Eight days ago we posted about the invention of the ice cream cone at the 1904 Worlds Fair in St. Louis. Today’s gastronomic wonder comes from New Jersey: the Pizza Cone was patented forty years ago today by Joseph Eufemia, of New Milford, N.J. His U.S. Patent No. 4,463,021:

Other contributors to conic dining include Michael Thilavanh, who patented a generic “Food Cone”:

Gilbert Shin who invented an Ice Cream and Food Cone:

William Pordy who invented a Food Cone:

and Salvatore Ruggiero who also invented a Food Cone:

A quick Google search suggests that Pizza Cones are quite popular, and perhaps Mr. Eufemia, like many inventors, was just ahead of his time.

On this day in 2003, the last classic VW Beetle also known as the Volkswagen Type 1, rolled off the assembly line. A total of 21.5 million Beetles were produced between 1938 and 2003. although early production was interrupted by World War II. The Type 1 was initially marketed simply as “the Volkswagen,” and was not officially named the beetle until 1968.

The Beetle was the idea of Adolf Hitler, who in 1934, saw the need for a “people’s car” — simple, inexpensive and mass produced. He insisted on car that could accommodate two adults and three children and get the equivalent of 33 mpg on the autobahn. The design is often credited to Ferdinand Porsche, who was responsible for the final design, however the concept traces back to work by Béla Barény and others in the 1920’s. As one would expect, the Beetle changed a lot during its 65 years of production, but one thing that never changed was its distinctive beetle shape.

On this day in 1927, the first iron lung was installed at Bellevue hospital in New York for the post war polio epidemic. The first iron lung was developed and patented by Phillip Drinker and Louis Agassiz Shaw. The received U.S. Patent Nos. 1,834,580, 1,906,453, and 1,906,844,

However, when these patents were asserted against John H. Emerson, a later entrant in the field, who made valuable improvements to the technology, they were all found to be invalid. Collins v. Emerson, 10 F. Supp. 885 (D. Mass. 1935), although the First Circuit reversed as to the middle patent (U.S. Patent No. 1,906,453). Collins v. Emerson, 82 F.2d 197 (1st Cir. 1936).

The patents were found invalid over the Woillez publication from 1876. The district court noted that the only evidence tending to show that the respirator described by Woillez was ever used is contained in a publication by Knapp, and there was no evidence that it received any substantial commercial use. However the court also correctly noted that the statute 35 USC 31) “makes a prior publication more than two years old the equivalent of a prior use as an anticipation.” One of the Court of Appeals judges believed “[T]he changes from the crude apparatus of Woillez to the practical and useful respirator of the plaintiff’s patents seem to me to have involved invention,” that should have saved the first patent as well, but did not carry the day.

The contributions of Drinker and Shaw and of Emerson were important to the care and comfort of numerous patients, particularly during the polio epidemic, and were important steppingstones to the respiration technology we use today. Drinker’s work was also important in the development of naval rescue equipment. Emerson went on to work on breathing equipment high-altitude flights and SCUBA equipment.

Continuing the mail theme from Friday’s post, on July 28, 1942, U.S. Patent No. 2,290,920, issued on a Coin Operated Mailing Machine.

This was actually the third patent to issue to inventor Linden Thatcher on this invention in 1942 (U.S. Patent No. 2,358,424 and 2,273,300) and is one of a total of five for this prolific inventor.

All these patents were assigned to the Pitney-Bowes Postage Meter Company, which has a long history of inventing and patenting. In 1902, Arthur Pitney patented his first “double-locking” hand-cranked postage-stamping machine (U.S. Patent No. 710,997), and with patent attorney Eugene A. Rummler, founded the Pitney Postal Machine Company, which became the American Postage Meter Company in 1912.

In 1920, the company merged with Walter Bowes’ Universal Stamping Machine Company with the invention of the first commercially available postage meter. U.S. Patent No. RE14916, a reissue of the Company’s earlier U.S. Patent No. 1,273,792.

On July 26, 1775, the U.S. postal system was established by the Second Continental Congress, with Benjamin Franklin appointed the first postmaster general. Although no patents surround the creation of the postal service (the first U.S. patent did not issue until fifteen years later, on July 31, 1790), the U.S. Postal Service has received 660 patents since 1975, on things like digital stamps (US11348056) and mailboxes (D727589)

It’s hard to imagine the Postal Service ever enforcing these patents against FedEx or UPS, but they probably provide a good defense against third party claims against the Postal Service.

On July 25, 1871, Seth Wheeler received U.S. Patent No. 117,355, on Improvement in Wrapping-Papers — the improvement being providing the paper in a perforated roll:

As Wheeler explained in his patent, previously wrapping paper was sold in individual sheets, which were difficult (and expensive) to deal with. The concept of perforations must have been percolating in his head because twenty years later, he invented and patented (U.S. Patent No. 459,516) a roll of perforated toilet paper:

Wheeler followed up just a few months later with U.S. Patent No. 465,588 on a Toilet-Paper Roll, having improved perforations for easy tearing,

The significance of Wheelers patents cannot be overstated, for they settle once and for all that the paper should hang from the front of the roll (not the back of the roll). If Wheeler were alive today he no doubt would flush with pride over how essential his invention became to modern life.

120 years ago today, Charles E. Menches, a concessionaire from Ohio, allegedly invented and sold the first ice cream cone at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. Facing a dwindling supply of serving dishes, Menches allegedly approached a fellow vendor, Ernest A. Hamwi, a Syrian immigrant selling a wafer-thin pastry called zalabia. Charles rolled a still-warm zalabia into a cone shape, and filled it with ice cream. The rest, as they say, is history.

In the years that followed, numerous other vendors made competing claims of inventorship, and today we may never know if Menches claim is correct. The year before the Fair Italo Marchiony patented a mold for making an edible serving dish for ice cream, but these looked more like teacups than a cone.

In 1905, a year after the Fair, Lanier and Driesbach filed an application on a Confection Apparatus, which issued as U.S. Patent No. 839,488 on Christmas Day 1906. The pair received a second patent (U.S. Patent No, 919,601) on an improved apparatus a few years later.

Menches never patented the ice cream cone, although a few years after the Fair, he did receive U.S. Patent No. 924,484 on a Baking Iron for Ice Cream Cones:

Menches, and his brother Frank, are also credited by some with the invention of the hamburger, at the 1885 Erie County Fair in Hamburg, New York, although that claim is even more suspect.

Menches ice cream cone story, if true, proves the old adage that necessity is the Mother of invention.

On Jully 22, 1952, Frank L. Zyback was awarded U.S. Patent No. 2,604,359 on a Self-Propelled Springing Irrigating Apparatus — the center pivot irrigation system.

Zyback was a farmer from Nebraska who left school in the seventh grade to help at his father’s farm and blacksmith shop. Zybach became a skilled metalworker and an inventor earning nine patents (U.S. Patent No. 2941727, 2355773, 1731220, 1597648, 1727625, 1770569, and 1879733. and Canadian Patent No. 284294), and literally changing the landscape of America (and many other places). If you have ever looked out the plane window while flying across the country you have no doubt seen the thousands of green circles created by Zyback’s systems.

Valley Manufacturing acquired the patent rights from Zybach in 1954, improving the system. Renamed Valmont Industries, Inc. in 1966 the company is a global leader for center-pivot systems and other agricultural products, with $4.2 billion in sales, 11,000 employees, doing business in more than 100 countries. For his work greening up American and the rest of the world one circle at a time, Frank Zyback was inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame in 2022.

On July 21, 1987, John Geddie was issued U,S, Patent No. 4,681,244 on a Portable Bar:

Mr. Geddie explained:

The objectives of the present invention are accomplished by providing a rigid hat that may be adjusted to fit different size heads such, for example, as a safety helmet or hard hat with an adjustable head band provided therein. Several drink containers are mounted on the sides of the hat using elastic bands that are inserted through slots in the hat and fastened to the inside of the hat. In the illustrated embodiment there are six such containers, including two relatively large containers that might be used for soft drinks such, for example, as soda or ginger ale. The other four containers are relatively smaller and might be used to hold one or more alcoholic beverages. Each drink container is provided with a tube for carrying liquid from the container to one of two gang valves on the front of the hat that may be used for mixing drinks from two or more drink containers. Alternatively, a user of the portable bar may drink from any one container by opening the valve controlling the flow of liquid from that container and closing the valves that control the flow of liquid from all of the other drink containers.

Few things start a day off worse than sleeping through your morning alarm, or hitting snooze until it is too late. Oddly enough, this problem was solved 132 years ago today by George Q. Seaman’s Time Alarm Bed, which as patented on July 19, 1892, as U.S. Patent No. 479307:

Mr. Seaman explained that “It is well known that the ordinary alarm-clock often fails of its purpose in waking people or at least in compelling them to get up; and the object of my invention is to produce a bed and attachments therefor which will overcome this difficulty and which at any required time will actually eject the occupant of the bed, so that the said occupant will not only be awakened, but must necessarily arise.”

Of course, ejecting the occupant is a bit extreme. It seems that oversleeping was a problem in 1892, because earlier that year another inventor, Samuel Applegate, obtained U.S.Patent No. 256,265 on a Device for Waking Persons from Sleep. Applegate’s device drops sixty blocks of light wood or cork on the face of the sleeping person:

Not surprisingly, being dumped out of bed (as Mr. Seaman proposed) or smacked in the face with 60 wood/cork blocks (as Mr. Applegate proposed), did not stand the test of time, and the urgent trill of a cell phone is what gets most of us going in the morning