Patent Pending Blog - Patents and the History of Technology

The Fork

Forks are a fairly recent addition to the dining table, unlike knives.  Knives in some form have been around for millenia, as have spoons.  Forks, however, were unknown in Europe until their introduction from the Middle East via Italy.  They were introduced to Italy by a Byzantine princess in the 11th century CE, but were scorned as an affectation at first. 

"Instead of eating with her fingers like other people, the princess cuts up her food into small pieces and eats them by means of little golden forks with two prongs."[Giblin]

"God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks - his fingers. Therefore it is an insult to Him to substitute artificial metallic forks for them when eating."[Giblin]

This is a variation on the old saying that if God had intended man to ____________, he would have provided him with ______________ instead of _______________.  You can fill in the blanks as the occaision requires.

At first forks were small two tined utensils used to spear fruits in syrup, and were only used by the Italian nobility and upper classes.  At the time of the Spanish Armada, forks were used in Spain, but not in England.  A British traveler to Europe wrote the first information in England about the fork in 1611, and was widely ridiculed as being affected and effeminate.  Gradually, forks became used in England, first by the nobility and upper classes, and much later by the lower classes. Therefore the Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving in 1621 did not have forks, but the Founding Fathers probably did in 1776, because they were the upper class, the first adopters of forks.

It wasn't until the mid eighteenth century that forks were used in Germany and England, and the early nineteenth century before they began to be commonly used in America.  The original two tined fork developed into the three, and finally the four tined fork.

Xerxes Canal Through the Athos Peninsula

King Darius of Persia sent a huge fleet to conquer Athens, after the Greeks had been assisting a Persian province in Asia Minor in revolt against the Persians. The fleet was destroyed in 492 B.C. by a huge storm as it rounded the Athos Peninsula .

A second attack by Darius was defeated at Marathon by Athenian warriors. 

Darius' son Xerxes decided to conquer Greece also, and in 480 B.C. began preparations.  So that his fleet would not meet the same fate as Darius' first fleet, he ordered his army and those of his allies to build a canal across the one and a quarter mile wide Athos Peninsula.  The work went on for three years, and when completed the canal was 100 feet wide at the surface, 45 feet deep and 50 feet wide at the bottom.  This was wide enough for two warships to pass abreast.  The Persian fleet passed through the canal, and then the canal was largely abandoned, and was silted in

over the years. Xerxes went from the canal to burn Athens, but his fleet was destroyed by the Athenian navy in the Battle of Salamis.  Never maintained, the canal fell into disuse quickly.  Its existence had been debated by historians, but recent studies have confirmed its location at the narrowest point on the peninsula. The canal can be seen as a line of green trees between the two red dots.

The Corinth Canal

Everyone has known for a long time that a canal across the Isthmus of Corinth would greatly aid shipping.  Periandros, ruler of Corinth, tried to build a canal across the isthmus by pick and shovel in about 600 BC, but the project was just too big for his resources.  That is when he built the overland haul road described below.  The second attempt was by the Macedonian King Demetrius Poliorkitis, in about 300 BC.  The canal was contemplated by Julius Ceasar, and again attempted by the Roman Emporer Nero, in 67 AD, but was not finished when Nero was killed shortly after its start.  The next attempt was in modern times, using the same techniques and steam equipment that had been developed for digging the Panama Canal.  A crew of Greek and French workmen finally finished the canal in 1881, using the same route selected by Nero.  Unfortunately, it was built too narrow for many large modern ships, but some 9000 smaller ships cross the Isthmus of Corinth through the canal each year.  The canal also provides something that Nero never contemplated, an awesome bungee jumping venue!!   

The Ship Railroad of Corinth

Southern Greece consists of a body of land called the Peloponnese, which is connected to the rest of Greece by a narrow isthmus, the Isthmus of Corinth, near the ancient city of Corinth.  Corinth was a major center of trade and culture in ancient Greece, at times exceeding the influence of Athens and Sparta.  If  a ship wanted to go to a port city east of the Peloponnese, it had to go all the way around the Peloponnese. 

This was a 195 mile journey, and exposed the ship to dangerous coastal rocks and weather.  It would be much shorter to cut across the Isthmus of Corinth, but of course this was not possible.  This would take a canal, which would be a huge undertaking. 

In the mid sixth century BC, Periander, the ruler of Corinth, did the next best thing to building a canal.  He built a road paved with stone from one side of the isthmus to the other, called the Diolkos.  There were two deep gooves carved into the stone of the road, and a vehicle called the olkos was built to travel over the road.  The olkos was on wheels, and was large enough to carry an entire ship, without cargo.  Loaded with the ship, the olkos would be towed across the 4 mile wide Isthmus of Corinth to the other side.  If a ship was too big for the overland journey, its cargo would be transported from a ship on one side to a waiting ship on the other side. 

The Diolkos was 10 meters wide at the harbor, and narrowed to 3 to 4 meters wide in places on its route.  The Diolkos and the olkos, though repaired and restored many times, were used until the 9th century AD, for a useful life of 1500 years.  Enough revenue was generated by operation of the Diolkos that taxation of the residents was abolished. 

The First Tanks

Leonardo da Vinci designed an armored car or tank in about 1487.  His design was covered by wood, had 4 wheels, which were powered by hand cranks from within the vehicle.  There were firing ports so that the occupants could fire in a 360 degree range, without moving the vehicle. Like most of his other ideas, this was never published, and a prototype was never built.  Perhaps he realized that his vehicle would be far too heavy to be powered by hand operated cranks.

However, in 1512 a Spanish army in Italy used 200 battle cars against a French army, but the armored cars were not sufficient to win the battle for the Spanish.

The Kayak, High Tech Craft of the Arctic

The early arctic explorers were amazed to see the light and seaworthy boats that the Inuit and Aleut Indians paddled into the ocean.  These crafts were kayaks, and are traditionally made by Arctic peoples from Greenland to Siberia.  They are made of a wooden framework covered by a skin.  Traditionally, the skin was animal hide, but kayaks with a frame and skin are now made with a skin of fabric, dacron, neoprene, or some other modern equivalent of hide.  Modern boatbuilders still build these craft, and the wood and skin versions are reputed to perform better than wood strips kayaks, because they bend with the waves.

Kayaks were typically made in treeless areas, so the wood for these craft were scrounged from driftwood on the beach.  Kayaks typically have a sturdy gunwale, which is the top edge of the craft, and no keel, unlike boats of European design.  Made entirely without metal, the wooden pieces were connected to each other by wooden or bone pegs, mortise and tenon joints, and by rawhide or sinew cord.

The view at left is of the interior of a traditional kayak, showing the wooden frame and how it is interconnected.  A hide covering is stretched over the frame, and the top deck has a peak to shed water.  Some traditional kayaks have a floor, made by wooden slats that the paddler sits on.

Modern kayaks take the traditional kayak shape, and apply modern materials to the design, such as composite materials instead of wood structural pieces, metal for the frame, and wood with fiberglass for a skin.  The photos below are of an ocean going tandem built by my good friend, Marc Dilley of Wenatchee Washington. It has a carbon fiber rudder, steerable by foot pedals, and wonderful patterns formed by different colored strips of wood. 

This took Marc about a year to build, spending 5 hours a week, and has given him and his wife Margareta many hours of peaceful paddling.  It was built from a design by One Ocean Kayaks, and is the Cape Ann Double model.  It weighs about 70 pounds, and in addition to Marc and Margareta, will hold about 200 pounds of gear.  This boat is made using the same technique as wood strip canoes, in which thin strips of wood are attached to forms on a strongback, and glued side to side.   The interior forms are then removed, and the inside and outside are coated with fiberglass and resin, which add to the strength.  Although built from plans, building this boat required Marc to do an incredible amount of design and fabrication of the component parts.  Nice job, Marc! 

    

The Suez Canal (the first one)

History marks as a great achievement the completion of the Suez Canal, linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Ocean in 1867. The canal meant that ocean-going ships could travel from the Mediterranean to the Orient without going around Africa. However, the first Suez Canal was built in about 600 BC, by the Egyptian pharoah Nikau II. It ran from about the mid point of the modern canal straight west, and connected to the Nile River. Nikau II did not complete the canal, but 75 years later the Persian King Darius I completed the canal after conquering Egypt.

It gradually filled with silt, and was restored several times in the centuries that followed. It was wide enough for two large oared ships to pass along side each other, and was 140 km in length. The historian Herodutus recorded that 120,000 workers died in its construction. It was in use until about 800 AD, for a total life of 1400 years. We’ll see if the modern version lasts that long.

The City of Cahokia

About 10 miles east of St. Louis, in Collinsville Illinois, is the site of the Native American city of Cahokia. At its height in about 1200 AD, it had 20,000- 30,000 inhabitants and was the largest city north of Mexico City. It was a city with many man-made mounds, made in tiers like those in Central America.
In fact, it compared favorably with London at the time, which had about the same population.

As described at The Mississippian Moundbuilders and their Artifacts, the Indians made highly refined pottery, arrowheads, and flint and stone tools. The painting "Community Life" By Michael Hampshire, Courtesy of Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site Collinsville, Illinois, shows the city and a mound. The bow and arrow was the preferred weapon, being described by early European explorers as being made of Osage Orange wood, with the bow being nearly as tall as the user.

The French later had settlements, trading outposts, and garrisons in the area. The land on the east side of the river became U.S. territory when captured by Captain Clarke during the Revolutionary War. The French soldiers stationed in Cahokia included an officer named Michel Beaulieu and his wife Angelique. Angelique was a doctor and the first woman doctor in the region. It was the practice for Napolean to grant land to the French soldiers as a retirement. Michel Beaulieu and his son Guilliame were both granted 1000 acres of land in the region of St. Louis area, which was unsettled at that time. When they retired from the French Army, they crossed the river and claimed their land. The land grant was ratified when the area was purchased by President Thomas Jefferson. When Guilliame settled in Missouri, he changed his name to William Palmer, and his great granddaughter was my grandmother.

Cahokia Courthouse, built about 1737.

Hero's Steam Turbine

An Egyptian scientist from Alexandria Egypt was famous in the ancient world for designing mechanical marvels. One invention was a steam turbine, which spun furiously, but which he never put to a practical use.


It utilized a sealed caudron of water, which was heated to boiling. Steam from the boiling water entered the ball through one of the arms supporting it, and exited through the two projected nozzles. The reaction from the exiting steam sent the ball spinning.

The same concept was put to work by the black inventor William Smith, when he invented the first rotary lawn sprinkler in 1897 and 1898, shown in U.S. patent Nos. 581,785 and 601,065. Water shot from the two exit nozzles sent the sprinkler head spinning, just like Hero's steam turbine, and this sprinkler concept is still busy on peoples lawns sprinkling away.

The 2000 Year Old Computer

In 1901 Greek sponge divers found an odd looking piece of coral encrusted brass gears on the site of a sunken Roman vessel from the first century BCE. The wreck was off the coast of the island of Antikythera, near Greece, and the device has become known as the Antikythera device. The device was cleaned up, x-rayed, extensively studied, and it appears that is was a mechanical computer that displayed the position of the stars, planets, and moon.

A reconstruction of the device has been made, on paper, as computer animation, and out of brass, the material of the original device.

The device consists of a number of geared wheels that are mounted on a bronze plate. A shaft was turned by a handle, which caused the large crown-gear wheel to turn. The crown-gear wheel moved the large four spoked drive wheel, which in turn moved two connected gears and a set of gear wheels and shafts connected to them. The movement of the gears and shafts resulted in moving three pointers on the exterior of the machine, which indicated star positions, planet positions and lunar positions. Only one dial is unobstructed by the encrusting material, and it shows a dial with the symbols of the zodiac and the months of the year.

This dial showed the position of the sun in the zodiac, and the main risings and settings of brights stars and constellations during the year. The gears were made with triangular teeth, which is a primitive type of gear, but one that could be made by a craftsman with a triangular file. The device appears to have been repaired at least twice, which indicates that it actually worked, and was used for a period of time. Its existence also indicates a technological skill that was not known to exist in that time, and did not exist in modern times until tens of centuries later.