Patent Pending Blog - Patents and the History of Technology

The World's Oldest Seed Germination

The ArchaeoBlog has a bit about a 2000 year old date palm seed recently germinated, citing a longer article in the International Herald Tribune.  The seed was found at Masada, the Jewish fortress in which the defenders killed themselves rather than surrender to the Romans.

A seed is alive, carries on respiration, and requires oxygen and food, the food coming from stored carbohydrates in the seed.  Apparently it doesn't require much food, or it would be dead after 2000 years.  One of the date palm seeds found there germinated, and scientists hope it grows to a mature date palm tree, which will take 30 years.  The palm seed is of a species that has been long extinct, and was much praised by people in antiquity.  It could have DNA for disease resistance and hardiness that has been lost during the past twenty centuries.  Now that's pretty neat!

The Trangia Alcohol Stove

As backpackers have moved to lighter and lighter gear, many have rediscovered an old favorite, the alcohol stove.  Some people make an alcohol stove from pop cans, with instructions from a number of sites on the web, such as this posting in Wikipedia.

A nice commercial version is made by Trangia, a Swedish company started in 1925 by John E. Jonsson and his father-in-law.  Besides the nice alcohol stove shown below, Trangia makes nice cook sets for the stove, available at any outdoor stove, with the full line viewable at the Trangia site.  These stoves are lighter than gasoline or compressed gas stoves, and many people swear by either the Trangia or the homemade version of the alcohol stove. 

Below is an 1896 patent on an alcohol stove that is pretty similar to the Trangia stove.

Early Carabiner, 1906

The typical carabiner has a gate that opens inward, which makes it easy to snap a rope through the gate, or to snap the gate over a rope.  This 1906 link has a gate that opens outward, and don't ask me why.  Other than the gate opening outward, this design looks pretty much like a modern carabiner.  The gate has a  spring that locks the gate  shut until the user presses the release, much like a lock back knife.  Pretty ingenious! 

The Henry Repeating Rifle

The Volcanic Arms company made a lever action rifle and a lever action pistol, both called the Volcanic.  Both were based on a cartridge system, which promised to displace muzzle loading loads of power and bullet.   The company was losing money hand over fist, because the cartridge design was weak and failed too often.  The rifle was also underpowered, and just was not reliable enough. 

The assets of Volcanic were sold to its largest shareholder, Oliver H. Winchester, who had invested large sums of his personal money into the company.   Winchester renamed the company the New Haven Arms Co., and later to the Winchester Repeating Arms Co.  Hired by Winchester to make a reliable repeating rifle, gun designer B. Tyler Henry worked to improve the cartridge, and to make a rifle to use it.  He came up with a large caliber lever action rifle and a  .44 cal rimfire cartridge.  He got a patent on his design in 1860, and the Henry rifle was in production before the U.S. Civil War started. 

The Army evaluated the Henry rifle, as it was called, and bought a few of them.  However they did not buy significant numbers of the Henry.   Army brass thought the soldiers would waste a lot of ammunition by the rapid fire of the rifle, and units equiped with Henry's would be hard to keep supplied with ammunition.  Since the days of the Kentucky Rifle, the Army has favored accurate single shot fire over massive firepower, often citing the wastefulness of massive firepower, and expense of all that ammunition.  Although rejected by the Army, it was an instant success by the soldiers who used the rifle.  Some Union outfits supplied themselves with Henry rifles, either on their own or by contributions from their communities. 

A Southern general remarked that the Henry was a rifle that the Northerners could load on Sunday and fire it all week. 

The Henry rifle would get hot during firing, and did not have a wooden hand grip under the hot barrel.  It was a bit slow to load, a magazine tube being loaded from the muzzle end.  But once loaded, it easily outclassed other rifles of its day. It was only made through 1866, when improved models of Winchester repeating rifles replaced the original design.

The Henry rifle and its descendents, the Winchesters, are cited as one of the three inventions that allowed the settling of the American West, along with Gliddens barbed wire fence, and Halliday's windmill.

Other rifle articles in the archives include:
           The M1-Garrand
          The British Furgeson Breach Loader
          The 1903 Springfield
          The Krag Jorgenson
          The First Colt Revolver
          The Walker Colt
           1911 Colt 45
          The Collier Flintlock Revolver

Click on the Firearms Category to view all the firearms articles.

Abraham Lincoln's Patent

In the early years of U.S. history the only roads were in and around cities and well settled regions along the Eastern seaboard.  Transportation of goods and people largely relied on water routes, over the ocean or along interior rivers.  The vast interior of the land was reachable only by rivers, or on foot or horseback. 

One problem river navigation suffered was that the boats could easily become stuck on sand bars, and would require much pulling and digging to free them.  A country lawyer named Abraham Lincoln traveled extensively by river boat, and observed many a stranding.  He came up with a device which would raise a stranded boat in the water, thus allowing it to be pulled off a sand bar. 

He later became President of the United States.  He remains the only U.S. President to receive a U.S. patent, although Thomas Jefferson invented several items worthy of patents, including an improved plow.  There was no patent system in place at the time of Jefferson's inventions.

Universal Laws II.

Everything is equally difficult (designing a new paper clip or a guided missile).

Everyone knows that you should build the second model first.

If the boss is a dope, everyone under him/her is (or soon will be) a dope.

Half of something is worth more than all of nothing.

If you want a 50-50 deal, offer the other party 60 and ask for 40.

If you want to be different, you better be very good.  If your product is really different, it better be very good.

If you want to know what the country will be like in the future, learn what the junior high kids are thinking now.

35 Reasons Not to Have Your Photo on the Internet

This site demonstrates 35 (and growing) reasons not to have your photo on the internet. 

http://www.aseltine.com/rhee/

Carabiners

Carabiners got their name from the use on carbine rifles of a clip with a spring loaded gate that connected the strap to the rifle.    The first aluminum carabiners were made during WWII for use by military climbers (the 10th Mountain Division, Rangers, and other specially trained forces).

The first carabiner made specifically for the outdoor sport industry was made in the U.S. by Yvon Chouinard around 1957.   What made Chouninard 'biners great was that they could support a climbers full body weight, and the gate would still open and close.  Earlier carabiners would flex enough under load that the gate would open all the time under load.  Here is a snap link from 1897, which would have worked pretty well for climbing, although a rack of 30 or so of these would be pretty heavy.  The basic carabiner form appears much earlier in an 1868 patent.

An earlier carabiner, made for use with ropes but not for climbing, was one made in 1868 by Pelton.  A form of locking carabiner was made in 1896, as shown in the patent below. 

 

The Fire Truck

A pump for pumping water was developed in Alexandria in ancient times, and used for firefighting.  Sometimes a water supply could be made by just digging a hole in the ground, and when it filled up with ground water, the firefighters would pump it out onto a fire. 

In the early days of Rome a real estate investor/ extortionist named Crassus used a team of firefighters in an effective scheme.  There was no public firefighting service at that time, so when a building was on fire, Crassus and his team would show up with their water pump.  Before fighting the fire, Crassus would make a very low offer on the building, and to neighboring building owners.  If the owners refused, Crassus let the building burn and spread to neighboring buildings, and would later make an even lower offer.  If the owner agreed to sell the property, the firefighters would try to put the fire out.  Crassus became very wealthy with this scheme,  owned a good portion of the city of Rome, bought his way into political office, and ruled Rome as Triumvirate with Pompey and Julius Caesar.  As Triumvirate, the area he ruled was centered in Syria, and extended over a wide region.  Envisioning riches beyond belief and military glory, Crassus led an expedition against the Parthian Empire, in which he was killed and his legion was wiped out.

The pump below, patented in the U.S. in 1870, is very similar to ancient Roman force pumps of the type used to fight fires.

First Full Suspension Bike, Circa 1890

Here is a pretty well developed full suspension bike patented in 1890, a year before McGlinchey's full suspension velocipede, and 32 years before telescoping forks of Sage. As far as I know, Becker is the first inventor of the full suspension bicycle