Patent Pending Blog - Patents and the History of Technology

The Seaplane of "The Aviator"

In the movie "The Aviator" about the early life of Howard Hughes, Hughes lands a seaplane, taxies to the beach, and asks Kate Hepburn out on a date.  Later, he takes Kate flying in the same plane.  The plane is a Sikorsky seaplane, the S-38, as seen in Sikorsky's seaplane patent drawings.

The S-38 held 5 passengers, and two pilots.  It had a gross weight of 10,500 lb, a 400 or a 525 hp engine, a ceiling of 16,000 ft, a cruising speed of 104 mph, with a top speed of 120 mph.   More photos and information about the S-38 here.

There were only 111 of these built, and no complete airplane still exists.  Restorations include some but not all original original parts, and reproductions have been built.

The Curtiss Seaplane

The Wright brothers were the first aviators to successfully fly an airplane that could  sustain controlled flight, but there were many competitors who were very close to achieving that goal.  One of those was Glenn Curtiss.  While trying to avoid the Wright's patent on wing warping, he came up with other innovations that contributed to improving on the technology of the Wrights airplane as a historical footnote.  He introduced the use of a steering wheel on a stick, the control device still in use today.  Although the Wright's first flew in 1902, by the time of WWI, there were no Wright airplanes in the conflict, but 10,000 Curtiss Jennies were supplied to the Allies. 

Curtiss built a seaplane in 1911.  The seaplane was a regular Curtiss pusher airplane, with a central pontoon and wing tip floats. The pilot sat in a tricycle framework, in front of and below the wings.  Early versions had a 25 hp 4 cylinder engine, and later versions had a 50 hp 8 cylinder engine.  The seaplane was first flown in 1911, the same year the patent was filed.  It issued 11 years later, in 1922!!  You think the patent office is slow now,  this took 11 years to issue.   

Lower Case Writing

Roman writing was  entirely in upper case letters.  Manuscripts from the 7th and 8th century AD are entirely in capital letters.  But the common people, such as legionaries, by 100 AD wrote in a style that was easier to write by hand, and was similar to lower case script.  This style was picked up by Celtic monks in Ireland, who wrote the first formal books using upper and lower case letters.  Besides legionaries letters, the earliest writing using lower case was from the 7th century AD, in a text of Psalms called the Cathach of St. Columbia.  This text was carried into battle as an inspiration to troops.

Sikorsky Helicopter

Igor Sikorsky left Russia when the last Tzar was overthrown in the Bolshevik revolution.  He designed aircraft for the Tsar, he had built a huge passenger airplane, the Le Grande.  In the  West, he turned his hand as an aircraft designer to build a three engine transport, and a seaplane.   

Ssikorsky had always been interested in designing helicopters.  The first working helicopter that Sikorsky built was the VS-300, first flown in 1940.  It had a body made of welded steel tubes, a 90 hp engine, three 14' main rotors, and three auxiliary or tail rotors.  The pitch of all the rotors could be changed.  The design patented in 1931 must have been an early model, having two main rotors and two tail rotors. 

Babylonian Math

In the fertile landbetween the Tigris andEuphrates Rivers, the land now known as Iraq, a number of civilizations developed, were conquered by outsiders, assimilated the outsiders, and the cycle repeated many times.  The earliest culture was called Sumerian, and they developed a system of math based on the use of 12 for some tasks, and on base 60 counting for other tasks.  This in in contrast to our counting system based on multiples of 10.  The Sumarians were conquered by outside invaders, and they developed into the Babylonian culture. 

In the third millenium BC the Babylonians adopted the base 60 math system of the Sumerians, and used that system to designate that the night had 12 regions, with one region appearing each hour, and one region dissappearing.  Since they were near the equator, the days were about equal to the nights in length.  They defined that  each hour had 60 minutes, and each minute had 60 seconds.  The day, being equal to the night, also had 12 hours, for a total day length of 24 hours.

Further, a circle was designated as having 360 divisions to form the whole, and the 360 degrees were applied to the 4 directions.   The Babylonians math system used a positional system like ours, in which the position of a number indicated  its value.  They did not used a symbol for zero, but if a position was left blank, it meant zero. 

The Sumarians and Bablyonians base 60 math system carries on today in our reconning of time and in geometry and trigonometry.

Predictions of Oliver Evans

Oliver Evans was a home grown inventive genius, and revolutionized the milling industry in the late 18th century, advanced steam power from primitive to powerful, and built the first automobile and steam powered watercraft.  He made some bold predictions about the future of technology.  In a time when the smallest improvement was opposed, he said...

The time will come when people will travel in  stages moved by steam engines, from one city to another,  almost as fast as birds fly, fifteen or twenty miles  in an hour.

Passing through the air with such velocity, changing  the scene in such rapid succession, will be a most exhilarating, delightful exercise.

A carriage will set out from Washington in the  morning, the passengers will breakfast at Baltimore, dine at Philadelphia, and sup at New York, the same  day.

To accomplish this, two sets of railways will  be laid so nearly level as not in any place to deviate more than two degrees from a horizontal line, made  of wood or iron or paths of broken stone or gravel,  with a rail to guide the carriage, so that they may  pass each other in different directions and travel  by night as well as by day; and the passengers will  sleep in these stages as comfortably as they now do  in stage boats....

And it shall come to pass, that the memory of  those sordid and wicked wretches who opposed such improvements, will be execrated, by every good man,  as they ought to be now.   

The Langely Aerodrome

Around the turn of the century many scientists, blacksmiths, astronomers, dare devils, and bicycle makers were trying to achieve manned controlled flight in an airplane.  A favorite to achieve flight was Samuel Langley.  He was a well known astronomer, scientist, and architect of the international time zone system.  He became Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1887, and used the Smithsonian's resources to pursue serious research into manned flight.

Langely built several steam and gasoline powered airplanes, which he called Aerodromes, which sustained flight for 1000-5000 yards.   The U.S. Army funded his research with a $50,000 grant, and his quest for manned flight really took off.  Brought in on the Langley project, Hungarian engineer Stephen M. Balzer designed a five-cylinder, air-cooled rotary engine  which produced a paltry 8 hp.  Charles Manly redesigned it and got 52 hp from it, running at 950 rpm, and with an excellent power to weight ratio.  The engine drove two pusher props. 

     

The airplane  had  a tandem wing design and a cruciform tail. The control surfaces were minimal and inadequate, which Langley and Manly were aware of.  They planned to improve the control surfaces after achieving straight line manned flight.  The airplane weighed 750 lbs.

On October 7, 1903, the first flight was attempted.  It was launched off a large house boat, almost an aircraft carrier.   As it left the deck of the launch site, it angled down at a 45 degree angle, and crashed into the water.  Much to Langley's  consternation, it was reported that the airplane had left the launch site like a "like a handful of mortar."   Langley maintainted that the problem was with launching, and it was theorized that the airplane snagged on part of the launch structure. 

A second launch was attempted, with similar if not worse results. Manly was almost drowned in the crash.   Amid nationwide ridicule, the Army withdrew the grant, and Langley's attempts at manned flight ended.  Although no one would know about it for several years, a few days after Langley's crash, the Wright brothers achieved their first manned flight, on December 17, 1903. 

The First Assembly Line

Albert Pope was a man of modest origins from Boston, who served in the Civil War.  Discharged with the honorary rank of Leutenant Colonel, he was known as Colonel Albert Pope thereafter.  After the war, Pope went into the shoe business and did very well.  In 1876 Pope visited an Exposition in Philadelphia, and saw his first bicycle, a high wheeled "ordinary" bike.  Intrigued, he visited England to learn more about their manufacture, and returned to the United States determined to manufacture bicycles.  First he imported English bikes, then began building his own. 

He acquired a 25% interest in the Lallement patent, which was being agressively enforced.  Later he acquired a 75% ownership in the patent.  He designed a production line for assembly of his Columbia bicycle.  Eventually, he had two bicycle factories, a tire factory, and a steel tubing factory.   All parts for the bicycle were made in-house.  Later, when Henry Ford began manufacture of his Model T, he adopted Pope's ideas of a production line and integrated production.  The Columbia sold for $95, which was cheaper than the $113 of the English import.  With 10 million bicycles sold in the U.S by the 1890s, Pope made a fortune in the bicycle business.

Photo from Robert Howe's Antique Bicycle Photo Page

The First Internal Combustion Engine

The first successful internal combustion was designed and built by a Belgian engineer,  Jean Joseph Lenoir, and patented in 1860.  It operated on coal gas, and was basically a two stroke engine. However the stoke did not compress the gas, so it was not very efficient.  Even so, it produced more power for its weight than steam engines of the day, and some 500 engines were produced before it was surpassed in technology by the internal combustion engine of Otto. Lenoir put one of his engines in a three wheeled vehicle, which completed a 50 mile road trip at about 3 km/hr.

Oliver Evans Automated Flour Mill

In 1790, the first year that the U.S. Patent Office granted patents, three patents were granted.  One was to Samual Hopkins for an improvement "in the making Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process."  The second patent was for a new candle making process, and the other was for automated flour milling machinery.  These patents were signed by George Washington, Attorney General Edmund Randolf, and  Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson.

Oliver Evans, the inventor of the automated flour mill, was born a farm boy and learned what he could of machinery and science by reading what books he could find on the subjects.  He had great machanical skills, and was brought into his older brothers partnership in a flour grinding mill.  Working at the mill, he learned the workings of the mill, and how labor intensive the work was.  Sacks of grain would be carried by hand to upper floors of the mill, and as it was ground the flour would be gathered in lower floors, sacked by hand, and carried off by hand.   

He designed and built machinery that would operate off the power shaft turned by the water wheel, and perform all of the tasks of the mill using automated implements.  He was the first to use the Archimedes Screw to lift dry material, and used belts and scoops to perform other tasks.  It took many years to overcome the doubts of traditional millers, but eventually all mills were built on the Evans plan.  In an Evans mill, the only work the miller had to do was to stop and start the machinery.

Illustration from Theodore Hazen's site on Flour Mill Automation, and Oliver Evan's Mills, with color and arrows added by Dr. Barbara J. Becker from her site, Spinning the Web of Ingenuity, which is part of her class on the History of Technology at U.C. Irvine.

Sites with information about Oliver Evans' mills include Theodore R. Hazen's site, Crabble Corn Mill is a restored Evans mill in England, Pierce Mill is a restored Evans mill in Washington D.C., and Colvin Mill is another D.C. mill.  See also Roman mill at Barbegal.

Evans greatly improved the steam engine of Watt, recieved the first patent on an automobile, and built a steam powered automobile/ boat  in 1805.