JF Ptak Science Books

Questionable Quidity: the Fire Escape Head Parachute, 1879

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When I first saw this image I thought, naturally, that it was an unreal real patent; it turns out that Mr. Oppenheimer was a real person and that this patent was a real patent. I doubt that someone would have their necks broken by this device when deployed thinking that it would just pop off--then again, if fastened very securely, it becomes a very cringeworthy thing to think about. The shoes don't help much.  

And the report:

The Slim Ubiquity of Smiles in Patent Reports, 1850-1925

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2623

"Better is the last smile, than the first laughter."--J. Heywood Dialogue Prouerbes Eng. Tongue, 1550. 

 

I haven't written very often on the word "smile" on this blog--less than ten times in 4000 posts, I think. ("Did Teeth Exist in the Renaissance?", "The Mystery of the Sun's Missing Smile", "Is the Mona Lisa's Smile Nothing?", that sort of thing, all searchable in the Google search box.)  This came up this morning because I had an idea for morning coffee to check out "smile" in a patent search for 1850-1925 to see what sort of smile-somethings existed in the Patent Office records.  It turns out that even though "smile" appears in two dozen patents for this period, none of them are about the smile of smiling; rather they're all anthropomorphized for varied and unrelated purposes--except that the thing it is they refer to looks like a "smile". I thought I'd find something for an artificial smile, or smile-maker (whatever that would be), or something along those lines, but no.

The differences in the patents in which the word "smile" was used is pretty impressive, and can almost approach a found-poetry status, but not quite--the word appears describing elements of patents for: chuck for bowspirits (1908), production of fertilizer (1918), window cleaner (1909), antifriction cage for roller-bearing rollers (1910), mechanism for a milking apparatus (1919), self-closing funnel (1913), life vest (1912), guide for a molding apparatus (1909), car-coupling for railroad cars (1876); bridle bit (1909); convertible freight car (1914), design for a horse shoe calk (1897), design for a stool (1885)...there are some others, but I think the point is made. Even though the word "smile" is used in many different ways to describe divergent pieces of machinery, they don't really have anything in common from one patent to the next, save for the anthropormorphized shape of the object, which I find amusing. 

The slightly odd thing that I have found in this adventure is that "smile" doesn't seem to makes its way into English until 1550 (?), at least according to the OED, which sources the opening quote above from J. Heywood as the first appearance. Perhaps my post on "Did Teeth Exist in the Renaissance?" which is really about the smile in art shoud have asked that question more directly about the word "smile"...

Balloons I Know But Do Not Love--Deaths from Above in Ads and Bombs (Revisited)

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1771 (b) (from 2012)

In the early days of aviation aerial assault must have seemed incredible--and an abomination.  Hurling stones and other offensive weapons by trebuchet and catapult is one thing, and  launching balls and shot from cannons and mortars is quite another--but actually having your weapon flown over an enemy's position and dropped, remotely or via cable, must have been ab excruciating achievement, militarily speaking.  To be able to direct an explosive charge over a position not reachable by an infantry (say in 1915) must've been a short-lived comfort on the offensive end, though the user of such a technology would also have to contend with the contrary, as the enemy would be able to do the same thing themselves. 

This idea was not limited to just military purposes.  Companies could now wage an advertising war war against competitors  in a thee-sky's-the-limit campaign, hoisting their ads on balloons anchored over a city, making it possible for the first time to have your message so universally read, a pre-intertubes version of smoke signals. 

[Source:  Google patents, http://www.google.com/patents/US496177?dq=balloon]

And this, seeming more on the Orwellian/1984 side, or perhaps more contemporary as an instrument of the Dear Leader in North Korea (left, from Popular Mechanics, July, 1939).

 

Here's an interesting, pre-airplane, airship-delivered explosive device: floated over an enemy's position, the chord would be pulled at the desired time to create a tear in the balloon's top, sending the craft down, with the bomb exploding on impact:

[Source: Google patents, http://www.google.com/patents/US603182?dq=balloon]

 Another sort of slow death from above advertising scheme:

[Google patent:  http://www.google.com/patents/US144436?dq=balloon]

In this device patented by Steinmetz the explosive device is still actually attached to the aircraft when exploded--not a very common way of delivering your weapon.  The airship would advance on the enemy, with the bomb  attached to a cable just above an anchor at bottom; the anchor would grapple the target, and the bomb detonated from the  gondola of the airship:

 

When the Catcher's Mitt Was a Cage (1904)

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In the history of baseball gloves--better still, in the history of the catcher's mitt--there are few ideas that are as singular as the glove/mitt that isn't a glove, or a mitt.  This was the patent report of the invention of J.E. Bennett in 1904, which proposed to replace the mitt with a cage.  The cage offered a receiving area easily double the size of a catcher's mitt, with padding at the back of the cage to cushion the capture of the pitched ball, after which the ball would somehow be collected and deposited via that pipe.  I'm not sure what the catcher would do with pitched balls that were low, or high, but the cage certainly did not have any real versatility, particularly when comparing it to a real glove. It seems as though this idea didn't go far, and that was a good thing. 

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/gallery/2015/may/14/imagining-the-future-turn-of-the-century-us-patents-in-pictures

 

 

 

The Eloquence of Baseball (Games), 1904

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Baseball season is either here or almost here, so picking around in old patents on baseball games in December is perfectly allowable.  This game (found at Google Patents) probably has more text on it than just about any game of any sort I've ever seen (and that may actually include Scrabble), and its lazy-staccato descriptions of the "play" are really quite lovely for a board game¹. For example: 

• "too hot for the right fielder's hands"
• "a hot one caught" 
• "2nd baseman not fast enough"
• "fine running catch" and "beautiful running catch" and "pretty left hand catch"
• "good stop, poor throw"
• "would have been a 3-bagger but for the fast fielding by the right fielder"
• "slow work and wild throw"
• "fly muffed"

[Source: https://www.google.com/patents/US772344?dq=catcher+baseball&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiz0--e5L7JAhXK7CYKHWt_CPwQ6wEIVjAI]

Notes:

1.  I haven't read many books on sports in my reading history, but from what I have seen over the years is that baseball literature is good enough to have its own genre. If you're going to read only one or two baseball books in your life, consider one of these: Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer (1972);  Eliot Asinof, Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series (1965); Jimmy Breslin, Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? (1963);   Robert Creamer, Babe: The Legend Comes to Life (1974); Arnold Hano, A Day in the Bleachers (1955);  Donald Honig, Baseball When the Grass Was Real: Baseball from the Twenties to the Forties, Told by the Men Who Played It (1975); Bernard Malamud, The Natural, (1952).

 

The .50-Caliber Better Mousetrap

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post    Daily Dose from Dr. Odd

  [Source:  Google Patents, https://www.google.com/patents/US269766?dq=patent:269766&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiyw_r6277JAhUGSiYKHV_eCdkQ6wEILDAC]

Well, there's not much that one can say about this that the reader is not already thinking.  

The idea was that of J.E. Bennett of Fredonia, Texas, who patented the "trap" in 1882.  He reports that this apparatus has been used before, as a house "alarm". He states in the patent that  "I am aware that burglar-alarms of various kinds have been used, and which have been connected to windows and doors in such a manner that the opening of the window or door causes a pressure upon a lever which discharges a tire-arm; but in no case have the parts been arranged and combined as here shown and described."  Indeed.  I think that this sort of "alarm" was declared illegal decades ago because its use employed depraved indifference.  Poor little critter.  

The Expandable Waistcoat & Blank Book Patents of A. Einstein & S. Clemens

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Albert Einstein was many things--including a designer of clothing, and a patented one at that. He applied for and was granted a patent in 1936 (not an unbusy period in which he must've been noodling this thought around in his head, that blouse thing along with gravitational lensing, that pesky quantum mechanics, and the EPR paradox and all that) for an expanding waistcoat. 

Well.  Einstein had his hand in other patents, including a rather famous one regarding a refrigerator with no moving parts (along with the great Leo Szilard, the "Einstein-Szilard electromagnetic pump), as well as part interest in gyroscompasses and a hearing aid, and better yet a "light intensity self-adjusting camera" with an "electric eye".  And the "ornamental blouse". I suspect that it was all in fun, except that once the thinking had been done, it was thought to take it to the next logical step. 

DIY Pocket Baseball Game, 1876

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Following up on a post from yesterday on a make-it-yourself baseball history calcul-computer is this glorious spinning arrow pocket game board from 1876.  An enthusiast could easily cut and paste their way to their very own baseball game for lost moments on the train or in line at the Piggly Wiggly.  Enjoy.

Inventing Aged Tone in New Violins, 1903

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Patent #190303723  issued in Great Britain to R.H. Payne and T. Broadbent, February 17, 1903. It really doesn't have anything to do with creating patina/lustre in the tone of a new violin via artificial means, but it does have that scent to it, and sometimes that all anything needs to do, provide the aroma of an interesting idea.

Circular Calculators: 19th Century Patent Diagrams

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BioPunk: Human Robots, 1900-1923

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post #425

I found this extraordinary image via collection of Finkiyaya on Pinterest, which is an interesting source for the unusual relating to the uncommon.  There is no attribution, but help came from correspondent Jeffrey Weston, who advised that the helmut belongs to none other than the ferociously active publisher/editor/thinker and creator of the term "science fiction", Hugo Gernsback.  This was supposed to deliver a more powerful thinking and concentration experience to the user by delivering a flow of O₂ , shutting off sound and auditory distraction, and by making the wearer focus their vision through a kind of horizontal pinhole slit. Gernsback I am sure did not use one of these things while working on his dozens of simultaneous projects, but he thought that it might help the rest of us--in today's world, perhaps all we need to do to achieve this iolsation is turn off the electronics and sit at a clean desk.  In any event, the mask removed a fair amount of the human experience from thinking, and probably focused a LOT of attention on not-hearing and trying to see through those tiny slits. 

[Source: Pinterest account of Finkiyaya, here]

[I wonder if Wilhelm Reich read about this as he was fiddling around with his "orgone accumulator" (read: "box").   Even the crown prince of American Black Comedy, William Burroughs, could not wrestle this Reichian thing outside its impossible cellulosity of weird. As odd as Gernsback's thing is, Reich's goes on-beyond-zero with his, thinking that his siting-coffin collects/regulates an etherless ethery thing called orgone which was the seat of many and remarkable things, not the least of which was a controller of cancer and the weather.  It sounds sort of like a water-cycle thing but for a thing that influences thought and consciousness and biological systems as well as our ocean of air--that's a long pull for a box with a chair in it.]

Now three's plenty in this helmet to suggest itself to the history of masks, but that is an enormous diversion, because I was really just looking for complements in the mechanical helmet world.  I could not resist though including this magnificent mask made by someone of the Sukuma ethnic group of Tanzania:

It is interesting to note hwo the Isolator mask eprforms up to its name, isoalting human qualities to a high degree, muhc like the Sukuma mask.  There is a real encapsulating experience going on with these helmets and suits, looking far more robotic and alien than anything else. 

And a last visit to Gernsback:

[Source: LaughingSquid, here.]

And another (source here):

How could any of this possibly go wrong?

Beautiful Techno-Art & Invention: Circular Adding Machines, 1850-1900

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Standard Corpse, Inc. & Deadpunk: Shaving, Cooling, Lifting, Electroplating, and Diapering the Dead

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1975  

The idea of creating an economy from a previously dead clientelle--the very after-market dead person--is relatively new. Once a middle class or lower working class with disposable income was created, celebrating the care of the dead was a paying option opened to the millions of families who were not the fastidious and celebratory wealthy.  Once the notion of having other people take care of the dearly departed became a part of the popular ritual of dealing with the dead, an entire new industry was born--spawning other related and associated industries for supplying the dead-care-givers with amenities and notions and necessities of a previously unthunk and unthinkable nature.  For example, the idea of needing to shave a corpse became an issue after it became fashionable to allow several days or more to pass between death and burial.  Beards and hair grow in death, so the people caring for the body and its display now were ordained an issue of economy in nultiple shavings of a corpse.  Now that may or may not have been an issue, but it was certainly presented as a possibility by the incredibly-named "Razorless Post- Mortem Shave Co."

• See also some of the other, associated posts on this blog like Incontestable Oddness: Inflatable Puffy Shirts for the Dead & Coffins with Retractable Legs and  A Monumentally Bad Idea: Screw Coffins, and others (just search "dead" and there will be a number of other posts).

 

{Many thanks to reader Max W for providing the information for the correct information for the citation of the above image--the magazine is Casket & Sunnyside for January 1912, and there are ample references to it in Charles Addams and Jessica Mitford.] The worry for the consideration of the cost of a shave (15 cents) for a dead person seems quite an inescapable weirdness and luxury. The weirdness of the name of the company nearly obscures it common nature--it isn't exactly the Acme Corpse Company, but it is close to it, and it addresses just one small bit of minuatiae of deadness in the vast sea of Dead, Inc.

The sellers of the razorless post-mortem shave equipment didn't receive a patent for their process--nor did anyone else, for that matter, at least so far as I can determine. 

Here are some further examples of Dead, Inc/DeadPunk patented death appliances:

Post-mortem skull examination facilitator:

Postmortem Underwear for the prevention of dead leakage and deodorization:

19th Century Smart Sticks: Calculating Pencils

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This thinking stick comes to us via the courtesy of the Scientific American Supplement (19 August 1876, page 542), and shows a lovely Victorian non-SteamPunk answer to on-the-run calculation. It is an almost-elegant device, and seems as though it should work just fine. Its utility as a writing instrument seems a bit limited, as seems the calculator part, but the whole of it seems to be full of possibility--and a very nice piece of dedicated thinking. 

[Text describing the invention below.]

Other nice examples of adding/writing found in the U.S. Patent Office via GooglePatents are seen below:

Beautiful Sprockets: MetalPunk in Space and the Jetsons.

JF Ptak Science Books    Post 1958

The birth year of Rosie the Robot is approaching.

(This beautiful sprocket nest, for a patent for transmitting power (1874), like all of the following patent images, is located at   Google Patents, here)

For some odd reason I was thinking about Spacely's Sprockets, George Jetson's (of The Jetsons cartoon in the 1960's) employer.  I wondered if this was a high irony--the "sprockets" part-- and if there would be any sprockets in our space-aged future.  Even by the end of the 60's, just at the end of this cartoon, I wonder if in the tens of thousands of parts that went into the hardware of the Apollo Project to get us to the Moon if there were any sprockets among them. 

The sprocket was just such an excellent idea in the history of the transmission of power...but in the 15 or so books that are on hand here on the history of technology there's nothing in between "spring" and "Sputnik" in their indexes. Patents for sprockets seem to begin in U.S. patent history in the late 1860's.  Sprockets show up in Gatling/machine guns (1878, with the Leland gun), chain propellers (1875), turn tables for railroads (1874), chain saws (1883), holler for printing machines (1882), stump extractors (1878), wind engine engines (1880), window shutters (1879), safety pulleys (1880), traction engines (1881), feathered paddling wheels (1882), potato differs (1883, with very great tank potential), harvesters (1880), hay elevators (1881), horse treadmills (1884), corn planters (1881), grain elevators (1883), and of course in veliocepedes (a very cumbersome device by Emmit G. Latta in 1880). 

[Bicycle source here]

I suspect that there were sprockets in space in 1969, and perhaps they're in a Space X vehicle--I really don't know. Its just interesting to think of the coming of the sprocket and what an enormous influence it exerted in the history of power transmission--and the device's beauty. 

My sneaking suspicion is that Rosie the Robot, the maid for the Jetson family--who was 45 years old in the  beginning of the 1962 series-- was loaded with 1965 sprockets--whether sprockets would exist in the year 2062 or whatever year George Jetson was alive in (certainly many centuries post-2062) is another story. But Rosie--the outdated-model mid-life maid of the future and most reasonable character in the series--surely had them.

Some beautiful sprockets: