Patent Pending Blog - Patents and the History of Technology

The Otto Engine, First Four Stroke Engine

Nicolaus Otto was a traveling salesman who at age 30 began testing his ideas of how to build an internal combustion engine.  He had seen an engine built by Lenoir and thought he could see how to improve on the Lenoir engine.  His design was not very good, but he met Eugen Langen, owner of a sugar factory, and together they made an improved engine.  Entered in the 1867 World Exhibition in Paris, their engine won a gold medal for the most economical engine for business.  The Otto engine proved to be powerful and light compared to steam engines, and in the next decade over 10,000 engines were produced. 

The Otto engine was of the four stroke type which utilized the new concept of compressing the gas mixture before ignition.  The up and down motion of the piston in the cylinder performed 4 steps in two revolutions of the crankshaft: intake of new gas mixture into the cyinder, compression of the gas to the top of the cylinder, explosion of the gas that pushes the piston down, and expulsion of gasses from the cylinder.   Here is a fun animation of a 4 stroke engine cycle, by Matt Keveney.  Another animation shows a graph of pressure as the piston performs its tasks. 

One worker at the Otto Engine Works was Gottleib Daimler, who later put engines like the Otto engine to work to drive vehicles. 

Steam Plowing

In the early days of steam, the farm  tractors were huge machines, and were often too heavy to work the fields when they were wet.  One method of using steam tractors was tried in which two steam powered tractors were set up at either end of a field, and a plow was pulled between them.  When the plow reached one tractor, the plow was built to lift one set of plows into the air, so another set of plows would be used on the return trip.  This method was used in England and tried in the U.S. but was soon abandoned as being slow and ineffective. 

The Daimler Motorcycle

In the early 1880s Gottleib Daimler worked as an assistant to Dr. Nicholas Otto.  Otto was an early maker of gasoline engines, in a time where there was little use for the volatile fraction from oil.  Daimler decided to leave Otto and build vehicles using a gas engine.  His first vehicle was a test bed for later automobiles, and was basically a motorcycle with training wheels.  It was called the Daimler Reitwagen, and was patented in 1885. 

It had a wooden frame, a seat  about like a saddle for a horse, and two outrigger wheels on springs.  Daimler's son rode the machine for 6 miles around the roads rural Cannstatt Germany.  The machine had twist grip controls, and was air cooled.  It had one cylinder, weighed 198 lbs (90 kg), and a top speed of 7mph (12km/hr).  The engine was fan cooled, put out 0.5 hp, and ran at 700 rpm. The wheels were wooden with an iron band on the outside. Considered by some the first motorcycle, it actually had 4 wheels so was not a motorcycle, and came 16 years after the steam powered motorcycle of  Sylvester Roper, and 14 years after the Michaux - Perreaux steam powered bicycle.

At the same time as Daimler was developing his "motorcycle", his future partner Carl Benz was designing a motorized tricycle.

Richard Trevilthick's Steam Automobile

The American inventor Oliver Evans developed the concept for a high pressure steam engine in 1794.   Evans steam engine was a high pressure engine, which was a vast improvement in power over Watts low pressure engines.  In high pressure steam engines, steam pressure is used to press a piston down, as opposed to pulling down in a low pressure system, with the low pressure created when the steam cools and contracts in volume.  Evans sent his plans to England for scientific review, and many feel that their teachings were read and understood by Englishman Richard Trevilthick. 

Trevilthick first built a steam engine to operate a water pump in Cormish mines,  and later built a locomotive in 1807 (the first in the world) and still later an automobile. 

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 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

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. 

The First Patent in the New World

The first patent in America was granted in 1646 to a Mr. Joseph Jenkes by the General Court of Massechusets, was to protect his scyth mill from competition.  Patents in the early days were not to benefit  an inventor,  as they are now.  They were to encourage a businessman or industrialist to invest in a shop or mill, by extending to him a monopoly for a period of time.  At times, they even rewarded the businessman who stole industrial secrets from a foreign operation, in order to get that technology at work in the colonies or later, in the U.S.

The patent to Jenkes appears to be in that tradition, and relates to his establishment of a water mill, and reads:

At a generall Courte at Boston
the 6th of the 3th m^o 1646

The Co^rt considringe y^e necessity of raising such manifactures of
engins of mils to go by water for speedy dispatch of much worke wth few hands, F.r being sufficiently informed of y^e ability of y^e petition^r to pforme such workes grant his petition (y^t no oth^r pson shall set up, or use any such new invention, or trade for fourteen yeares w'hout y^e licence of him y^e said Joseph Jenkes) so farr as concernes any such new invention, & so as it shalbe alwayes in y^e pow^r of this Co^rte to restrain y^e exportation of such manifactures, & y^e prizes of them to moderation if occasion so require.

 

In the original, it looked like this:

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.

Levi Strauss Jeans

A Nevada tailor named Jacob Davis came up with an improved design for making denim jeans, which were already popular with farmers and working men of all types. The problem with denim jeans was that the pockets always ripped out from people jamming their hands in the pockets.  Davis came up with a solution to that problem, and that was to put copper rivets at the stress points of seams, such as at the pockets,  and at the base of the fly.  He didn't have the $80 required to file a patent, so he approached Levi Strauss to finance the venture.  Struass was a successful San Francisco businessman, selling denim and canvas pants to miners.   Davis' improvement to Levi's already sturdy jeans turned them into an icon.

Fast forward to current times, Congressional hearings about patent reform.  Senator Dianne Feinstein Discussed the "Levi Strauss" patent as an example, arguing the need to make the duration of patents and copyrights longer (the present duration of patents is 20 years from the time of filing, copyrights are the life of the author plus 70 years, in Levi Strauss' day patents lasted 14 years, and could get a seven year extention). 

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA):  Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman.

         And I'd like to echo those words.  Patent and copyright protection is a very big deal to California, and that's really why I'm here.

         And it's interesting to hearken back on an early patent.  And that was a patent which was issued to Levi Strauss for jeans in 1873. I believe at that time it was 17-year patent.

        It's now a twenty year patent from date of application or seventeen years.  And, so there are a lot of questions about these patents. 

         Is seventeen years fair?  Should it have been longer?  I mean, when Levi Strauss came forward in those early Gold Rush days, it was a very big deal to come up with a fabric, like jean fabric, because the pants of the miners were wearing out too fast.  And yet, as soon as that patent expires, you see Levi-type jeans everywhere. And, in this day of high costs, high labor costs, high every kind of costs, I've begun to wonder whether the time for the patent is really an adequate time.

         So, I look forward very much to hearing your comments, Mr. Dudas, on that subject.  And may I put my full remarks in the record, please?

See Matt Buchannan's article on patent reform discussions for more information.