Slashdot Mirror
England Salutes 150 Years of Eccentric Patents
jonerik writes "Want to patent a moustache protector? Or perhaps you've hit upon the idea of improving chickens' lives by giving them eyeglasses. Well, don't bother - they've already been invented. The BBC has this piece today on the bizarre ideas that have trickled into the U.K. Patent Office on a regular basis since it opened 150 years ago this month. Other doozies which are saluted are a rifle fitted into a helmet, 'the recoil [of which] broke a man's neck during early trials' and the parachute hat. According to Steve van Dulken, who oversees the patent archive at the British Library, 'For every 100 applications lodged, I'd say that 10 are a bit whacky.'"
has finally figured out step 2 for the underwear gnomes:
1. Steal underwear
2. Get wacky Brittish Patent
3. Profit!
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
m00.
My favourite is the patent about attaching a wind turbine to the roof of your car to take advantage of a resource that, otherwise, goes completely to waste :-)
the phrase "dead ringer" has a similar origin: they'd set up a bell above ground and tie a string or something to it when they buried someone, who could ring the bell and alert everyone that they would like to be dug up as they weren't dead . . .
track7.org has all kinds of interesting stuff!
Here's a funny one...
One click electronic buying, oh wait..
I wonder if anyone has patented the posting of an article about stupid patents? and I wonder if this patent would qualify...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
From the article
It must have seemed like a great idea at the time: an alarm to be fitted inside a coffin, just the thing to guard against premature burials.Why is this a bad idea now?
More can be found here, here and here.
If you have the money, you can claim anything as your own.
OLPC Australia
But see, if that hadn't happened, people from South Dakota wouldn't be able to say: "Well, at least one of us got a Nobel prize." Referring, of course, to Ernest Orlando Laurence, born in Canton, SD.
BTW, Laurencium, element 103, is named after him.
...and 100 years later, geeks are still having trouble figuring out just exactly how to remove the damn things.
Correction: I should say, Just exactly how to get near the damn things.
There is no spork.
I heard that during the civil war they cut down on these "presumed deaths" by shipping bodies in air tight coffins.
If you weren't dead when you were put in, You were by the time your body arrived home!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I have a board game I was given when I was a kid, featuring wacky US patents (not recent ones even then, as I recall) called THE INVENTORS.
Haven't played it in years, so i don't recall all the inventions. I definitely remember the automatic hat tipper, though.
R David Francis
It's too bad they don't try to make some patents on personal privacy. I was over there doing some low level databse consulting work for Lloyds of London last year and I was totally freaked out by all the video cameras everywhere. You can't blow your nose without the Queen getting you on video doing so.
Still, it still didn't stop me from tossing some bland half-cold fish-n-chips into the street. The Brits may be good at inventing stuff but they need to spend a little more time learning how to season their food in my opinion.
Warmest regards,
--Jack
Wagner LLC Consulting Co. - Getting it right the first time
Something about a way to connect most of the industrialized nations in the world in order to better exchange information and form a community....naaaaaaaah. Way too idealistic. It'd never work (It still doesn't work if you ask me).
Zech Harvey, MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA
Why am I not surprised that when you get something like the Prior-Art-O-Matic from the UK that they would take it just one step too far.
Among these was a cat flap connected to an atomic bomb in space. The device was fitted with a colour sensor, designed to admit his ginger cat but block the passage of a neighbour's black moggie
:)
Hmm. Looks Like This Company is Infringing on a patent
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
The terrorists will pick them up, put them on and run into battle with American Forces(TM). First shot fired; they fall to the ground with a broken neck! War over!
America's Freedom Force(TM) - 1, Axis of Evil(TM) - 0.
Game Over, man
This idea is patent pending ©2002 Teamhasnoi. Unauthorized use will be turned over to Panip, Inc.
When I was young(er), we had a game that included much of these patents. It was titled "Inventors" or "The Incredible Machine" or something. Each invention was on a card, and had a certain base value. You could buy patents from each other, roll the dice right and get into the "royalty track", have silent partners investing in your holdings, and best of all it came with a little machin that rolled the dice for you and rang a little bell.
It was all in a turn-of-the-century theme, and was a lot of fun. Perhaps a modern version of the game could include Rambus-style tactics...nah. If we'd had that, my sisters would have started pulling each others hair, and someone would be running crying to Mom.
One of my favorite inventions was the automatic hat-tipper.
...
so if it was patented, the govts would have ignored it for sakes of national security. or just paid the fees?
so nuclear weaponary/development can still go to the people with the most money
good call
Someone has watched too many Austin Powers movies. I've yet to meet a former GB'er here in the states that has that type of problem (maybe just the typical teeth problems, no worse than the average American).
- the rocking chair's oil
- the parsley straightener
- the gut be gone
- the chia pet
- space monkeys
- the ball spot remover (spay paint for your skull)
and the pet rock.
Fascinating sometimes how unuseful these inventions (barely) are. Just have a look ( if you can bare it ) at those info-mercials late, way late at night and you'll see some fine examples of silly contraptions. Most of which are patent pending...
--Vuzz/
When I first read the title, I thought England was saluting 150 years of eccentric PARENTS.
Pantenting removes the secrecy. That's one of the advantages of patents to the society.
Well, at least in the UK they didn't come up with screen doors for submarines or braille street signs they way the did.
IP law isn't as bad as you think, just imagine the safe and secure world we'd be living in today if this evil technology had remained a secret.
You do realize that if the patent had been granted, it would have disseminated the information more *widely*, due to the fact that patents are available for anyone to read?
You also realize that a cyclotron is about as useful for making nuclear weapons as pocket lint would be?
I know, I know, IHBT...
Lawrence reportedly got the idea for the cyclotron after looking at the pictures in a foreign (German?) engineering journal. An engineer had come up with the idea of making high voltages by linking pairs of cylinders at opposite phase of a HV AC cycle into a line. Lawrence basically coiled the idea up into a circle. The fact that charged particles in a magnetic field always circulate with the same period allows this to work efficiently.
It is claimed that Leo Szilard independently came up with this idea about 6 months before, but didn't do anything with it.
It's akin to software companies - they can sell their games without any copy-protection whatsoever, and just hope everyone follows copywrite laws, but this obviously doesn't happen very often.
Actually, the point of eyeglasses for chickens is to worsen their vision, not improve it; the purpose being to reduce territorial fighting between roosters in overcrowded coops.
To be really silly, you need to patent contact lenses for chickens: http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/chickens/
"Time is an abstract concept devised by carbon-based lifeforms to monitor their ongoing decay." - Thundercleese
You insert the name of the ethnic group you want to make fun of there.
The parent is untrue. See other posts in this thread for details.
Oh - I though it read 150 years of Eccentric pants Which could be a celebration coming up if you look here.
Jesse Wolfe Sr. Manager Systems Integration
We have our share of patent zaniness on the left side of the Atlantic as well.
Wacky patent of the month
For example . . .
Have you ever eaten the most often ordered dish in Britrish restaurants?
It's Chicken Tikka Masala. I suggest _you_ try a phall instead.
Moderators, realize this guy is a troll and nowhere close to a "Physics Genius".
The first cyclotron patent was awarded to Ernest Lawrence in 1934, after being prompted to file for the patent by investors and being told that another scientist at Raytheon was about to patent the same thing.
Search Google, you'll find that there is nothing that indicates a cyclotron patent was rejected for any such reason.
Since there was a patent granted on the cyclotron, the rest of your arguments fall apart. Not surprising since they're full of shit.
Moderators - feel free to mod me down. But mod down the idiot parent post first.
They're spectacles, you unbespectacled freaks!
true && more || less
Four words: IP over pneumatic tube.
Here
I especially like the "Horse Masturbation Preventer". (Seriously, look at the page!)
Complaints of flavourless food is a bit hypocritical coming from a yank - a nation who's sole contribution to international cuisine seems to be the hamburger.
If I were him, I'd stick to boiled rice and popadoms. Maybe some mango chutney, if he's the rakish type!
No different then the patents that we allow here.
Hyperlinks etc..
Really, the title to this article should be "British patents...". Strictly speaking, England and Scotland have not been sovereign states since 1703. Since then there has been one British government.
The US Patent Office has certainly received its share of eccentric patents:
-One-Click Shopping
-Here's one discussed the other day...
-Any Software patent
Too bad the US also leads in enforcing eccentric patents as well!
Laurencium was named after Lawrence Welk, who was from North Dakota.
'For every 100 applications lodged, I'd say that 10 are a bit whacky.' ... which is itself a whacky way of saying that 1 out of 10 applications is whacky.
If you're rich, you can be eccentric. If you are poor, you're just crazy. :)
You also realize that a cyclotron is about as useful for making nuclear weapons as pocket lint would be?
Way to go. You just gave Saddam the last thing he needed to make nukes.
Like he ever would have figured out pocket lint.
They may not have the widespread damage capabilities of a nuclear weapon, but accelerated particles can put an eye out.
Damn they hurt.
For those who want to see if their patent idea has already been taken... http://colitz.com/site/wacky.htm
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Troll??? That's a true and non-degrading statement!
Slashdot poll - what is the wackiest patent ever granted:
1. moustache protector
2. chicken eyeglasses
3. rifle helmet
4. CowboyNeal
From The American Heritage Dictionary:
"ETYMOLOGY: Middle English wakien, waken, from Old English wacan, to wake up and wacian, to be awake, keep watch; see weg- in Appendix I."
The word "wake" is just related to the word "watch" and has to do with a vigil and essentially doing the same kind of thing we do nowadays at a wake.
Oh, I see! So that's why a "dead ringer" is someone who looks just like someone else!... er huh?
From takeourword.com (as well as other places that aren't email forwarded urban legends):
"The term dead ringer is one of the terms which means 'lookalike'. It dates in writing from about 1891 and arose from ringer 'a horse entered fraudulently in a race'. It is thought that ringer came from the British expression ring in 'to substitute or exchange fraudulently' (1812). Some believe that ring in is related to ring the changes 'to substitute counterfeit money in various ways', a pun on ring the changes 'go through all the variations in ringing a peal of bells.' The dead in dead ringer is probably the same as that in dead heat or dead on, i.e., it means 'exact'."
I feel like the Internet has really caused word etymology urban legends to flourish in the past few years.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Ok, I don't know who modded this down but all I know is that whoever did so either (a) took the post too seriously or (b) didn't read it carefully or (c) some combination of (a) and (b). This was not intended to be a flame or anything. People here make jokes about spelling errors/typos all the time (and get modded up for it.). Maybe some of those here are biased against anonymous posters or something and they don't bother to RTFM and just mod down anyone who is anonymous. Who knows?
Yeah, I know that this system isn't perfect but it's so much of problem that it must be making the users not want to post for fear that it'll be misundestood my someone with too many mod points who doesn't bother to read the message carefully.
I just thought I'd point out what these people who don't know how to mod are doing. End of rant.
Astro Chicken!!!!!
Indeed. Moderators should look at PhysicsGenius's other posts. Merely sounding convincing should not be a +1, people.
hush up now.
This is the reason we have a Great Britain team at the olympics, the Northern Irish are part of the Eire team.
In summary:
I think maybe PhysicsGenius may not be 100% accurate, but I don't think he's trolling.
;)
Here's a quote from an article claiming that this quote was a response from a patent officer about the patent application from Leo Szilard, which was applied for in 1928:
"Patents can be given only for inventions that permit a commercial use. However, the submitted procedure apparently has only a scientific value. Whether, in accordance with the invention, any commercially useful material can be produced by accelerating artificially- produced positively-charged corpuscles, appears from our present knowledge ruled out. In the whole application, no hint is found that the applicant has produced, or can produce, such material. Obviously the yield would be so tiny, as with atomic disintegration from the natural alpha rays of radioactive substances, that even in the future the prospect of using the invention in commerce has the highest degree of improbability.
So it was initially rejected, maybe not for the same reason the parent though, but the patent office gave him a hard time about getting the parent.
Moderators, please mod the parent of my post down as a troll. You can mod me as informative though
The company commander sported a goatee & a long moustache. He made the facial hair a part of the uniform for his men. Troops had to keep the moustaches trained, they had to have the proper upward curve, and protected at night. To accomplish this, they were all given a moustache protector that they were required to wear at night. They were taught during basic training to tie it just right to achieve the proper look.
When my father got back home after the war, he threw his uniform, boots & everything else into the river. Somehow the moustache protector survived, travelling from Germany to Czechoslavakia where he barely survived an ambush, a POW camp in Poland, back home to Hungary, to East Germany, West Germany, and finally to the US.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
...And I tried to submit a story about it at the time. I guess jonerik has more luck than me.
My origonal submission, I think it is still relevant:
It's also St. Crispin's Day! The day made famous by Shakespeare's Henry V.
WESTMORELAND.
O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!
KING.
What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin.
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires;
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart. His passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse.
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say, "To-morrow is Saint Crispian."
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, "These wounds I had on Crispian's day."
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words,
Harry the King, Bedford, and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered,
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
Education is the silver bullet.
The Japanese have managed to publish 3 books focusing on whacky inventions. They, however, refuse to admit to the whackiness, hence the title "Unuseless".
(This post does not contain emoticons or l337.)
the patent office itself!
Oh, he's trolling... just take a look at his posting history.
Regarding Szilard's patent application - according to this page it's likely that his first patent on accelerators was rejected due to "prior art". Of course, file the same thing today and I bet you get a patent.
From that page it's not clear if his cyclotron or betatron patents were granted or not.
As for moderation - I didn't expect to get modded up. PG just deserves to get modded into a -1 hole.
There's always the idea of patenting 'evil' or 'world domination' techs to prevent Bill G, Monsanto etc... from taking over everything.
e.g. Patent business models &co that you believe might exist in the future because of genetics, or DRM or advances in medine.
That way you could charge a high license fee to the company if they don't sell there drugs etc... cheeply or don't generally toe the line. or just not let them pratice at all.
Patents, keeping inovation alive!
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
GET SOME PRIORITIES, UKIANS!
Well if the'd have tightened up export restrictions on the US and had a propper trade war ' yes you will die!' then maybe you'd have had some propper british food, not some of that imported american crap.
I don't remember that game, but does ANYONE remember Agri Cup???? ... ...
no?
Thought not - Boooo
According to Steve van Dulken, who oversees the patent archive at the British Library, 'For every 100 applications lodged, I'd say that 10 are a bit whacky.' And, of course, the other 90 are crap :)
At least, I think that was his name. Ring any bells for anyone ?
Damn, I got trolled. I feel so dirty now. Now there's a noticable red sphere next to his name so I'll know better next time.
Free dental care and treatment up to the age of 16 for everyone always helps.
Subject says it all.
l
http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/home/scotland/britain.htm
This doesn't sound hugely idiotic. Attaching a few mini-turbines on locations where wind-resistance and/or drag are high anyways might actually work. Putting one on the roof would add drag, putting on somewhere near or just in your front grill shouldn't add any resistance that isn't already there.
I was actually thinking of this whilst noticing a bicycle wheel spinning quite quickly - probably due to air flow (on a hitch behind the vehicle, where wind is not really significant. I've been considering designing a fan/capacitor array to generate power and seeing how much it would make, any reasons why this shouldn't work?
You are correct, it is called the Inventors. Some of these inventions don't look that crazy when compared to things like Onc Click SHopping though :)
You know, I laughed pretty hard when I read the Tac-Nuke specs in the Paranoia manual. And someone actually built one? And DEPLOYED it? Your link said that this was sent to the field for actual combat!
I'm just glad none of my relatives were in field artillery...
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
.... through the links in the story, yet I can't seem to find PanIP talked about anywhere :)
-- 7 string electric violin + live loop samplers
He may be trolling, but he's one of the best I've seen. This man puts more effort into his posts than the vast majority of /. 'ers. This is satire at it's finest. Now you might not care for wit, and you might mod him down, but some of us look forward to his posts. A cursory glance tells me that he has roughly twice the fans you do.
Best Windows Freeware
That should be "Take Our Word", not "Take Our World"! The link is right anyway.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
At least I don't live the side of the pond where they patented the swing as a jok (funny) and one-click-shopping (not funny) Mind you I guess we had a technological society going for longer, not that we are doing toooo welll these days....
Yes, and he has roughly 20 times or so the number of foes I do. Would've been ~30x, but you just became my 3rd freak. Shrug.
I enjoy wit. I enjoy satire. PG has a poor grasp of them.
If his posts were modded up as Funny (which they occasionally are) then that'd be one thing. But there's a whole lot of idiot mods out there that mod them up as insightful/informative.
Have you ever considered that those that do are trolling you through moderation?
It's a lot less work than what PG usually posts, but judging by your response it's just as effective.
Well, I agree with your point about the idiot mods.
However, I disagree that PG has poor grasp of satire, and it may be a little rude, but I can't help but laugh when I see him modded up for being informative.
You might think his jokes are disruptive to the discussions, and based on his karma and number of freaks, you may be right, but hey, he makes me laugh. His description of why we see things in 3D (the longer it takes light to reach your eyes, the further away objects appear) is about the funniest pseudo-scientific explanation I've ever read.
Guess all I'm really saying is he does a good job, and I hope he keeps it up.
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What do they mean by eccentric? Is that like BT patenting hyperlinks? ;)
10 inventions fails to cover complete lunar cycle, mad inventor eats invisible corpuscle, grows into giant cyclotron belch, throwing blender/toaster circuit breaker. YOU LOSE!
Next Enemy) Mr. Ha Ha Toilet Mouth
England was the land of the "Anglo-Saxons."
Britain is from the Welsh name for Wales-- "Prydain" (pro: PRU-dain). Etym is O. W. Prydain -> L. Britanium -> Mid. Eng: Britaygne (however you want to spell it). -> Mod. Eng. Britain.
UK is short for "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland."
As for those wacky English, though-- I have a cousin near London who says that Oracle owns a mansion near there with a sizable park around it. He imagines that someone from Oracle US told some one from Oracle UK that "We need to buy some real estate: and so they went and bought a real estate...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I'm not talking about powering the car off of this however, that would be dumb. Using it to power a capacitor array for some low-consumption internal electronics might be useful however.
Because the power generated will be less than the power required to overcome the drag.
If you read my original post, you will see that I was talking about using turbines, etc at points where drag is already there, so adding something to take advantage of it probably won't add to it overly.
Unless you've got a superstreamlined nearly drag-free car. Mine's an 88 Corolla, old boxy design, the front end catches wind like a reverse sail at times...
Second law of slashdot: read the damn post fully, think a few times, then hit "Submit" - phorm
Bullshit this is a troll. It's informative as heck. Just cos some insecure American felt this hurt his/her sense of national pride and self worth, doesn't make this any less true.
A jump to conclusions mat!
"That is the most terrible idea I have ever heard."
They got nothin' on us United Stateians. We even have the method for swing on a swing patented.
duh!
"Ahhhh, those Brits might have the lock on bizarre and useless patents. AHHHHH, but now that the internet is around, lets see how they fare with the combined eeeeevil of the US Patent Office! MuuuUUUUAAAAaaahhhaahahahaha!"
"FIRE THE EULA BEAM! NOW! NOW! I TELL YOU!"