Patent Pending Blog - Patents and the History of Technology

The Recumbent Couch-Cycle

Nate Welbourn showed me his recumbent couch, and I had to know how that beast came to be built.

"The whole notion of an amphibious tall couch trike is the beer-induced brain child of a Rat Patrol member who goes by the name of Nancy Porker; I am simply the conduit between a fantasticly absurd idea which should never have been done, and something that now exists and is actually practicle to use in the real world.

Why? That's a fair question, but one that I haven't seriously considered until now; I guess we were looking for a ride with style so we figured a couch bike is probably going to satisfy that brief, and it had to be a tallbike so that the eye level of the pilots would be well above that of all but the tallest pedestrians (good for concerts and the like)... also the couch had to be easily removeable for parties (it's held on to the frame by 8 bolts, and the brake and gear levers simply pull off)...

Yes, we happened to have quite a bit of refuse steel lying about our workshop too... Plans are afoot for a parasol cover, fold-out bed, etc, etc. This is a chick magnet by anyone's standards! In any case, it probably hadn't been done before, and that seemed like a sound reason in itself. It made sense at the time!

What else? Well, you'll notice a bit of a cocktail bar/table at the couch; this will soon be completed with drink holders in which to put one's beer, thus affording our no-doubt-soon-to-be-patented Steer by Beer Technology (you need a beer in order to steer!). Seing as we were already building a tall trike with a serious inherent danger of off-camber cornering disastery, I thought it would also be great to have a reliable 360degree-turning system, allowing it to (theoretically) spin on it's own footprint in traffic. And guess what; it turns on it's own footprint!!! It was all "educated guesswork" (I'm a graphic designer working at a university, so that seemed to make excellent sense!), but I tried to design the weight distribution such that most was over the back wheels so that the bike would turn well and minimise the tendancy to roll over and snap people's backbones...

After working out some basic dimensions, it just seemed to make some kind of 'lateral sense' to create such a thing which could be ridden into and through the water without stopping (we had consumed a lot of beer at this point)... that makes sense, doesn't it?

After a lot of talk about using empty coke bottles, discarded newspapers and old candy packets for displacement, I found myself insiting on retaining 'some kind of hydro dynamics'. We ended up sourcing some old plastic barrels, chopped the tops off and smashed them together with a film of epoxy. All of a sudden the hulls became very strong — even stronger than I had invisaged. Then, we used a 2-part expanding polyurethane foam to fill each barrel, ensuring enough displacement (and that at the very least, the hulls couldn't sink), based on some rather blurry mental calculations. A rudder? The front wheel would do.

The floatation hulls and associated frame attach or detach easily by one person and are held in place by 4 high-tensile bolts. The aqua propulsion system also easily detaches when required. I think the floatation system weighs about 80kg (you'll be used to do your own metric conversions of course, living in probably the only country in the world still using emperial measurements! Anyhoo...), while the rest of the bike is probably around 70kg. Surprisingly (and this REALLY surprised me!), she is pretty stable on land and absolutely stable in the water. We have tried to capsize her, but to no avail!!

I think I must be quite good at guess work and bring with me a wealth of good luck, because the test float was so successful that no further structural changes were required. This was good news, after about 250 humorous hours of late-night labour and much domestic anxt.

OK, it probably has a top speed in the water of about 1 knot, but it's a STYLISH ride! The cops aren't sure how to take this one, it's a bike but it's much bigger than a car... or is it a boat? We are quietly confident that she is legal in this country.

So, what's the next project? Sleep :)

Screw Vehicle

One of the earliest screw vehicles I've found is the Ice Locomotive, which looks like it would be so heavy that it would sink into the snow.  I wonder if any were ever built?

Screw Vehicle Technology

Recently British adventurers Steven Brooks and Graham Stratford built a specialized vehicle which could cross the Bering Straights from Alaska to Russia, and could traverse water, ice, snow, and the tangled masses of ice ridges that can occur in that area.  It could also climb out of the water onto the ice shelf.  Their adventure is showcased at the team's Ice Challenger site.  The vehicle was a Bombardier snow grooming vehicle, driven by tracks, to which was added a screw propulsion system.

I had thought the Russians had pioneered screw propulsion vehicles, and wrote a blog post with pictures of their vehicles.  Recently I found out that the original screw propulsion vehicle was designed in 1944, during WWII, by Johannes Raedel, a member of the German Army and veteran of the Eastern Front with Russia. (Note: Raedel was originally spelled R'a'del, with an umlaut).  He had observed that in the deep snows of Russia, tanks would dig out the snow under the tracks, and the tank would become high centered on snow pressed under the belly of the tank. 

According to Siegfried Raedel, son of Johannes..."The idea evolved while looking at a meat mincer, also employing a screw type of compression. He convinced army headquarters in Berlin to allow him to make a prototype of this machine.  At that time, Austria was annexed to Germany already and he was dispatched to the Austrian Alpine vehicle test centre at St. Johann in Tyrol.  Using whatever materials were available he built this prototype during the period of 10th Feb 1944 to 28th April 1944.  It was tested extensively and the first page of this report is attached, together with a few pictures of the original.  It was very slow, but it would pull 1 ton!  It also had good climbing capabilities. It would penetrate about 30cm into the snow, no more."

The photos below are of Johannes testing the vehicle in Tyrol.  The woman and children were at a lodge at the top of a mountain, which the vehicle had climbed during testing. 

Siegfried pointed out that "something in the order of 7 tons of patent papers were taken out of Germany after the war. What amazes me though is the fact that both the US and Russia seem to have had access to these papers - and this during the cold war period!"

The page below is the first page of Johannes' report on the vehicle. 

Pedal Powered Kayak

I have always thought a pedal powered canoe was just the craft to win the Cross Sound Rowing Race, which is a race in human powered boats of all kinds from Seattle to Bainbridge Island.  It is held every year, and is about a 14 mile course, I am guessing.  This little pedal powered kayak would win it I bet, slicing through the waves while displacing much less water than a rowboat, and with more stability than a rowing skull.  Maybe someone can tell us if such devices are ever entered in such races. Also, how does the propeller not get snagged on rocks and sand of the shoreline?

Simon Lake, Submarine Pioneer

From Pleasantville New Jersey, Simon Lake was an inventor at a young age, having invented a windlass for use as an oyster dredge.  When the U.S. Navy announced a submarine design competition, he decided to enter.  His submarine designs were designed around use for marine salvage, and included wheels to crawl the ocean floor, a conning tower, a periscope, an escape hatch, and compressed air to drive the screw propeller and wheels underwater.  When surfaced, the submarine would operate using a steam engine.  Lakes submarine would not move forward when rising or sinking in the water.   A Lake submarine prototype was built and used to salvage wrecks in Chesapeake Bay, then was taken on an open ocean trial.  When the sub was hit by a storm on the open ocean, it submerged and sat on the bottom till the storm passed.  Lake used his submarines to salvage wrecks along the Long Island coast.

More information about Simon Lake is at The Submarine Heritage of Simon Lake, by Edward G. Whitman.  Lake was a contemporary of Joseph Holland, and in competition with Holland for Navy contracts.  A collection of watercraft technology is in the Watercraft Category of this blog.

Franklin's Jet Boat

American scientist Benjamin Franklin developed a plan for a jet boat, powered by a hand pump.  Water would be drawn into a pump, then expelled out a nozzle to the rear of the boat.  The boat would thus be a jet boat, a concept which was taken up again some 200 years later.

 

Ericson's Propeller

The idea of using a modified screw to propel a ship had been proposed as early as 1752.  John Fitch experimented with a screw propeller before his steam paddle boat.  Both the Bushnell (1777) and Fulton (1797) submarines used propellers.  Of course a paddlewheel would not make sense for an underwater boat, so propellers were mandatory on submarines. 

Several experiments were made with different versions of a screw propeller.  These assumed that a ship could be propelled not by sail, oars, or paddlewheels, but by a modified version of the Archimedes screw.  One preferred design included a long tube enclosing a screw shape, like the historical water lifting device called the Archimedes Screw. Some did away with the tube, and just had a long screw.  In 1834 Britain Francis Pettit Smith built one such long wooden screw to drive his 237 ton ship Archimedes.  In trials part of the long screw broke off, and to everyone's surprise, instead of slowing the ship down, the shorter screw speeded it up. More experiments arrived at a very short screw shape, closer to what we know as a propeller.  Steven's also successfully used propellers on his 1804 double prop steam boat.

At the same time in the U.S., Swedish born John Ericsson built a similar screw.  His 1838 U.S. patent figures are shown below. His screw was a double propeller, and the two props were counter rotating.  His screw pattern was explained in the patent as being based on spiral screws around a cylinder, like an Archimedes screw, but only a section of the cylinder was used. 

Smith's Archimedes, Propeller Driven Ship

The idea of using a modified screw to propel a ship had been proposed as early as 1752.  John Fitch experimented with a screw propeller before his steam paddle boat.  Both the Bushnell (1777) and Fulton (1797) submarines used propellers.  Of course a paddlewheel would not make sense for an underwater boat, so propellers were mandatory on submarines. 

Several experiments were made with different versions of a screw propeller.  These assumed that a ship could be propelled not by sail, oars, or paddlewheels, but by a modified version of the Archimedes screw.  One preferred design included a long tube enclosing a screw shape, like the historical water lifting device called the Archimedes Screw. Some did away with the tube, and just had a long screw.  In 1834 Britain Francis Pettit Smith built one such long wooden screw to drive his 237 ton ship Archimedes.  In trials part of the long screw broke off, and to everyone's surprise, instead of slowing the ship down, the shorter screw speeded it up. More experiments arrived at a very short screw shape, closer to what we know as a propeller.

The original propeller of the Archimedes was mounted about in the center of the hull, and was really a screw, not a bladed propeller that later was developed.  First tested in 1839, the Archimedes hoped to achieve 4-5 knots, but the engineering world was astounded when it achieved 9.5 knots.  However, the engineering world was skeptical, and many were adamently opposed not only to screw propellers, but also iron ships and steam power.  The Rattler was built for the British Navy in 1841.

U.S. Navy Submarine

In the 1890s inventor John P. Holland designed and built prototype submarines.  One had 3 steam engines for propulsion, but the heat they generated made them unworkable.  Holland thought of a dual propulsion system, with an internal combustion engine for surface use, and batteries and electric motors for submerged use.  His Holland reached a respectable 7 mph on the surface, and could remain submerged for several hours.  The U.S. Navy bought the Holland, and commissioned it the USS Holland in 1900, and used it for testing and submarine design research for 13 years.  His patent is from 1902. The photo shows the Holland on a trial run in 1899.

Steven's Steam Boat

Colonel John Stevens had watched the trials of Fitch's steamboat, and knew that he was watching a boat built on a shoestring by amateurs.  He also realized that the principle was sound, and even if Fitch could not pull it off, a more polished and well funded venture could pull it off.  In 1792 Stevens had a steamboat on the Hudson river, and several advancements followed.  Steven's got his first patent on steam propulsion of boats in 1792.   That is signicant because it was well before Fulton's steamboat, which is generally regared as the first successful steam powered ship.

In 1804, years before Fulton's boat, Stevens built a steam boat with two counterrotating screw propellers.   This photo is of a replica of Steven's double screw boat, built in the 1860s.  The second photo is a drawing of the engine, gearing, and propellers of the 1804 boat, which was refurbished years later and measured at 8 mph.