area receives an inch of rain, no plants can be grown.  However, if an area adjacent to the field or to a tree is sloped to send any water recieved to a neighboring field or tree, or to a cistern or pond, the water from the infrequent rains can be used to maximum advantage.  The collection areas are called catchments, and may be 25 times the size of a neighboring field.  A tree can have a fan shaped catchment adjacent to it, with all the water from the catchment running toward the tree, where it may be collected in basins, and basically stored in the soil around the tree.  In this way a land that receives an inch of water per year, can be made to grow crops as if it received 25 inches per year.

The Rain Bird Sprinkler

The impact sprinkler was invented by a Mr. Orton Englehart, in 1933.  It was durable, and spread water over an area in a more uniform distribution, and to a greater distance, than other sprinklers then available.  The inventors neighbors took an interest in the device, and set up shop in their barn to manufacture the sprinkler.  The neighbors were Clem and Mary LeFetra, and their barn based operation grew into the Rain Bird Corporation, and would obtain more than 130 other patents and 30 trademarks.  The sprinklers were marketed to cirtus growers first, and to other agricultural fields and homeowners later.  Shown below are the original design from the patent, and a current model.  The ancestry is evident. 

 

History of the Plow

Plows are thought to have been invented in Mesopotamia in approximately 3000 BC. 

Plows in the ancient Greek culture were very simple devices, which would be improved in Roman times.  Sometimes a wheel was added to improve the functioning of the plow. 

In China, plows made of iron were in use in in about 300 BC, and moldboards, which turn the soil over in a furrow, were in use in the first centure BC.  Moldboards were not used in Europe until the late 10th centure.  When Chinese agricultural implements were shown in Holland in the 17th century, they were far in advance of European technology.

The Roman plow was adequate for plowing the dry Mediterranean soils, but proved inadequate for the heavier soils of Germany and northern Europe.  A heavy plow was developed for those regions. 

A heavy plow of medievel times.

In the American colonies, early plows were imported until the local blacksmiths learned how to make them.  An early advancement in plows came from Thomas Jefferson. 

Jefferson's "Moldboard of Least Resistance"

After observing European plows while ambassador to France, he developed an improved moldboard, which was designed to work with the soil found in Virginia, and to turn the earth as efficiently as possible.  He called his plow the "moldboard of
least resistance."

The first American plow made of cast iron was made by Charles Newbold in 1797.  The figure below is from his patent.

The disadvantage of this plow was that if it was broken, the whole plow had to be replaced.  This problem was solved by the plow of Jethro Wood, which had iron parts which were interchangable.  Thus, if one part was broken, it could be replaced. 

Jethro Wood, US Patent # X3130, 1819

The next big improvement in American plows came when blacksmith John Deere made a plow with a steel face.  The problem that had developed was that farmers in the newly settled prairie found that their heavy soil stuck to the cast iron moldboard of their plows.  John Deere made a plow with a steel moldboard, which was self polishing in the grassy soil, and to which the soil did not stick.  He first used steel saw blades and welded them to the iron mouldboard.  John Deere, US Patent # 46454, 1865