Yet Mr. Scott is put in the shade by Mr. Turner, out in Indian Territory, who has patented a contrivance for making a [head wind drive] instead of retard. He proposes to mount a small windmill with four vanes on a horizontal shaft in line with the top tube, and this, by a pair of bevel pinions, is to run a shaft leading straight to a crown wheel on the rear wheel, which is to be driven by another bevel pinion. The usual driving is prudently retained for emergencies, and the relative size of these pinions indicates that the windmill will need to whirl with great velocity. He somehow omits to claim the windmill and asks protection for a peculiar brake on its shaft. As the shaft is rigidly fixed in line, he must intend to run dead into the wind. The school text books used to tell of a man who put a large bellows in the stern of his pleasure boat, so that he could always have wind for his sail, and a contributor relates in the Youth’s Companion how he once saw an attempt made to work a wood scow by a windmill carried on it. Yet, if the winds that blow in the far West are not peculiar, and if Mr. Turner is not ignorant of what most children think they know, navigators have been wasting time for a thousand years in trying to sail by tacking instead of making the wind drive against itself.
THE LURE OF THE PATENT.
These are examples enough of folly which shows no signs of abatement. The Government offers a patent to inventors of “any new and useful” improvement. There is a notion that invention is an easy road to fortune; on the contrary, there is no harder and more unpromising one. The foolish inventor constantly overlooks the words “and useful,” and the Patent Office, in order that no risk be incurred of smothering improvement by any official dictum that the thing proposed is worthless, has also waived the qualifying words and has thrown the door open so wide that anything may get a patent—not even novelty is strictly enough required. An elaborate muzzle to keep sheep from biting might therefore not be debarred from patent right by the fact that a sheep was never known to bite anything but its own vegetable food; and so long as any combination, although obviously impracticable or even going counter to natural laws, is “novel,” and therefore can obtain the right to litigate which is called a patent, it must be expected that dreamers and persons of misfit intellects will continue the line of applicants. The bicycle is so much in the public eye that it especially draws these persons as the light draws the moth. They will not consult practical men, or, if they do, they will not accept the advice given. They will not even look to see what has already been done in the same line. One of this class came to the writer more than a year ago with some complicated contraption of levers, ratchets, cams, and the like—just the usual thing. Had he been to any bicycle makers? Yes, and none would give him encouragement. Nor could we and we tried to show him how useless his labor was; but he gathered up his drawings and shuffled away. He did not want expert opinion, unless it was of a pleasant nature; he wanted aid to build his contrivance. Like all of his class, he could see nothing beyond his idea, successful on paper, and if he could only get his patent and get a sample made success was sure.
Apropos of this is the classification of cycle patents for 1897 made by the Iron Age. For pneumatic tires there were 110; 106 on handlebars and grips; 105 on driving gears, 70 of these being for chainless; 85 for saddles; 69 for brakes; 51 for frame construction; 50 for cranks and pedals; 17 for spring frames; 124 for stands and racks and for devices for dropping down some sort of prop or leg by which the bicycle might stand alone. The last-named is absolutely valueless and has been so proved; the spring frame has also been tried and virtually rejected; and if a hundred patents on the bicycle and accessories are issued in a year it is almost certain, without examination, that ninety-nine are commercially useless, if not mechanically preposterous. This is so because the practical conditions are narrow and rigid, and because the field has been so repeatedly and minutely gone over.
MAHONEY PATENT—1893.
The crank cycle inventors, of course, are only one class. They are non-riders usually, and not prejudiced by any practical knowledge of the subject; one device (one of the best of the year) has been invented by a man who has not yet mounted a bicycle, but he is a mechanic, not a dreamer. It is sad to see so much waste of time and energy in planning, so much illy-spared money spent in patent fees, and so many disappointed hopes, and if this rapid sketch happen to deter some would-be improver of the cycle and send him to the Klondike for a fortune instead it will not have been without direct advantage to somebody.
BUILDING “TO ORDER.”
In course of the development of the bicycle, the “component parts maker” has come upon the scene, in this country as he had previously done in England. In a general way, all bicycles are constructed alike; that is, all have hubs, ball bearings, spokes, crank brackets, joints constructed by forging from the solid or by working up sheet steel, and so on. Production of these parts by quantities, as a specialty, is in line with the custom of subdivision of labor, and is in the direction of economy in product, and yet this has its undesirable side as well, for it tends to encourage the practice of “building to order.”