Protheses patents in and after World War I

One result of the tragic loss of limbs during World War I was a huge increase in the number of patents for protheses -- artificial limbs.

This can be tracked by using the free Espacenet database. Its classification schedules can be searched to identify A61F2 as the patent class for protheses. This can be used in the Advanced search as the CPC class and combined with e.g. publication years 1911-13 (expressed as 1911:1913) and with national country codes (GB, United Kingdom; US, United States; FR, France; and DE, Germany). It does rely on both coverage of patents during the period by indexers, and on accurate usage of the classes. It also includes applications made by foreign residents. As countries took different attitudes to assessing novelty other discrepancies turn up although they are not obvious. Some patents which are clearly not relevant are included as they were misclassified.

I analysed the publication years 1911-22 by those four countries and assembled the following table. As some applicants applied for patents in foreign countries there is some overlap. The numbers of patent documents are clickable links to get to the lists (which are in order of "priority", the original filing) and from them to the actual patents ("original documents").

	UK	USA	France	Germany
1911-13	8	61	4	0
1914-16	22	61	25	0
1917-19	195	115	154	9
1920-22	117	116	166	215

German patents were apparently not indexed by the CPC for much of our period, hence their absence for most of World War I.

The steep rise in patents clearly reflects concern, often by private inventors, about the subject. France and the UK had many more maimed soldiers than the USA, hence presumably the much bigger jumps in numbers.

It is also interesting how many Austrians and Germans were attempting to protect their inventions in foreign countries even during the war. The database's priority field can be used to ask for the original country, although it cannot be relied on. This is a list of the 22 German priority filings in the UK during 1911-1922, and of the 4 Austrian priority filings in the UK. Coded respectively as DE and AT. In theory as enemy aliens they would have been refused granted British patents. They do provide a translation of the concept, of course.

One thing we can't do, without a knowledge of the field, is to identify key patents. Similarly, only those familiar with the field can identify important inventors. Kim Norton's A brief history of prosthetics says that no major developments occurred in the field in World War I.

It also mentions Marcel Desoutter, a British aviator who lost a leg below the knee in a flying accident in 1913. Apparently he developed with the help of his brother Charles, an engineer, the first aluminium prothesis (this made it half the weight of a wooden leg). The database credits in our period Charles, alone, with three British patents, two of which were patented also in France and the USA. Here is the list. Desoutter continues to be an important British engineering company, mainly in tools. Below is one of the drawings.

Below is a drawing of an artificial hand from a patent by three Americans, US1380835.

The Brodie military helmet

According to Web sources, the standard British and American helmet in World War I was invented by John Leopold Brodie, and was patented in 1915. He was a London-based engineer. It had been found that shell splinters rather than bullets were the main danger to soldiers' heads, and the design was meant to protect them from splinters (and hence from above).

However, the three British Brodie patents for helmets do not look anything like the classic flattish helmet with a broad brim. These vary somewhat, but tend to look like the one illustrated below.

The 1915 patent, GB 1915/11803, illustrated below, was applied for in August 1915. There was also US 1251959 for the same invention. See how much higher the dome is in the drawings. Also, the brim is at a greater angle of slope.

There was a lining made of "American cloth" which was integral to the helmet. An air gap between the lining and the helmet kept the head cool in summer while preventing frostbite in winter. It also prevented rusting; kept the helmet firmly on the head; and prevented pressure on any point on the head, which could cause headaches. Also in the patent, Brodie suggested that it be painted in rainbow colours so as to make it "invisible to the enemy", and early issues were indeed painted, apparently.

So why was it so different ? I can only speculate that a need to save metal meant that the flatter shape was adopted, assuming that the Brodie attribution is correct. It was first used in any numbers in July 1916.

There is a Wikipedia article on the Brodie helmet. To save time designing a new helmet, sources say, the US Army adopted a slightly modified form of the Brodie helmet for its soldiers.

One-handed cutlery and World War I

World War I resulted in numerous one-handed soldiers, and many inventions for one-handed cutlery were patented as a result.

There is a patent class, A47G 21/08, for "serving devices for one-handed persons". This can be used to find, in the Espacenet database, 17 British patents between 1908 (as far back as coverage goes) and 1922. The earliest of these were only applied for in 1915.

British patents at the time usually gave the inventor's profession, Hence we have GB107915, applied for in 1916, which is by Edward Geoffrey Fisher, a Canadian private. It is illustrated below.

GB136966 was by Herbert William Duck, a farmer, and was applied for in 1919, and is illustrated below. 

The occupations vary widely -- cinema proprietors and a surgeon are among them, though they are mainly engineers or, oddly, commercial agents. 

Fore the same 1912-22 period there were 12 American patents, half of which date from the USA's involvement in the war from 1917. One such was particularly elaborate. It was by Charles Young of Maine, his Holding device for one-armed persons, illustrated below. 

For the same period there are also 11 French patents, all dating from 1915 onwards. 

These patents are sad to look at and to think of, but do show how patents provide a source of information for a grim chapter of history. 

Toy tank inventions from World War I

Toys invented during a war often reflect that war. Tank toys in World War I are an example, and here are some patents as illustrations. I looked through both British and American patents.,

In November 1916, a patent application was made at the British Patent Office for this design, as illustrated below by the American equivalent patent:

The British document, accepted for publication in August 1917, was titled Improved mechanical toy and was by Duncan Rice, who described himself as "No. 522,853 Canadian Army Medical Corps, a Private in the Canadian Army at present stationed in France and at present attached to Headquarters of the Third Canadian Divisional Ammunition Column." As a corporal he applied, just after the war ended, for a combined shaver and stropper, GB130872. Meanwhile, the US patent for the toy did not get published until 1920, as Toy. He only applied for it in May 1919, from Aberdeen.

How did Rice know about the tank ? The first use of tanks by the British was in September 1916, before the first significant use of tanks at the Battle of Cambrai, in November 1917.

In date order of application, the next one to be filed was in January 1918 from New York City. The inventor was Koh Ono, who said he was a Japanese citizen. The patent, "Toy", was published as US1364513 and is illustrated below. It has considerably more detail than the Rice patent.

In February 1918 there was GB121848 was filed by William Ellis Pickford, a company director in Sheffield. It was for a "military tank" to be ridden by the child. Below is a view from above.



Again in February 1918 there was Toy tank-car by Robert Potter Breese of New York City. It is illustrated below.

Next, on March 1918, there was Toy fighting-tank by Walter Huth of Chicago, IL. In it he mentions that it was made to "resemble the so-called tanks now in use by the British Army in France."The illustration below is from the patent.

In September 1918, a couple of months before the end of the war, was US1294237 by Edward Cloonan of St Louis, MO.

Further toy tank patents followed, for years all or most using the same general design of a vehicle with guns on the side instead of the now standard frontal view. A rare toy showing the general appearance of the now conventional tank dates backs to March 1919, by toolmaker William Osman of East Ham, as illustrated below. It is, apparently, based on the French Renault FT model.




What impact did these militaristic toys have on the children, one wonders. It would have made them more interested in the military, as war-related toys and games generally flourished in World War I. 

The patent for the Mills bomb

The Mills bomb was the first modern fragmentation grenade.

Earlier grenades used in World War I used a stick attached to the grenade, and often were caught in barbed wire when thrown, often with fatal results to the users. The Germans remained faithful to that type.

William Mills' invention was published as Improvements in, or relating to, grenades or other like apparatus. He described himself as an engineer at the Atlas Aluminium Works, Grove Street, Birmingham. That publication incorporated two filed inventions, 1915/02468 and 1915/03559, and refers to an earlier 1915/02111. That, dated 10 February 1915, had also been published, but the later specification is usually given the credit, although they do look rather similar. The American patent specification, filed in June 1915, was published as US1178092. Here is a page from its drawings.

It was a grooved cast iron “pineapple" with a central striker and close hand lever over it which was secured with a pin. It exploded four seconds after the pin was removed -- seven seconds had been found to be too long, giving time for the enemy to take cover or to even throw it back.

According to Mills' notes the casing was grooved to make it easier to grip, rather than to increase fragmentation. The grooves mean that when the grenade explodes, an increased number of fragments are produced. It was quickly adopted by the British Army as their standard hand grenade, although it was repeatedly modified. There is a Wikipedia article on the Mills bomb.

According to that article there was a patent dispute with a Belgian Captain, Leon Roland. This is presumably based on Roland's patent GB1913/18766, which is illustrated below.

According to Anthony Saunders' 2011 book Reinventing warfare 1914-18: novel munitions and tactics of trench warfare Mills did base his design on Roland's invention, but the crucial difference was that the Mills grenade worked and the Roland one did not.

Besides patenting in the USA and France, the 1915 invention was patented in Germany (as DE339387). It was filed there in September 1919, taking advantage of a dispensation for foreign patents having to be filed within the normally required 12 months of the original filing. The problems of World War I for intellectual property -- such as trying to patent in an enemy country -- were covered by the Berne Arrangement of 1920, and were presumably anticipated by Mills when he filed it.

Mills claimed to have lost money from his invention, which was manufactured by his own factory. He was awarded £27,750 by the government for the invention, and apparently tried (unsuccessfully) to avoid paying income tax on this sum.

A secret aviation invention from World War I

In my work as a patent specialist I was often asked about secret inventions for military use. Today I researched the history of a British secret invention which is rather sad, as the inventor died tragically.

Like many other countries the UK Patent Office either suppress or delay the publication of militarily sensitive patents. One that was delayed was GB1915/17082, which was for a method of training pilots so that bombs were dropped accurately. The basic idea was that it was a mirror which was placed by an operator in the middle of an airfield, and could be used to check if the pilot had "dropped" an imaginary bomb on the right spot (that is, where the operator was). Ruled lines were used to monitor the accuracy in this first, 9 page version, Optical apparatus for use in connection with aircraft. It was filed on 4 December 1915 but was not published until 5 July 1923, having been, as the printed patent states, "withheld from publication under Section 30 of Patents and Designs Acts, 1907 and 1919". Here is the main drawing.

The applicant is given as Thomas Archibald Batchelor, Flight Lieutenant R.N.A.S., Admiralty. The only reason I found it was that I knew the patent number. That was mentioned in files at the UK National Archives (TNA) released in the 1980s. The Espacenet database only indexes the patent by the publication number and the words in the patent summary -- which does include his name (as Batchelor, T.A.) If this is typical of secret patents then the way I found it may be helpful to others.

The TNA catalogue lists numerous files in class T173, the papers of the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors, which cover 1919 to 1937. It was to determine compensation for patented and unpatented inventions used in World War I. Many of the folders are for the correspondence of a single request for compensation by the inventor or his/ her representatives. The advanced format of the Discovery online catalogue can be used by specifying T173 in the "Search within" area while specifying a name or a topic in the first boxes. That would find folder or "piece" T173/108, described as

Claimant(s): Batchelor, Mrs. U. Nature of Invention: Bomb-dropping mirror

I also found that there was a second folder for Mrs Batchelor, T173/554, for a bomb sight, by looking for her name.

I spent ten minutes studying these folders, but they needed hours. Usually there is little or no information other than the patent for an old invention, yet here there were many pages. I only had a quick look, from which Una turned out to be her name, and her deceased husband was called Major Batchelor. Her address was given -- 30 Hampstead Road, Preston Park, Sussex. Basically the folders consisted of an exchange of letters, with some memos, between the widow and the authorities, in which she asked for compensation for his invention.

They replied that he had been employed to do research work and had been paid an extra £500 anyway, for the 273 mirrors made for the British forces, but she wanted compensation for the 41 made in the USA for the US forces. £1000 was her price. It was mentioned that Batchelor had been a paymaster in the Royal Navy who had trained to be a pilot. He had crashed and died in a Handley-Page aircraft.

I had assumed that he died in the war, but an item dated May 1 1919 on the Flightglobal archive revealed that he died, as a Major in the RAF, and who had received a DFC, on April 22 at the age of 32 in a flying accident at Andover aerodrome. Not only did he die in an accident, the war had been over for several months. A brave bombing raid by Batchelor is described in an August 1918 issue of the same magazine.

The papers refer to an improved version of the invention that did not require the ruled lines, but this is not the same as his patent that was applied for on 13 April 1917 and was accepted for publication in 1921 as Range-finding apparatus for use upon aircraft. There was a co-applicant, Lieut.-Commander Harry Egerton Wimperis, of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. Here is the main drawing.

Wimperis had 20 patents, mostly on aviation. He is described in the first patent as an engineer, in 1909. He turns up a lot in the Batchelor folders, including the transcript of his making statements in some sort of courtroom on behalf of the widow, where he is called Major Wimperis. He was in some difficulties as he admitted that he was also supposed to be involved in helping decide if inventors should be paid compensation. Hence there was a conflict of interest.

There are also papers from the American side, including an impressively set out letter, with a huge blue seal on it, signed by no less than Billy Mitchell, the distinguished pilot and general.

The verdict ? The official side claimed it was not new, referring to the earlier work in GB1915/9354 and in US1121309, and talked of offering her £50. It does not seem that Batchelor's widow received even that.

This is merely one of many stories hidden away in the archives.