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England Salutes 150 Years of Eccentric Patents 259

Posted by michael from the think-different dept.
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.'"
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England Salutes 150 Years of Eccentric Patents More

England Salutes 150 Years of Eccentric Patents

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  • Well I'm glad to know that someone (Score:5, Funny)

    by hrieke ( 126185 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @11:19AM (#4529915) Homepage
    has finally figured out step 2 for the underwear gnomes:
    1. Steal underwear
    2. Get wacky Brittish Patent
    3. Profit!

  • Of course.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Unknown Bovine Group ( 462144 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @11:20AM (#4529920) Homepage
    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.'

    ... The other 90 are, of course, blatant attempts to cash in on pre-existing technology.

  • How to make your car more efficient... (Score:5, Funny)

    by 26199 ( 577806 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @11:20AM (#4529921) Homepage

    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 :-)

    • 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?

      • Re:Not a bad idea? (Score:5, Informative)

        by donutello ( 88309 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @03:50PM (#4532494) Homepage
        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.
        • All that wind already pushing on the boxy front end of my 88 Toyota isn't likely going to increased a lot by adding a few fan-like turbines. At least not the amount I would need to power some low-end electronics?
          • All that wind already pushing on the boxy front end of my 88 Toyota isn't likely going to increased a lot by adding a few fan-like turbines. At least not the amount I would need to power some low-end electronics?

            It will cost you at least as much in drag as you will generate from those turbines. You will be much better off just sticking a dynamo somewhere along the transmission. It will still cost you in power but won't be as inefficient as those turbines.

  • England != UK != GB (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ed_Moyse ( 171820 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @11:22AM (#4529927) Homepage
    Sorry to get all pedantic here, but this is like saying California when you mean the USA!

    • England is part of the United Kingdom.
    • Great Britain is the largest island in the British Isles, and isn't stricly a country.
    • Don't EVER make this mistake in Glasgow!
    ;-)
    • Don't EVER make this mistake in Glasgow!
      Thats right, scots are puffters that'll lift their skirts at you!
    • Don't EVER make this mistake in Glasgow!

      I can vouch for that!

    • 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...

  • "the wake" and "dead ringer" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by misterhaan ( 613272 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @11:23AM (#4529931) Homepage Journal
    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.
    a long time ago there actually was a problem with burying people who weren't dead but seemed to be dead. thus somebody came up with what is still called "the wake," where everyone sits around to see if the person they're going to bury wakes up.

    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 . . .

    • invention: air tight coffins is the answer! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mekkab ( 133181 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @11:31AM (#4529989) Homepage Journal
      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!

      • 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'.
        • 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.

          Just tell them it was a war injury.

          "Damned Confederates used one of them nasty acid cannons on him, Mam."
    • Hence the phrase, "saved by the bell"
    • After white folks discovered embalming this was no longer a problem. If whatever was supposed to have killed you in the first place didn't do the job, odds are that:

      - Having an artery in your shoulder exposed and used to pump formaldehyde and methanol through your system
      - Having a cannula stuck down your throat to aspirate the contents of your lungs and stomach and replace them with embalming fluid
      - Having that same cannula inserted into your rectum for the same purpose
      - Being chilled at 33 for a day or two

      would probably finish you.

    • Re:"the wake" and "dead ringer" (Score:5, Informative)

      by Plutor ( 2994 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @11:50AM (#4530160) Homepage
      This is a rather persistant urban legend, and I'm surprised it's been modded up so far. Snopes [snopes.com] 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).

      • yeah i always doubted that one for dead ringer--it just has nothing to do with the way it's used now at all. so i apologize for mentioning that one.

        i still think it'd be fun to wake up at my funeral now that nobody expects it :)

      • True story, at least according to my grandfather:

        During the Great Depression he took a job as a Hearst driver for a funeral company. (Like what programmers are doing now.)

        Near an intersection he had to break kind of hard to stop at a sudden red light. The corpse in the back popped up and forward due to the abrupt deceleration. My grandfather looked in the rear view mirror and was startled to see a corpse staring right at him.

        "I have never been so freaked out in my entire life!", he understandably said.

        Lesson: Break gentally in a Hearst.

        When I see the physics books that say, "A body in motion will stay in motion", I tend to interpret "body" *literally* after hearing that story.

    • a long time ago there actually was a problem with burying people who weren't dead but seemed to be dead. thus somebody came up with what is still called "the wake," where everyone sits around to see if the person they're going to bury wakes up.
      No, that's not where it comes from.

      From The American Heritage Dictionary [bartleby.com]:
      "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.

      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 . . .
      Oh, I see! So that's why a "dead ringer" is someone who looks just like someone else!... er huh?

      From takeourword.com [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.
      • unfortunately you have failed to discount the tradition of the wake, while being redundant about dead ringer! please see this post [slashdot.org] which managed to be informative without trying to bash someone elses post

        the meaning of the word "wake" is a different thing from the tradition of the wake at funerals. if someone actually finds something credible that says the wake never had anything to do with seeing if the presumed dead person would wake up (the other post actually DID say that this was part of the wake), i would be very interested!

        as for "dead ringer," i never thought that made sense and probably shouldn't have posted that considering i never believed it either. also, i don't read e-mail forwards (actually anything with fwd: or fw: gets trashed before i see it) and heard this from a friend (who very well may have read it in an e-mail forward).

    • from the bottom of this page [igs.net].

      When they drink they would use lead cups and drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days! They would be walking along the road and here would be someone unconscious and they thought they were dead, so they would pick them up and take them home and get them ready to bury. They realized if they were too slow about it, the person would wake up; also, maybe not. So they would lay them out on the kitchen table for a couple of days, the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. That's where the custom of holding a "wake" came from.

  • A funny one indeed.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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...

  • Why not? (Score:2, Funny)

    by spakka ( 606417 )

    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?

  • dumb patents (Score:1, Informative)

    by The Original Yama ( 454111 )
    I'm sure there are even dumber patents in the US. The UK has an excuse -- science was still in its infancy, and people were more gullible because they didn't have the kind of access to information and education as we do today. The US has no such alibi. I worry when you can patent absurdities like this [uspto.gov].

    More can be found here [forbes.com], here [informationweek.com] and here [informationweek.com].

    If you have the money, you can claim anything as your own.

  • Britain patents, The first Bra... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gwizah ( 236406 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @11:30AM (#4529983) Homepage
    ...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.

  • 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).
  • Why am I not surprised that when you get something like the Prior-Art-O-Matic [thesurrealist.co.uk] from the UK that they would take it just one step too far.

  • Patent Infringement (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Deathlizard ( 115856 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @11:33AM (#4530022) Homepage Journal
    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 [quantumpicture.com] is Infringing on a patent :)
  • Air drop a bunch of the RifleHats® (used to be called ShootHats, but it infringed on ChuteHats®) to Afganistan.

    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.

    • America Freedom Force -1, Axis of Evil -0? Since -0 == 0 and 0 > -1, America is losing?
    • Drop a couple of those parachute hats too. Unlike the rifle design, which could be perfected enough to minimize the recoil,there's no way you could attach a parachute to your head without hanging from your neck.

      And what if its just a normal hat, i.e. no attachment at all? You won't be wearing it for long. Give it to the terrorists along with some kind of device that launches people into the air. If the broken neck doesn't get them, the impact will.
    • Air drop a bunch of the RifleHats® to Afganistan.

      Why the hell not! They got most of their arms, training and funding from the west anyway. Maybe we can give them royalty points or repeat buyer discounts?

  • I remember this game.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Friday October 25, 2002 @11:37AM (#4530055) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • One day, growing bored with the stasis that eventually overtakes most Monopoly games, I changed the rules to allow hostile takeovers. IIRC, it went like this:

      If all of one property group are under single ownership, it's immune. But if you land on a property that's not yet owned as a complete set, you can force the owner to sell by paying them 3 times the standard price.

      Needless to say, money flew around the table as if propelled by a hurricane.

      • Interesting.... Imagine simulating the entire tech business world using a number of different games tied to the same money pool.... Monopoly, something like "that incredible machine", some kind of simulation of the stock market, and poker to simulate the after work deal making and money losing that all execs do....

        And maybe some kind of hack of "the game of life" or Rob T Kiyosaki's Cashflow [yahoo.com] to simulate your family.

        all funds fully transferable between games.
        • I think we already have that situation; it's called a "conglomerate" :)

          It does bring up the question, tho -- to what degree are these companies *creating* new value (usually defined as "wealth") vs. merely redistributing old value (a la Monopoly, where there is a limit on the total cash involved)..??

    • Buy it Now! [ebay.com]

      (Not my Auction, BTW)

    • One of my favorite inventions was the automatic hat-tipper.

      Mine was... the "eye protector for chickens." Which sounds very much like the one in the BBC article.

    • 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 :)

  • Oh PATENTS (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25, 2002 @11:41AM (#4530089)
    When I first read the title, I thought England was saluting 150 years of eccentric PARENTS.

  • chicken glasses (Score:2, Informative)

    by ebonkyre ( 520924 )
    >Or perhaps you've hit upon the idea of improving chickens' lives by giving them eyeglasses.

    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/ [rr.com]

    • Re:chicken glasses (Score:4, Informative)

      by archeopterix ( 594938 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @12:10PM (#4530316) Journal
      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/ [rr.com]
      Actually the contact lenses aren't silly - it's the cheapest way to make the chickens see red (literally). Why? As far as I know it's because chickens (not only roosters) have this instinct of pecking at contrasting spots. When they are overcrowded it creates a positive feedback loop - a chicken gets hurt, the other chicken see the blood, peck, more blood -> a dead chicken. This is to prevent it - through red glasses the blood does not stick out this much. Another way is to use red lights.
    • 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:

      The lenses also serve to reduce the vision. Furthermore they are colored in red, as this color somehow calms the birds down.

      I thought this was a joke, but then I got to see an instructional video about it. The alternative to manually putting in these lenses is to either only have one bird per cage or to destroy their beaks (in a rather cruel manner) so that they cannot harm each other too much. I believe, however, that the latter is the most widely spread practice.

      Tor
  • Oh - I though it read 150 years of Eccentric pants Which could be a celebration coming up if you look here. [widemedia.com]

  • USA! USA! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by buzzdecafe ( 583889 )
    We have our share of patent zaniness on the left side of the Atlantic as well.

    Wacky patent of the month [colitz.com]

    For example . . . [colitz.com]

  • eyeglasses?!? (Score:2, Funny)

    by jkramar ( 583118 )
    perhaps you've hit upon the idea of improving chickens' lives by giving them eyeglasses.

    They're spectacles, you unbespectacled freaks!

  • Patent of the year: (Score:5, Funny)

    by cordsie ( 565171 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @11:55AM (#4530194)
    Four words: IP over pneumatic tube.

  • A Collection of Wacky Patents (Score:3, Funny)

    by StCredZero ( 169093 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @11:56AM (#4530201)
    Here [aol.com]

    I especially like the "Horse Masturbation Preventer". (Seriously, look at the page!)
    • I've heard of this before.

      Horses don't 'masturbate'. This was actually to prevent someone from sneaking into your stable, giving your 2 million dollar stallion a handjob, and stealing "the stuff that dreams are made of".

      You'd be surprised what a tube of good horse semen is worth these days.
  • '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.

  • Ececntric (Score:4, Insightful)

    by harks ( 534599 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @12:07PM (#4530283)
    If you're rich, you can be eccentric. If you are poor, you're just crazy. :)

  • Moustache protector looks familiar (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mikewas ( 119762 ) <(wascher) (at) (gmail.com)> on Friday October 25, 2002 @12:24PM (#4530509) Homepage
    The moustache protector looks familiar. My father used to have one. It was issued to him when he was "requested" to join the German Army as it rolled through Hungary at the end of WW2.

    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.

  • That was on the BBC two weeks ago. (Score:4, Informative)

    by chrestomanci ( 558400 ) <{david} {at} {chrestomanci.org}> on Friday October 25, 2002 @12:30PM (#4530598)

    ...And I tried to submit a story about it at the time. I guess jonerik [mailto] has more luck than me.

    My origonal submission, I think it is still relevant:

    The UK Patent Office [patent.gov.uk] celibates it's 150 year anniversary [patent.gov.uk] this week.

    A BBC [bbc.co.uk] Radio news show [bbc.co.uk] has decided to commemorate this by holding a poll [bbc.co.uk] of the public's [bbc.co.uk] favourite, and least favourite inventions of the last 150 years. The poll closes on Monday 21 October, so vote now.

    In the radio item on the subject, the inventor James Dyson (of vacuum cleaner fame [dyson.co.uk]) was interviewed (text, [bbc.co.uk] audio [bbc.co.uk]), and gave his favourite [about.com] and least favourite [about.com] inventions. There was also an interview [bbc.co.uk] of the patent office's director of copyright

    It is interesting to note that James Dyson chose to highlight as his favourite invention the example of Rubber vulcanisation where (in his opinion) the patent system failed because the inventor Charles Goodyear [goodyear.com] was refused a patent and died in poverty despite the value of his invention.

  • Unuseless Japanese Inventions (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kikaid. ( 587623 ) on Friday October 25, 2002 @12:38PM (#4530689)
    The Japanese have managed to publish 3 books focusing on whacky inventions. [wwnorton.com] They, however, refuse to admit to the whackiness, hence the title "Unuseless".

  • "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!"

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