Steve van Dulken's Patent blog

To Arthur ! 250 years of the black stuff

Today marks 250 years since Arthur Guinness signed a 1000 year lease on the St James's Gate premises in Dublin, and successor company Diageo are throwing a party, with the slogan "To Arthur !". Here are two inventions by the company for pouring its famous black, bitter stout: one famous, one not (yet?) so.

Just about everyone has heard of the Guinness® “Widget”. This is the can of stout which on pouring gives a nice smooth head without any special equipment. It works with a device at the bottom of the can emitting gas. It won the Queen's Award for Technological Achievement in 1991 for an invention which had been worked on since at least 1959. The patent application was published as A beverage package and a method of packaging a beverage containing gas in solution. Here is the main drawing.

In September 2002 successor company Diageo trialled a pint dispensing system Guinness® FastPour which claimed to deliver a perfect pint in only 25 seconds instead of the usual two minutes or so. It was tried out in pubs across London and Yorkshire, but was dropped after opposition from loyal drinkers: they enjoyed the ceremony of waiting.

Then Diageo came up with a new technique which it was promised would give drinkers at home the perfect head to a pint of Guinness®. The concept had been tested since 2003 in Japanese bars, which are often too small to have the usual keg-and-tap system for pouring stout. It uses a device which emits ultrasonic pulses through glasses holding specially prepared stout. The device is the Guinness® Surger® and it went on sale in some Tesco Extra stores in about the end of February 2006 at a price of £16.99.

The patent application was published as the Apparatus for forming a head on a beverage. Here is one of the drawings.

 

The kit as sold consists of a pint glass and two cans as well as the unit itself. It is plugged into the mains and a little water is added to its metal plate. Special cans of stout (using a different gas mix from normal stout), equipped with batteries, and costing £4.99 for a pack of four, are poured into a pint glass and placed on the device, which is then switched on. It takes between 30 and 90 seconds to create what the company describes as a “velvet pint with a creamy head”.

The water on the plate is there as, without it, even the best made glass would not be completely smooth at its base, and would therefore have air gaps at its base. This would reduce the contact between the bottom of the glass and the plate. Technically speaking, the ultrasonic transducer produces “excitation” and hence cavitation of the liquid which encourages the gas in the liquid to come out of solution.

Diageo spent £2.5 million in advertising the concept. The move towards non-smoking pubs may well encourage the existing trend to drink more at home rather than in pubs, so perhaps it is a smart move. Even in bars, many younger drinkers prefer not to wait and just order a premixed drink, and busy bar staff can find it a nuisance taking so long to prepare one drink.

There are likely to be problems. The cost of the apparatus for what may be seen as a laugh is surely a deterrent, and the users will need to remember to buy the correct cans. It will take between 30 and 90 seconds for the Surger® to work, but then Guinness® drinkers are used to waiting for, it is estimated, 119.5 seconds for the ritual to end in which the bartender holds the glass at a 45-degree angle, fills it three-quarters full, lets it settle and then tops it off with its signature creamy head -- an Irish variant on the Japanese tea ceremony, perhaps.

The company’s advertising has cleverly made a virtue of the wait, with slogans like “Good things come to those who wait”, and endless television shots of entranced would-be drinkers staring at the stout slowly settling. Diageo says that the device “creates the theatre and anticipation around the Guinness” that many drinkers expect and enjoy. It remains to be seen if the company gets the financial reward that they are hoping for.

Pressure exchangers in desalinization

I have found Forbes magazine, perhaps surprisingly, a good source for interesting articles about inventions.

Recently I read in it an interesting article about Leif Hauge of Norway and his research into using pressure exchangers in the desalinization of sea water. Using sea water as a source of potable water has long been desirable, but the problem is the amount of power involved.

The sea water is subjected to great pressure so that the water is forced through a membrane which enables the small water molecules to pass through but not the larger salt molecules. Traditionally, the story says, that pressure was allowed to go to waste. Hauge wanted to utilise it in a pressure exchanger where the pressure was used again.

Pressure exchangers do exist but Hauge's worked on a new principle. The exiting water enters chambers in a cylinder and, as water can't compress, transfers nearly all its momentum to water entering the chambers at the other end before exiting. The cylinder spins 1000 times a minute, and is the only part that moves.

The article says that the PX-300 pressure exchanger is 4 feet long and weighs 180 pounds. 13,000 gallons of water is handled an hour. The device costs $25,000 and has 70% of the market for desalination energy-recovery devices. It needs no maintenance and pays for itself in electricity savings in about six years.

Hauge eventually lost control of the company, Energy Recovery Inc. I can trace two relevant patents, the second being his Pressure exchanger patent application. 

Vibram FiveFingers® shoes

The latest big product in footwear seems to be Vibram FiveFingers® shoes.

The idea is a shoe that fits like a glove, with each toe having its own pouch. Vibram USA is a company that has been associated with mountain boots for many years. The inventor is Italian Robert Fliri, an industrial designer. Going barefoot gives more grip, but as it can lead to injuries the shoe acts like a second skin and protects the soles.

Reactions have been compared to Marmite® as people either love the sensation or hate it, having been used to their toes being crammed into shoes.

The patent application is called Footwear having independently articuable toe portions. Here is the main drawing.

There is more information on the Primal Lifestyle website.

Photoelectric controls on street lighting

It is always interesting to hear about the technology in well-known inventions. I was looking for something else when I came across an article from 2003 about Sean Noone and his method of switching street lighting on and off by using the presence or absence of light.

It used to be that lights were switched off when it was broad daylight. Noone was an electronics engineer who had returned to Belmullet in Mayo, Ireland. There was a lot of unemployment after a local factory closed. He learnt that the usual street lighting broke down a lot (possibly connected with commands to turn on and off ?), and devised his Photoelectric control unit with cooling chamber for which he filed a patent in 1984. This is the main drawing.

The patent makes it clear that minimising the need for repair was built in. This technology is used as the standard method in Britain and Ireland, and the company employed 64 people in Belmullet when the article was written.