Patent Pending Blog - Patents and the History of Technology

The Serpollet Steam Tricycle

Leon Serpollet of France designed an improved steam engine in 1887 and in 1888 built a tricycle type vehicle powered by the steam engine.  Serpollet's steam engine addressed the problem of steam engines taking a long time to build up steam.  In Serpollet's engine metal tubes were heated, and when contacted with water a head of steam was instantly brought up.  American financier F.L. Gardner put up the money to bring the project into production. 

Serpollet obtained the first drivers license in Paris, and in 1890 with Ernest Archdeacon took a trip (the first road trip?) of 286 miles in 15 days in the steam tricycle.  In 1902 Serpollet broke the world land speed record with a speed of 75.06 mph.  Gardner and Serpollet built six and eight cylinder automobiles until 1907.  Serpollet died about then, and the gasoline engine automobiles were outperforming the steamers in sales by then. 

Scotland Hikes

If you ever wondered where patent attorneys in Scotland go hiking, here is the kind of outing  Andy Shanks (Marks and Clerk, Patent and Trademark  Attorneys) and his family enjoy.  These photos are of a family hike (average speed 1 mph) in the Clauchland Hills on a Saturday, followed by a boating trip on Sunday. 

The photos show Andy's three children, Michael (12), Emma (9), and David (7).

The island is Holy Isle which sits across Lamlash Bay.  The Bay was  used in the past as an anchorage for the Royal Navy fleet, and there were anti-submarine booms across the inlets at either end of the Holy Isle, and old pillboxes.

The photograph below shows the dorsal fin and snout of a rare plankton-eating basking shark which we encountered during the boating trip, around the Holy Isle which sits across Lamlash Bay.

Andy and the family in front of their cottage.

Aquatic Bicycle

When was the bicycle first adapted to aquatic use?  Depends on if you are talking about velocipedes, or the type of bicycle like James Starley's Rover.  Here is a bike adapted to aquatic use in 1899.  the front fork is adapted to serve as a rudder, and rear wheel drives a propeller.  The inventor is Charles Storms of Buffalo, N.Y.

Rear Suspension Bike, 1892

Here is an early, but not the first rear suspension bike from 1892.

Round the World on a Bicycle

On April 22 1884 a young reporter from England named Thomas Stevens left San Francisco and headed east on a Pope "Columbia" ordinary bicycle.  This was a high wheel type bike, and had a 50 inch front wheel. 

A few weeks into his trip he shot a moutain lion, and 103 days and 3700 miles of wagon roads after starting, he was in Boston.  After wintering in New York, he took a steam ship to Liverpool, and rode through England.  He took a ferry to Paris, and rode through Germany, Austria, Hungary and was in Bulgaria by June 24 1885.  A month later he was in Istanbul, and spent 6 months in Persia.  He was arrested in Afganistan and returned to Persia.  By August 1886 he was in India, and two months later he was in Canton China.  He cycled in Japan and headed for San Francisco by steamer and arrived December 24, 1886.  Steven's wrote a series of letters during his journey which were published in Harper's magazine.  The letters were collected into a book, Around the World on a Bicycle and is available in reprint and in digital form in the Gutenburg Project.

Benz Tricycle Automobile

Born in Germany 60 miles away from Gottlieb Daimler, Karl Friedrich Benz  started in business as a supplier of building materials. When he was 35 he received a patent on the two stroke engine he had been working on, and in 1883 when he was 39 he founded a company to build industrial (stationary) engines.  Using Nicolaus Otto's four stroke engine concept he build a one cylinder 958 cc, 0.75 engine and a three wheeled vehicle.  The vehicle had electric ignition, differential gear, and was water cooled.  He recieved a patent on the vehicle in 1886. 

Synthetic Fuel of WWII

Hitler's capability to conquer Europe was discounted by the experts of the day at least partly because Germany had virtually no oil deposits.  It was thought that merely cutting his oil imports would starve any serious war effort.  Those experts either didn't know of, or discounted the potential of turning Germany's vast coal reserves into liquid fuel, the synthetic fuel that powered Germany's motorized Army, panzer divisions,  and the Luftwaffe.   

In the 1920s two German scientists named Frans Fischer and Hans Tropsch developed a process (the Fischer-Tropsch Method) of processing coal to produce a liquid hydrocarbon fuel by reacting the carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and methane obtained from coal.  The product was refined to create a synthetic fuel. 

In WWII, it was not unusual for German tanks to drive or be towed to the battlefield powered by flammable gas made from wood.  At the battlefield the tanks would be converted to burn synthetic fuel in battle.  The tide of war turned against Germany when the synthetic fuel plants were bombed and fuel production stopped.  In 1944 General George Patton was speeding across Germany with the objective of being the first Allied force to reach Berlin.  His forces outpaced his supply lines and his progress stopped.  Patton ordered that synthetic fuel be drained from captured or abandoned German vehicles, and some of Patton's Sherman tanks and personnel carries were converted to run on  synthetic fuel.

Steel Tubing Bicycle Frame

Bicycle construction was made considerably lighter and stronger when in 1885 the German brothers Max and Reinhard Mannesmann patented a process for making seamless steel tubing.  A solid cylindrical blank is fed into contact with forming rollers which grip and pull the blank over a mandrel which bores out the inside of the blank.  The diameter of the tubing becomes larger than diameter of the original blank.  This 1888 patent is for a version of their process in which the work of forcing the blank over the mandrel is accomplished by a feed device, so the rollers have to form the outer shape but do not grip and pull the blank.   The brothers founded the Mannesmann company, which grew into a huge industrial giant which is dominant in its field today, and valued at around $92 billion. 

The Roman Era Grain Harvester

In Roman times a harvester was developed which was described by the historian Pliny the Elder in 77 AD.  It was called the Gallic Vallus.  According to Pliny, "on the vast estates in the provinces of Gaul very large frames fitted with teeth at the edge and carried on two wheels are driven through the corn by a donkey pushing from behind; the ears torn off fall into the frame."

Scenes carved into stone tombstones show several views of how the first mechanized harvestor worked.  The teeth were rows of sharp knives, and behind the knives was a box for holding the cut corn or grain.  A worker pushed the crop into the teeth of the harvester, and the harvester was pushed forward by the donkey from behind the harvestor.



The technology of the vallus was lost when the Roman world declined, and was not reinvented until the 18th century, almost 2000 years later. 

Rebuilding New Orleans

On Sept 7, 1900, a huge hurricane hit about the same area of the United States as Rita in 2005.  It hit Galveston, which at that time was an island 9 feet above sea level.  The hurricane was a category 3 or 4, and with winds of 140 mph drove a sea surge 16 feet high across the island on which Galveston was built.  Killed by the hurricane were 6000-8000 of the city's population of 37,000.  3600 buildings were destroyed.  The thriving port industry of Galveston was destroyed. 

The city decided to rebuild.  A 16 foot tall seawall was built around the city, and it was decided to raise the height above sea level of the city.  To accomplish that the house and building owners raised their houses into the air and built piers of stone, brick and wood under them.  Then pumps dredged up sand from the bay, and pumped water and sand onto the land.  The ground was thus raised to the new level of the houses.  2000 houses were raised in this way, as shown on photos on the Galveston and Texas History Center of the Rosenberg Library.

The history of the Galveston flood of 1900 raises some interesting points:

Did authorities in New Orleans 2005 know that their levies could not withstand a category 4 hurricane and that they were 9 feet below sea level?

Galveston of 1900 funded most of the restoration themselves, withsome help from the State.  The port industry that had been in Galveston went to Houston and never returned.

Can New Orleans could repaired as Galveston was, by raising the ground level?

Is this an example of the saying that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it?