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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.'"
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.
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
Actually, it was because a months-long journey in a pine box under the hot southern sun would yield a gooey pile of rancid flesh delivered to the family, which was considered highly disrespectful.
Of course, the run of the mill soldier was still shipped in the pine box. This treatment was afforded to the officers and exceptional 'war heroes'.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
This is a rather persistant urban legend, and I'm surprised it's been modded up so far. Snopes has a debunking. In summary:
Waking the dead is an ancient custom that extends around the world and has existed in Europe for at least the past thousand years. The term refers to the practice of watching over the corpse during the period between death and burial. Partly, this had to do with making sure someone was always around in case the corpse woke up (see our Buried Alive page for numerous stories about premature interments), but the watchers were also there to make sure household animals and assorted vermin were kept off the deceased.
Saved by the bell is a 1930s term from the world of boxing, where a beleaguered fighter being counted out would have his fate delayed by the ringing of the bell to signify the end of the round. Need we mention that although fisticuffs were around in the 1500s, the practice of ringing a bell to end a round wasn't?
Likewise, dead ringer has nothing to do with the prematurely buried signalling their predicament to those still above ground -- the term means an exact double, not someone buried alive. Dead ringer was first used in the late 19th century, with ringer referring to someone's physical double and dead meaning "absolute" (as in dead heat and dead right).
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.
...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:
You're wrong. Any power you can generate from this will cause at least as much drag - probably more because of the inevitable inefficiencies of generating and distributing power.
Mmmm.. Donuts