Patent Pending Blog - Patents and the History of Technology

Babylon

The Greek historian Herodotus visited the city of Babylon in 460 BC, after it had been conquered by the Persian Cyrus, and stripped or treasures, but when its walls and temples were still standing, and he described the largest city of the ancient world.  The entire city was enclosed within a wall from 14 to 10.5 miles on each side (depending on which ancient historian is referenced).   The river Euphrates passed through the city walls, and the brick lined channel was lined by waterfront, wharves, and docks along its length inside the city.   Each of the four walls were pierced by 25 fortified gates, each guarded by massive bronze gates, through which the 50 thoroughfares of the city passed, forming 625 regular city blocks, each of at least 100 acres.  The famous Ishtar Gate was a gated entrance to an inner wall in the city. 

The area inside the walls included gardens and farms, as well as buildings and a full size pyramid, all made of bricks and palm wood. The walls enclosed up to 196 square miles!  The step pyramid was the temple of Belus.  It was 600 feet on each side at the base, and rose to a height of 480 feet, which compares to the 481 feet of the Egyptian pyramid at Giza.  Stairs around the pyramid allowed worshipers to travel to the top, to place offerings at the temple there.  The view from the top of the city laid out below, with the river, parks, walls, the hanging gardens, and the surrounding agricultural areas would have been in incredible sight to visitors and residents of the great city.

The most impressive structure of the city might have been the outer walls.  Herodotus stated the walls were 85 feet wide, and 335 feet tall, topped by 250 defensive towers.  The top of the walls included a road wide enough that a four horse chariot could turn around on the road.   The top of the walls were the site of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which were watered by a "huge hydraulic machine, working after the manner of the screw of Archimedes", which drew water tot he gardens.  The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, which are described in the following links. 

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
The Temple of Artemis at Ephesis
The Colossus of Rhodes
The Pyramids of Egypt
The Statue of Zeus at Olympia
The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus
The Lighthouse at Alexandria  

The Lybe Spring Motor Carriage

In 1891 a Daniel I. Lybe filed a patent application on a vehicle powered by a wound up spring.  The spring of the vechicle was given an initial winding, then would recoup winding on the downhill runs, and expend the spring energy on the level and uphill.  Both arm and foot power assisted the winding, and 30 mph was claimed.  The inventor believed his machine would "afford a mild and pleasing form of exercise, in addition to its speed advantages."  The Lybe vehicle was entered in the first motor race in the U.S., held in 1895, but it is not known if it finished.

Much Ado About 'Almost' Nothing

Hans Camenzind has written a great little book about the history of man's understanding and use of the electron, titled "Much Ado About 'Almost' Nothing".  The book is about this tiny little atomic particle, with a weight of almost nothing, and a speed near the speed of light, which has become the workhorse of our culture, in tools large and small.   The book traces the earliest observation of the actions of electrons, from pre-history to modern applications in electricity and electronics. 

The existence of electrons was theorized by the ancient Greeks, such as Democritus in 400 BC.  They were actually used for productive work by about 200 BC, with batteries used for electroplating jewelry in Iraq.  Electron's take their name from the Greek word for amber, the dried and hardened sap of trees. People found that when amber was rubbed with fur, it would attract certain small objects, such as threads, feathers, and straw.  This observation was the first notice taken of the action of electrons.  The Greek scientist Thales observed the properties of amber and of lodestone, and formulated a theory for their actions.  Thales was the perhaps the first known scientist, and worked on many different areas of science in about 600 BC. 

"Much Ado About 'Almost' Nothing" has many stories about man's very slow understanding of electrons, and focuses on the stories of the individual inventors making each tiny step of progress. At $14.95, its a great read for anyone, including scientists and non-scientists, and believe it or not, will be a book you will have a hard time putting down.  available from the publisher, Booklocker.com.  

The Douglas B-23 Dragon Bomber

In the late 1930s the Douglas Aircraft Company found a superior design for a sturdy long range aircraft in the civilian DC-2 and DC-3.  These were the finest passenger planes yet created, and also served as the basic form of military transport as the C-46 and C-47. 

The Army also wanted a better bomber than the then current bomber, and requested a bomber with twice the range and load as the current Army bomber, which was based on the DC-2 design.  Douglas responded with a redesigned airplane with a tail gun, the first for the U.S., and more power.   In addition, the stronger wings of the DC-3 were added.  The B-23s were also fitted with the new top secret Nordon bomb sight, said to be able to place a bomb in a pickle barrel from 25,000 feet.  That particular claim proved to be hogwash.   

On January 29, 1943, pilot Robert Orr and a crew of 8 were returning from bombing practice in Nevada to their base in Washington.  Low on fuel and with the wings icing up in a winter storm, Lt. Orr crashed landed his B-23 on Loon Lake in the mountains near McCall, Idaho.  The lake was frozen and the plane skidded across the frozen lake and into the trees close to the lake.  The trees sheared off the wings of the plane, and the fuselage came to rest in waist deep snow, with more snow falling and one crew member injured in the landing.

Loon Lake, (after the 2007 fire) looking across toward the bomber site

After 4 days, three of the crew decided to hike out, though they had no idea of where they were.  After six days of hiking through waist deep snow, they found a cabin with a forest service map on the wall, which told them where they were and the route to the nearest town, McCall.  At day 13 they found a CCC building, where they left an injured airman and continued toward McCall. On day 15 they had gone another 5 miles and found a Forest Service building with a phone, and called town for help . 

Meanwhile, on day 16 a local pilot spotted the wreckage of the B-23, and the next day landed at the lake and made two trips to haul the remaining 5 airmen out.  The town of McCall closed schools and stores, and greeted the rescued airmen, all of whom survived.   

In the summer of 2007, the whole area around Loon Lake for many miles was devastated with a huge forest fire.  It was with great wonder that we approached the wreckage of the B-23 near Loon lake to see if it had survived the fire.  We found that it had survived, and our crew of 3 boy scouts from Troop 100 explored the wreck.

The perfect way to end a hike to Loon Lake and the bomber, is to visit Burgdorf Hot Springs!!  Oh yeah, Baby!

The Star Bicycle

In the era when alternatives were being tried to the "ordinary" bicycle, many new configurations were tried.  One was that made by the Star Company, of H. B. Smith.  In this design, the small wheel was in front, with the intent of reducing the number of headers that riders suffered. The Star Bicycle was used by Lucius D. Copeland as a frame for his steam engine. 

H. B. Smith Steam Tricycle

New Jersey manufacturer Hezekiah Bradley Smith patented a steam powered tricycle in 1889.  He also built the American Star Bicycle, which sold for $150 in a time when an average income for a man was $500.  Smith did very well with his manufacturing business, and was elected to Congress in 1879.  He purchased the town of Shreveville New Jersey and invested vast sums of money to make it an industrial center.  He renamed the town Smithville,  and the town still hosts the  company Smith founded, the Smith Machine  Co.

Paul Arany's Recumbent Trikes

I don't know much about Paul Arany's trikes, except they look like a lot of fun!

The Recumbent Couch-Cycle

Nate Welbourn showed me his recumbent couch, and I had to know how that beast came to be built.

"The whole notion of an amphibious tall couch trike is the beer-induced brain child of a Rat Patrol member who goes by the name of Nancy Porker; I am simply the conduit between a fantasticly absurd idea which should never have been done, and something that now exists and is actually practicle to use in the real world.

Why? That's a fair question, but one that I haven't seriously considered until now; I guess we were looking for a ride with style so we figured a couch bike is probably going to satisfy that brief, and it had to be a tallbike so that the eye level of the pilots would be well above that of all but the tallest pedestrians (good for concerts and the like)... also the couch had to be easily removeable for parties (it's held on to the frame by 8 bolts, and the brake and gear levers simply pull off)...

Yes, we happened to have quite a bit of refuse steel lying about our workshop too... Plans are afoot for a parasol cover, fold-out bed, etc, etc. This is a chick magnet by anyone's standards! In any case, it probably hadn't been done before, and that seemed like a sound reason in itself. It made sense at the time!

What else? Well, you'll notice a bit of a cocktail bar/table at the couch; this will soon be completed with drink holders in which to put one's beer, thus affording our no-doubt-soon-to-be-patented Steer by Beer Technology (you need a beer in order to steer!). Seing as we were already building a tall trike with a serious inherent danger of off-camber cornering disastery, I thought it would also be great to have a reliable 360degree-turning system, allowing it to (theoretically) spin on it's own footprint in traffic. And guess what; it turns on it's own footprint!!! It was all "educated guesswork" (I'm a graphic designer working at a university, so that seemed to make excellent sense!), but I tried to design the weight distribution such that most was over the back wheels so that the bike would turn well and minimise the tendancy to roll over and snap people's backbones...

After working out some basic dimensions, it just seemed to make some kind of 'lateral sense' to create such a thing which could be ridden into and through the water without stopping (we had consumed a lot of beer at this point)... that makes sense, doesn't it?

After a lot of talk about using empty coke bottles, discarded newspapers and old candy packets for displacement, I found myself insiting on retaining 'some kind of hydro dynamics'. We ended up sourcing some old plastic barrels, chopped the tops off and smashed them together with a film of epoxy. All of a sudden the hulls became very strong — even stronger than I had invisaged. Then, we used a 2-part expanding polyurethane foam to fill each barrel, ensuring enough displacement (and that at the very least, the hulls couldn't sink), based on some rather blurry mental calculations. A rudder? The front wheel would do.

The floatation hulls and associated frame attach or detach easily by one person and are held in place by 4 high-tensile bolts. The aqua propulsion system also easily detaches when required. I think the floatation system weighs about 80kg (you'll be used to do your own metric conversions of course, living in probably the only country in the world still using emperial measurements! Anyhoo...), while the rest of the bike is probably around 70kg. Surprisingly (and this REALLY surprised me!), she is pretty stable on land and absolutely stable in the water. We have tried to capsize her, but to no avail!!

I think I must be quite good at guess work and bring with me a wealth of good luck, because the test float was so successful that no further structural changes were required. This was good news, after about 250 humorous hours of late-night labour and much domestic anxt.

OK, it probably has a top speed in the water of about 1 knot, but it's a STYLISH ride! The cops aren't sure how to take this one, it's a bike but it's much bigger than a car... or is it a boat? We are quietly confident that she is legal in this country.

So, what's the next project? Sleep :)

Long Wheelbase Recumbent Bike

One type of recumbent bike is called a long wheelbase recumbent, and this is an example which was patented in 1981.  There are several commercial models using this general configuration, such as excellent bikes by RANS.



This model also has under seat steering, with a linkage to the front wheel, which is still a popular mode of steering.

Pinewood Derby Speed Tips

An annual event in many Cub Scout Troops is the pinewood derby.  In the derby, a father son team builds a very simple car and races it against the other cars  on an inclined track, with an electronic timer. 

Cars must be made from the BSA kit, using the enclosed axles (nails) and wheels. My goal in the race was to help my son have a fast enough car that it would not be eliminated on the first heat.  It would also be a project in which he could learn that perfecting some simple parts would require some thinking, and result in a better operating machine.

The car is so simple that you would not think that one car could be made to go much faster than another car.  Surprisingly, a person can invest a lot of time and creativity into making this simple car go faster.  All the tips to make the car go fast are on the net, but here is my experience in making a fairly fast pinewood derby car. 

Weight:  it is essential to have the car weigh the most that is allowable.  The scale (in our Pack) was a digital scale that weighs to the nearest tenth of a gram.  The best way to get the car as heavy as legally possible is to remove weight to get it under the 5.0 g limit.  If a car starts out weighing 5.1 and you remove weight, the scale will show it at 5.0 grams when maybe it is really 5.04.   You would rather be 5.04 grams than 4.95, but both weights will read 5.0 grams on the scale, and be legal weigh ins.  I  got the car close but slightly heavier than 5.1, and then to get to just barely 5.0, I removed one at a time the small lead fishing weights that I had pounded into holes the underside of the car body. When I got down to 5.0, that was the best weight I could have. 

Wheelbase: You want to have the longest wheelbase allowable, which means not using the grooves in the base as the axle slot.  You need to drill holes in the side of the car, being careful to end up wtih enough clearance to clear the guide strip.   The longer wheel base results in fewer bumps of the wheels against the guide strip, and thus fewer bumps which reduce speed. 

Axle Preparation:  Smoothing the axles and alligning them is where all the work is.  The "axles" are actually crude nails, with ridges under the head and on the nail shaft.  Those have to be removed and those surfaces made as smooth as possible.  The surface under the nail head is smoothed using first a small triangular file, then files of various grits down to 400 grit.  I have small metal files with diamond grit that I use to sharpen ski edges, and these are perfect for the underside of the nail head.  The files are in different grits down to 400.

To smooth the nail head and shaft I put the axle in a drill or dremel, and put the dremel or drill in a vise.  With the axle spinning, I use the triangular file for a rough pass, then hold a narrow strip of sandpaper on the shaft of the nail, and go through grits of 80, 120, 220, and 400.  One sheet of paper of each grit is plenty for the four axles.   As a last step, I put diamond paste on the backside of a strip of the sandpaper, and run it back and forth on the spinning axle.  I have used the diamond paste before in metallography work, and it was the polish I knew, but there are probably others that work well.

The Wheels: All the wheels have to be regulation BSA wheels, but there are wheels, and then there are wheels.  Four wheels come with the kit, but sets of four wheels are also available from BSA.  I would buy 20 extra wheels, and my son and I would give then spin tests.  He would run the stopwatch, and I would spin each wheel on a polished axle, with my finger.  We would time the coasting time of each wheel, and found that some would spin for 1 minute and 30 seconds or more, and some would stop at 40 seconds or less.  You use the four fastest wheels, of course.  After getting the best spinners, you smooth the wheel surfaces to take off any mold ridges and make them perfectly round. 

Alignment: The wheels are held on the car body by the nails, which are also the axles.  Depending on the allignment of the wheels, the car can angle left, angle right, go straight, have the wheels press against the car body, or press against the nail heads, or run on the middle of the axle.  You want the wheels to run in the middle of the axle, and for the car to run straight.  What I did to help this was to tilt a long dining table slightly, by putting books under one end of the table.  I ran a strip of masking tape down the table, then ran the car down the strip.  By running the car down the tape, and observing one wheel at a time, you can bend the axle slightly up or down, forward or backward, to attempt to get a neutral (and perfect) axle orientation. If all four axles are thus alligned, the car will run straight.  If it runs straight, it will have fewer bumps against the guide strip. If you reef too hard on the axle, you can break the axle out of the wood, so keep some super glue handy to glue the wood chip back in place.

Lubrication: I got a tube of graphite powder for lubrication.  The trick is to get enough of the graphite onto the axle, then to spin it alot, to get it worked into the porosities of the metal and plastic.  I put the axles in a baggie of graphite and jostled it for days.  Then I assembled and alligned the axles before the race.  Before the race I would add graphite, spin the wheels, add more graphite, spin more, etc.  Immediately before the weigh in, I gave it a last shot of graphite. If you add too much at this point, the first few heats will be slower, but the last heats will be fast.  If you dont' add enough, the first heats will be fast, but the last ones will be slower.  The trick it so add just the right amount, and that is difficult.

Our first race resulted in our car taking about 5th place.  Our car the next year did better, and I think I got lucky with the last minute lubrication.  We won every heat and placed first in our pack.  Jim was thrilled, and I felt like I was the envy of the Dad's.  We decided to compete the car in the next level of race, and took it to the district race.  Every car in this race had placed first in their pack, and I told Jim not to be surprised if we finished dead last against these cars.  At the weigh in were some beautiful cars, and kids were evaluating which were the cars to beat.  They didn't see our car as a contender, because it didn't look very good.  As the race started, we won the first heat by inches, and ours and several other cars won heat after heat.  Finally the fastest cars were run against the other fastest cars.  Heat after heat, our car won, sometimes by a fraction of an inch.  It came down to the last heat, and we edged out the other finalist, by millemeters!!  Some kids were crying at this point, because they were beaten by a younger scout, and because they thought their car would win, and our car looked so plain.

Photo: Bob and Jim with the big district trophy. Jim with road rash from a recent bike crash.

I hope you have the chance to do this project with your son and have fun with it!