Patent Pending Blog - Patents and the History of Technology

The Pullman Sleeping Car

Sometimes a little luck is needed to make an invention a success.  George Pullman designed a superior sleeping car for use by trains in the mid 19th century.  Unlike other sleeping cars on the market, it was luxuriously appointed, and made sleeping a real possibility, instead of a cruel joke.  His design is in patent number 42,182.

The only problem was his car was wider than the existing cars, and the train stations, loading ramps, and platforms were sized for the narrower cars.

A tragedy for the nation was a marketing Godsend for Pullman.  When President Lincoln was assasinated, officials wanted to send his body in a two week procession through 8 states, to his home in Springfield Illinois.  The Pullman car was obviously the most stately, impressive and splendid car for the job.  They ordered that all the stations on the route make modifications for the Pullman car of the procession.  As the car made its way through the nation, lots of people came to see the train, and especially the beautiful Pullman car with Lincoln's casket.  After the procession, sales of Pullman cars took off, and other stations made the necessary modifications.

The lesson for inventors is not to kill a president for sales effect, but to make your product so that existing regulations are met, or hit the marketing home run, and make the regulations change to require your product to be used.  This is what happened to the company that makes the little backup beeper on trucks and forklifts, the Boise company Preco. 

Dick Kelty and the Aluminum Frame Pack

Dick Kelty grew up hiking in the Sierra Nevada of California.  This is a moutain range 300 miles in length, studded with 14,000' peaks, and 10,000' passes, a land of mild weather, and awesome alpine scenery.  The only thing keeping people from enjoying it was the terrible packs of the day, which only Navy Seal types could carry for more than a day hike. Dick was inspired to build a better pack, and in 1952 borrowed $500 to go into the pack business.  He cut the aluminum frame pieces, and welded them together to form the first aluminum frame for a backpack.  His wife Nena sewed the nylon packs, another first, in the kitchen.  The first years they sold 29 packs, followed by 90 packs, followed by 500 packs, and soon had a thriving mail order business going from their home.

In five years, Dick quit his carpentry business, and made packs full time. The red pack below is a 60-70's vintage Kelty, with the unpadded waist belt of the time. A new hiker would still have a great pack if they bought the old red or green Kelty, and updated the belt and shoulder  pads.  They can still be found on ebay and used sporting goods stores. 

The packs came also came in green. The first Kelty packs were revolutionary in the aluminum frame, nylon pack, clevis pin attachment, and waistbelt. Later innovations included the padded waistbelt, top load bar, padded shoulder straps, wraparound belt, and pack compartments. In 1972 Kelty made a pack that is thought by some (including me) to be the best external frame pack ever built, the Kelty Tioga. It came with a padded wrap around hip belt, load bar, quick release buckle, hold open frame, incredible load capacity, and unmatched durability. I got a Kelty Tioga in 1972, and still use it today, 33 years, 200+ peaks, 3 Ptarmigan Traverses, 1 John Muir Trail through hike, and 1000's of miles of other trails later. I teach college backpacking classes, and go on 4-6 backpacks per year, and my trusty Tioga soldiers on, to the amusement of the younger crowd in their internal frame packs. I have two internal fame packs, I just like my Tioga for backpacking. The new Tioga is not that much different than the 1972 model, though I don't own one to make a good comparison. Kelty now sells about 80 different models of packs, plus tents, sleeping bags, and baby carriers.

The 1903 Springfield Rifle

To make up for the shortcomings seen in the Krag rifle adopted in 1896, the Army searched for a replacement around the turn of the century.  The Army had seen the Mauser 7mm rifle in action in the Phillipines, and thought that a rifle that combined the features of the Mauser and the Krag would be a superior rifle.  The Mauser was patented, however, and the U.S. paid royalties to Paul Mauser for rifles that fell within the claims of his patent.

A test model was designed, which used a five cartridge clip-loaded magazine in the stock. Several thousand were made, and tested and modified for two years.  In 1903, the rifle was adopted as the Army's main battle rifle and soon adapted to a larger .30 caliber.  The .30 caliber bullet was adopted in 1906, and was therefore called the 30-06 (thirty ought six).  It had a range of 600 yards, more power than the Krag, a stronger bolt to handle the more powerful cartridge, and a much faster rate of fire. 

It first saw action in Mexico, Haiti, and the jungles of Nicaragua and was found to be durable and accurate.  It was used by American doughboys in WWI, and when compared with captured Mauser bolt action rifles, the design from which the 1903 sprang, it was found to be capable of twice the rate of fire of the Mauser.  Fire from American positions was so rapid that Germans thought the American's had machine guns.  The 1903 Springfield in the hands of U.S. Marines, earned them a new nickname, "Devil Dogs." 

The rifle saw action part way through WWII, and was used by the Marines on Wake Island, Guadalcanal, and Corregedor, until it was replaced by the M-1 Garrand, as they became available.  It was still used as a sniper rifle in Korea and Vietnam.  It has been called the best bolt action rifle ever made.

The Trapper Nelson

On a hiking trip in Alaska in 1920, Seattle resident Lloyd Nelson used a borrowed Indian pack to carry his gear.  The pack was sealskin stretched over willow sticks, and proved to be uncomfortable to say the least.  He thought he could design a better one, and thought there would be a market for one among boy scouts and outdoorsmen. 

He designed a wooden frame that had a canvas panel stretched across it.  The canvas rested the weight of the pack load on the user's back, keeping the wooden frame from gouging the user's back.  He got a U.S. patent on the pack, which Eric Nicholson found out is U.S. Patent 1,505,661.  Thanks, Eric!   

He marketing the product by visiting every sporting goods store between San Diego and Seattle, and within a few years sales began to pick up.  He sold his patent rights to Trager, the company making his canvas bags, and shortly after the sale, he got an order for 500 packs for the Forest Service, and another 500 unit order shortly followed. 

By modern standards, the pack is cruel and unusual torture, but compared to the alternatives at the time, it was a big improvement. 

My father-in-law carried a Trapper Nelson pack on a hike from the Hell's Canyon of the Snake River, to the town of Riggins, over the Seven Devils mountains.  This was in the early forties, before WWII, and they carried canned food, an axe, a handgun, and other gear that made their pack weight extreme.  I inherited his Trapper Nelson, which belongs in a museum now. 

 

Does Hillbilly Sex Sell?

This ad on ebay for a '65 Lincoln tests the marketing addage that "sex sells".  The question is, "does Hillbilly sex sell?"  I'll bet it at least generates a lot more lookers at the auction.  We need some analysis and comment from some marketing types. 

The Backpack

The Native Americans used backpacks, sometimes configured as a woven basket with shoulder straps, sometimes as a flat backboard to which gear could be lashed.  Pioneers in America copied the Native American packs, and inventor name John Merriam got a patent on an early form of frame pack in 1886.  His backpack had a frame and a waist belt that went across the user's back, but did not go across his front.   

The F117-A Stealth Fighter

Blog reader Avi Solomon responded to the post on Northrup's Flying Wing by forwarding me the patent number of the Stealth Fighter, the F117-A, U.S. Patent number 5,250,950. 

 

This is not really a fighter aircraft, but instead a night precision bomber.  It delivers precision bombs, and relies solely on its stealthiness for defense.  Work on the F117-A was started in  early 70's, at Northrup's skunkworks.  The patent was filed in 1979, and has as its first, and broadest claim:

A vehicle including flight control means and propulsion means, comprising:

a fuselage and wings; and

a plurality of surfaces defining the exterior of said fuselage and wings, said surfaces consisting of a series of facets.

That is a pretty broad claim, and indicates to me that there just wasn't anything like it in previous patents. 

The designers knew the concept would work when they mounted a scale model in a radar range test area, to see if it could really be invisible to radar.  The radar operators turned on their system, and intently looked for the plane, adjusting their controls, since they knew it was there.   At first they had no contact, but then, the radar operators shouted out "target acquired!", thinking they had proven the effectiveness of their radar systems, and that nothing was invisible to radar.  When they looked up, they realized they were detecting a bird sitting on the model, and when the bird flew off, the model was again invisible to their radar. 

Tim Allen on Martha Stuart

Tim Allen had this to say about Martha Stewart:

"Boy, I feel safer now that she's behind bars. O.J. & Kobe are walking
around; Osama BinLaden, too, but they take the one woman in America 
willing to cook and clean and work in the yard and haul her ass to jail."

The Krag Jorgensen Rifle

In 1890, the U.S. Army decided it needed a repeating rifle to replace the single shot Springfield then in use.  A number of rifles were tested, and a design from Norway won the bid.  The rifle was the Krag-Jorgensen, designed by Captain Ole Hermann Krag and Eric Jorgensen, both of the Norway Arms Factory.  The Krag was bolt action, with rounds fed from a magazine into the chamber, and used smokeless powder.  The rounds were .30 to .40 caliber, and accuracy was good to 600 yards.  This was quite an improvement over the 200 yards of the incredible-at-the-time Kentucky Rifle.

 

The Krag was the Army's main battle rifle during the Spanish American War, and saw action in the Phillipines and Cuba.  Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders used the carbine version of the Krag in their cavalry charge (on foot) up San Juan Hill in Cuba.  Against elite Spanish forces in the Phillipines, the Krag proved inferior to the Mauser rifle, shooting a 7mm bullet.  The Mauser rifle had competed for the U.S. contract, and lost to the Krag. 

A skilled shooter using the Krag could shoot 43 aimed shots in 2 minutes, although the shortcoming was seen as it being slow to load the magazine.   Use of the Krag didn't last long.  The Army found a replacement for the Krag in the 1903 Springfield rifle, the Army's main battle rifle of WWI.

Bicycle Cable Technology

Bicycles rely on steel cables to pull the front and rear brakes and the front and rear gear changers.  Cables have long been used to transfer force when pulled, but bicycle cables have to transmit force even though they don't pull in a straight line. 

Bicycle cables go around corners and curves, and pull by the use of a cable running through a flexible cable housing that is anchored on the frame at both ends.  The housing is made of coiled steel with a rubber covering. 

This cable system was invented by Frank Bowden, and patented in England in 1894.  Bowden had made a fortune on the stock market in England, and bought a bike, then bought the company that made the bike.  He turned the bike company into the Raleigh Bicycle Co., which still makes quality bikes 100+ years later.