Steve van Dulken's Patent blog

The X-bow on ships

I was watching a TV programme last night about redesigning ships after disasters like the loss of the Titanic and the Estonia car ferry.

A new solution is the X-bow. The traditional ship's bow is narrow and raked, but this one is designed to form a huge snout, with the bow not sticking out at all. It is inverted, and is more like a bulge.

This means that as the ship moves through the water the bow's centre of gravity is lower than is traditional. Movement forward in rough seas is easier, and the bow does not move up and down as much as normal. The ship can also move forward faster.

Here is the main drawing from the patent application from Ulstein Design AS (of Norway), Foreship arrangement for a vessel of the displacement type. 

 

It shows the ship's bow as seen from the side. The programme said that when the engineers asked that a model be tried out for seaworthiness in a testing tank, the experts scoffed and said that it would sink. On the contrary: sensors showed that in heavy seas much less pressure was being exerted on the bow than in traditional designs. It was that kind of pressure that ripped off the doors of the Estonia car ferry.

It may seem strange that it has taken so long for a new design to be thought of.

The Great Exhibition

It's interesting to watch programmes about inventions but nothing beats going to see them in person, so that you can watch demonstrations and ask questions, frequently of the inventor in person.

The Great Exhibition will be held on the 29 September to 1 October at the Lawrence Hall, Royal Horticultural Halls, London. I know that there have been other inventions exhibitions but this is the first "great exhibition" so I don't know what to expect, but I'm sure it will be stimulating. The name relates to the 1851 exhibition which mainly featured industrial art and inventions.

I am on the judging panel but don't know yet what that entails. See you there !

The invention of the seatbelt

I read in the free newspaper Metro on the 13 August that it was the 50th anniversary of the seatbelt. This was a reference to Nils Bohlin of Volvo.

The brief article stated "His work was deemed so vital to safety that no patent was sought". Actually, they did get a patent, but it's true that they did not enforce it. The American patent was published as Safety belt in 1962.

There is a claim that the concept of the "across the chest" vehicle seatbelt dates back to Roger Griswold and  Hugh De Haven for Griswold Company in 1951, with their Combination shoulder and lap safety belts.

De Haven’s contribution was the inertia reel, where the belt is tightened by a fast movement (as in a crash) but not by a slow movement. This is done by a centrifugal clutch, which engages if the reel spins quickly.  

The idea of seat belts had a hard time being accepted at first, as consumers thought that its introduction by manufacturers meant that the car was unsafe. It was not until 1964 that most manufacturers supplied them as standard fittings. In the UK, their installation became compulsory in the front seats in 1967.

Powerbock boots

Every now and then I have seen youths using small, springy stilts to bound along the ground or to do somersaults. I wondered what they were called.

I found the answer in an article in the Sunday Times, although the online version omits the crucial explanation in a little explanatory box that the inventor was Alexander Bock.

I looked on Espacenet and found no relevant patents. I looked on Google and found that the inventor actually had the surname of Böck, not Bock. No luck again. Fortunately the site I had found linked to the American patent for his Device for helping a person to walk and I looked at the entry for that patent on Espacenet.

There, his name is spelt out as Boeck. Silly me -- I knew, but had forgotten, that if there is an umlaut in a German surname then Böck becomes Boeck in that database. Shows the problems that can occur when searching for names.

Here's the main drawing.

 

They are called Powerbock boots, and sound like a great way to get injured if you don't secure them properly to your feet and don't wear padding. I'm surprised that the name hasn't been registered as a trade mark.

Jim Shaikh and the self-heating baby feeding bottle

Over the years the British Library's Business & IP Centre has helped numerous inventors with their ideas.

I always like connecting a story about an inventor with the actual patent specification. Our web site has a story about Jim Shaikh and how he was, as so often inventions come about, provoked to invent his self-heating baby feeding bottle. I'm delighted we were able to help him.

I'm pretty sure I wasn't involved with helping Jim. Admittedly, over the years of working with countless inventors it all becomes a bit of a blur, and it can be frustrating not knowing if an inventor was successful years later. His invention was published as the Self-heating fluid connector and self-heating fluid container. As happens so often, his background in a relevant technology, fluid flow analysis, must have helped a lot.

Below is the main drawing.