Patent Pending Blog - Patents and the History of Technology

Pitotubes - Its Rocket Science for Your Packing

 

Alisa Caviness-Driscoll is the founder of AMD Travel Accessories, Inc. and the creator of Pitotubes. Alisa grew up living and sailing in the Caribbean and continued exploring the world with 15 years of discovery in the travel industry. Alisa's experience as a flight attendant fed her passion for travel and put her in direct contact with thousands of business and leisure travelers.

The Challenge

In her years of travel, Alisa has heard one common complaint from all of her globetrotting friends. Whether it's shampoo, lotion, or that pricey perfume, "the top came off and it got all over EVERYTHING!" Men and women on business or leisure travel have all had the experience of personal care products leaking in expensive bags and ruining valuables. It's no way to start, or end, a trip.

The Solution

Alisa's idea was simple...find a travel bottle that is airplane proof and capable of withstanding ALL the rigors of travel. After spending a year at cosmetic and personal care packaging tradeshows and countless hours at market research, Alisa realized that the product she was looking for didn't exist. And so the lifelong traveler's entrepreneurial journey began. With the help of the industry's finest engineers, Alisa created Pitotubes.

The Benefits

Pitotubes are sleek, luxury, airless travel bottles that transport personal care products with elegance and ease. Travelers of the world can now customize their shaving kits and cosmetic bags with our signature bottles. Simply transfer your personal care products into the Pitotubes and forget about searching for travel sizes or cleaning up after the big spill.Alisa says, "My energy and inspiration comes from inventing and enhancing products that all travelers of the world want and need." AMD Travel Accessories, Inc. was launched in 2004 and continues to develop new and exciting products for fellow travelers.

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.

Glenn Curtiss Just Needed a Little More POWER!

Glenn Curtiss had an early interest in bicycles, and opened a bicycle shop in Hammondsport, New York.  Not content to sell bicycles, he was soon building his own products, and designing new models.  When small, one cylinder motors were put on bicycles, he left the world of bycicles and entered the world of engines and motorcycles.  He designed his own lightweight engines, and the motorcycles they powered.  In 1907 Curtiss drove a motorcycle with an air cooled V-8 engine to a speed of 136 miles an hour.  The engine delivered 40 hp, and weighed 275 pounds.  According to a Scientific American article of the day, the motorcycle experienced a broken universal joint at 90 mph, which buckled the frame.  The record made him the fastest human on a motorcycle or car, until a car beat that speed 11 years later.  A motorcycle would not beat that speed until 1930.  Curtiss' speed was actually slower than an earlier Stanley Steamer that achieved 140- 150 mph, but that run was not an officially timed event.  Looking at the picture below, I'm not sure I'd want to go 136 mph on bicycle wheels.

Cutriss was drawn into the field of avaition because of his lightweight yet powerful motors, and competed with the Wright brothers as pioneer avaiator and airplane designer.  He designed the first float plane, aelerons, and many other new features in airplanes.  Curtiss airplanes served in WWI,  and Curtiss' company became Curtiss Wright when it merged with the successors of the Wright Brothers.

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The Inventor of Television, Philo T. Farnsworth

As a 14 year old farm boy plowing his family's fields in Rigby Idaho, Philo T. Farnsworth of was thinking of electron beams and Einstein's theory of relativity.  He science teacher recognized that Philo had an unusual intellect and helped him learn as much about science as he could.  As he plowed his fields he concieved of drawing a picture with an electron beam just like he was plowing the field, one line at a time, from top to botton and side to side. 

After two years of high school, and after finishing two years of college at Brigham Young University, he turned to designing his television system, including an electronic camera, a transmitter, a reciever, and a screen.  By 1927 he had built the components of his sytem and successfully demonstrated them to investors. He filed a patent on the working system in 1927.

The problem was that Russian immigrant Vladimir Zworykin was working on the same problem, and filed a patent on parts of his system in 1923.  However, his device did not work.  Zworykin worked for RCA, and in later years as Farnsworth technology developed, RCA used Zworkykin's filing date as the basis of its claim that RCA should not have to pay royalties to Farnsworth.  Farnsworth's patent issued in 1930, and that same year Zworykin visited Farmsworth's lab and was heard to say "I wish that I might have invented it."   However, RCA claimed that Zworykin's Iconoscope preceded Farnsworth.

Both sides presented their case for priority to the U.S. Patent Office in a proceeding called an Interference.  Farnsworth's evidence for priority of invention was ruled clear evidence of earliest conception. 



However, during WWII the government suspended development of television, and by the time the war was over Farnsworth's patents were almost expired. 

Military Dog Tags!

It wasn't too long ago that I wrote about my daughter's experience in her own seed business (Introduce Your Kids to Entrepreneurship).  I recently "met" a young entrepreneur who had an even better introduction to business and entrepreneurship.  That was Kobie, a 13 year old with his own internet business.  Like me, his father wanted to expose him to business, and give him a way to earn some money.  They thought of a business making dog tags, and bought an old addressograph machine to make them.  With the addressograph machine in the back of a truck, they went to swap meets and other local events.

Later they set up a web based business selling a number of different styles of dog tags, including brass ones, round ones, and modern types with the rubber edge protector.  They also sell LED belt buckles, name patches, and P-38 and P-51 can openers. Kobie added a page to his site about P-38 can openers which he also sells, which is how we met when he emailed about my posts about this type of can opener in the Outdoor Technology Section of the Patent Pending blog (scroll down to see them).

Kobie's site is DogTagsRUs and that link will lead you to his home page, from which you can see his "About" page for more biographical information, and his catalog page with his product offerings.   Way to go Kobie! (and Kobie's Dad).




I bought a set of dog tags for my son,  and I can't wait to check them out.

Alaska Wildfire Images

Smokejumper, inventor, photographer Mike McMillan is up in Alaska fighing fires for the summer.  He sent me this image of smoke and fireweed.  His images are at Spotfire Images.

Introduce Your Kids to Entrepreneurship

When my daughter Ciera was about 8 years old, we were hit with the usual school, team, and Girl Scout fundraisers.  In these, the kids would sell some cheesy sugar filled product to neighbors, and depending on how much they sold they would qualify for a super cheesy prize. 

Ciera sold hundreds of dollars worth of products, and got a $3.00 item for her efforts.  I thought it would be better if she sold a product that wasn't full of sugar, and that people would actually want to buy, rather than just buying to support the neighborhood kids, and where her efforts were fairly rewarded. What we came up with was a seed business. In the Spring, we bought wildflower seeds in “bulk”, as in bags of 4 to 16 oz, of about 10 different wildflowers. We got some tiny zip lock bags, which we discovered are available in coin stores. Then Ciera and her friend used a measuring spoon to place quantities of seeds into the bags. We made up package labels, with planting instructions and a photo, and a one page handout.

Then they hit the streets and sold their seeds for $1 per bag. They netted a few hundred dollars each for work that took place over a few weeks, and learned about paying for supplies, evaluating which flowers sold best, inventory, partners that don’t pull their weight, and advertising. She did the seed business for about 4 years, and then got too busy with other activities. It was a great learning experience, and when her 5^th grade class had a class assignment for each student to start their own fake business, with business cards and flyers, she had already had a real business for several years.  She didn't go on to become the Bill Gates of wildflower seeds, but it was an introduction. I invite you to try something like it with your kids. 

Ciera sold hundreds of dollars worth of products, and got a $3.00 item for her efforts.  I thought it would be better if she sold a product that wasn't full of sugar, and that people would actually want to buy, rather than just buying to support the neighborhood kids, and where her efforts were fairly rewarded. What we came up with was a seed business. In the Spring, we bought wildflower seeds in “bulk”, as in bags of 4 to 16 oz, of about 10 different wildflowers. We got some tiny zip lock bags, which we discovered are available in coin stores. Then Ciera and her friend used a measuring spoon to place quantities of seeds into the bags. We made up package labels, with planting instructions and a photo, and a one page handout.

Then they hit the streets and sold their seeds for $1 per bag. They netted a few hundred dollars each for work that took place over a few weeks, and learned about paying for supplies, evaluating which flowers sold best, inventory, partners that don’t pull their weight, and advertising. She did the seed business for about 4 years, and then got too busy with other activities. It was a great learning experience, and when her 5^th grade class had a class assignment for each student to start their own fake business, with business cards and flyers, she had already had a real business for several years.  She didn't go on to become the Bill Gates of wildflower seeds, but it was an introduction. I invite you to try something like it with your kids. 

How to Start a Company

I saw a reference on Steve Nipper's Invent Blog, from an original post titled How to Start a Startup, at Paul Graham's site. He said you "need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed."  More details in the original article.

The Sikorsky Le Grande

Igor Sikorsky started his airplane designing career designing aircraft for the last Tsar of Russia, Nicolas II.  In 1913, ten years after the Wright brother's first flight, Sikorskiy proved the critics wrong by building and flying a huge airplane called the Le Grande.  It had a wingspan of 92 feet, 3/4 the length of the Wright brothers first flight.  It weighted 9000 pounds, with 4 100 hp engines.  Experts of the day did not think that something that large could ever become airborne.  The Le Grande had a balcony in front of the pilot cabin, and a passenger cabin for eight. The Le Grande flew flawlessly through54 flights, until it was hit by an airplane engine falling from another airplane during an airshow.  By piloting the Le Grande, Sikorsky was the first person to fly a multi engine airplane.

The Schrader Valve

August Schrader immigrated from Hanover, Germany, to New York in 1843.  Within a few years he started a small company making brass fittings for the rubber industry, which had been started only a few years before. 

In l890, pnuematic tires were in use on the bicycle racing circuit, and soon bikes with pnuematic tires began winning the races.   A tire manufacturer asked Schrader to design a better air valve than the one they were using, and Schrader did so.  Schrader and his son George applied for a patent on their design in 1893, and made many improvements over the years.  Every car today uses Schrader valves to keep the air in the tire, whether tube or tubeless tires.  Most bicycles today use Schrader valves, with certain tubes using an alternative valve, the Presta valve.  The Schrader valves used  today are very similar to the 1893 version.