Stuart Nathan
Features editor
Engineering saves lives and makes them better, and the varied and inspired inventors of crucial technologies are the best advertisement for the profession
It’s been one of those occasional periods where event has crowded on event. It must be the weather or something. I seem to have spent an inordinate amount of time in airports recently and have become distressingly familiar with the EasyJet inflight menu (my recommendation is: don’t).
Last week took me to Lisbon, for this year’s Inventor Awards, an annual event organised by the European Patent Office. I’ve attended the past three years, and it’s become one of my favourite events: not so much because it’s held in a different city every year (unfortunately, the tight schedule at these events means that there’s never any time for sightseeing; all I can tell readers about Lisbon is that the white marble cobbled pavements are very pretty but a nightmare to walk on in hard-soled shoes), but because for us journalists, it’s a chance to talk to the inventors, a varied and fascinating bunch of very clever, inspired people whose work has made a real difference to people’s lives, or at least has the potential to. As usual, it struck me that if you wanted to entice schoolchildren into a career in technology, introducing them to these people would probably be the best way to do it.
One striking example showed that you don’t even need to know precisely what you’re doing to make a breakthrough, if you understand how to investigate a phenomenon. Czech physicist Miroslav Sedláček told me through a translator that his invention of the rolling fluid turbine, a hydropower system that works in low-velocity water streams, was inspired by his watching a leaf tumble in a vortex generated on the surface of a river while he was out for a walk. Although fluid dynamics wasn’t his speciality (and it’s a notoriously difficult field of study, replete with the kind of algebra that seems to have been devised by some mathematically-inclined sadist), Sedláček dedicated himself to empirical study of the properties of such vortices and devised the turbine, in which a conical, spherical or cup-shaped rotor rolls around inside a close-fitting, tapered housing while the fluid vortex swirls around it, simultaneously spinning on its own axis.
Imagine the Earth orbiting the sun while simultaneously spinning and you’ll be close to visualising it, although as Sedláček apologetically told me, it’s not quite the same effect. It’s that pair of simultaneous movements that can be harnessed to drive an electric turbine or just to provide a rotational torque to drive a tool or appliance, and could provide isolated villages and settlements with electricity, as long as they have even relatively sluggish stream running through them. Sedláček cheerfully admits that he still doesn’t understand the physics of the vortex formation; they’re familiar to all of us from watching baths drain, and it turns out that nobody knows why they form. Think of that when you next run a bath. But that didn’t stop him from effectively discovering, describing and harnessing this new hydrodynamic principle.
There’s a strong element of life sciences in the award nominees, reflecting the sheer amount of research and the number of patents in this area. Many of these are for pharmaceuticals, which are outside the scope of this publication; but those in the fields of medical imaging, prosthetics and implants very much are, and demonstrate powerfully that engineers save lives and change them for the better – a point that other STEM campaigns have sometimes struggled to make but in this case flows naturally from the inspiration for the event.
Unfortunately for me, the nominee who possibly best embodies this, Hugh Herr of MIT, couldn’t attend. Dr Herr is a biomechatronics expert and climbing enthusiast who, near the start of his career, lost both of his legs above the knee to frostbite during a climbing trip gone wrong. Dismayed with the quality of prosthetic available, he designed his own, with active, microprocessor-controlled, powered joints that continually adjust their stiffness and damping as they are used. He now climbs at a more advanced level than before his accident, and notes ruefully that as he keeps upgrading his prostheses, there will come a point were his natural body has degraded by ageing, but his synthetic legs will outperform it, reaching new peaks of ability. I’m hoping to arrange to interview Dr Herr in the near future.
The winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award is another lifesaver, though not in the medical field. Anton van Zanten heads up a development team at Bosch, and is credited with the invention of electronic stability control, which uses a car’s brakes independently of the driver to keep the vehicle balanced during sudden swerving or braking in emergency situations, preventing lateral dynamic forces from overturning the car or sending it veering off the road. Typically of engineers, van Zanten credits the team with the invention rather than himself, although he acknowledges the importance of the patent system in securing the innovation.
By preventing crashes, this system is seen as improving safety even more than seatbelts and airbags (which mitigate the effects of accidents but don’t prevent them) and has saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of drivers, particularly younger ones, since its introduction in 1995. It has been mandatory in all new cars and light commercial vehicles since 2014, and Bosch has now made over 150 million systems. Van Zanten could probably be called the father of vehicle autonomy, although it’s a title he shies away from; and as a lifelong proponent of ‘defensive driving’, his own use of his invention has probably been minimal, in a stark contrast to the high-altitude Hugh Herr.
My interviews with Inventor Award nominees will appear in upcoming issues of The Engineer and on our website.
I have been in inventing limbo since 1988 when the EPO dissed my Inventor of the Year winning invention* with the words ‘As there are no technical impediments to the implementation of your invention, it is therefore not unobvious’.
Think about that. How is it not indicia of unobviousness, that it might be readily made? Esp when the inventor is one from outside the industry – when there are thousands of engineers and designers all trying to come up with the better mousetrap.
And the reason that it had not made it to the market at 6 years after conception, despite heaps of family and friends investments?
Technical impediments.
Must be good to be a shiny bum patent examiner sitting in their ivory towers.
That decision was fatal to the project, and more.
Patent system is totally unrealistic, assuming inventors have unlimited funds, unlimited wisdom, and of course, an MBA. I’ll take the rest of my inventions with me, thanks. Mostly environmental – thank god we don’t have any problems there, eh!
* (That Sony only had two words for, on first sighting; ‘Excellent’ and ‘Brilliant’)
“heads -up”? please may we have ‘leads?’
” lifelong proponent of ‘defensive driving’,” ….and/or defensive living or speaking or writing or listening or…going placidly amongst the pressures of life. “The reasonable person, behaving reasonably” has nothing to fear from any excess. But much to fear from those who exercise it? Using the dynamic of an unexpected or unplanned movement as the basis of automatic reaction to counter such- a life changing concept. AV-Z should be inducted to the Engineers’ automotive ‘Hall of Fame’ . I wonder if his genius makes him as unpopular amongst the lesser of his peers as ‘Babbage’?
To be fair to Babbage, it wasn’t his genius that made him unpopular; it was his lack of social skills and obsessive nature in his professional life.
I feel for you Stuart. Around that same year, an EPO examiner rejected my application on the basis that; “Claim 1 has insufficient information for one skilled in the art to make the invention.” My patent agent had to tell him that Claim 1 always covers a broad field and the detail is contained in the specification! That lesson to the EPO cost me money, naturally.
The very same application was rejected by the USPTO, as being ‘obvious’ in the light of an existing patent. My agent had to explain that she had obviously misread the prior art document! Of course, that was even more costly.
The Patent was granted in both cases.
ESC is the epitome of treating the symptoms, instead of curing the disease. Vehicles only suffer from dangerous instability because they’re all built to the ‘cart’ convention. i.e. the 2-axle, 4-wheel plan. If they were all designed to the 3-axle, 4-wheel plan their chassis dynamics would be so well balanced there’d be nothing for the Electronic Stability unit to Control.
If patent legislation observed the fundamental principles of human (IP) rights, Ayrton Senna and hundreds of thousands more would still be alive today. Bosch would never have had to lobby for years to get their expensive ‘fix’ made mandatory.
Moreover, the MoD would never have wasted billions buying in foreign military vehicles which are not fit for purpose, nor would the awful Snatch Land Rover have been used in the Middle East.
Dear Stewart: surely it is precisely because those who achieve great things have to be obsessive to do so! Likewise tolerating fools (gladly or otherwise) is usually no part of a leader’s make-up! Jealousy & fear are, in my estimation and experience (and about 15 direct experiences) the primary drivers of malice and disgrace amongst all levels of organisations.
SS’s comments about patents: echoed by every post I have ever written on this topic. When will ‘we’ -Engineers and Technologists- get rid of those “leeches on the jugular of innovation.” Soon, please?
Dear Stuart Nathan,
Yes, invention is a critical necessity, if not the pinnacle of human progress. Primary advancements very often originating from individuals or micro groups. Such advancements are usually disruptive, which challenges the status quo and vested interests; (like pitching an alternative energy solution to an oil company, even though they claim to be receptive). I don’t think you can teach inventiveness, but tangible support for inventors would produce massive dividends. My efforts to interest development programmes and investors in the UK for my inventions, came to naught. The Netherlands and the ELAt region have a different approach, so despite being UK trained I have set up there.
I have a very ambiguous view on the “value” of patents.
Yes, with the right breakthrough idea, and in a market that is potentially commercially worthwhile, then there can be some sense in providing for a LOT of money to protect the commercial execution of it. Note: you are not protecting the invention, so much as the commercial possibility for its execution.
Big difference.
The more worthwhile your idea, the more likely you will attract competition (and much of it completely unscrupulous, and not at all bothered that you have a “patent”). If you do not have the money – and stomach – to fight patent imposters, then forget the whole idea of even going down the patent route. The only entity that is being made wealthy is the patent attorney – at YOUR great expense!
Something like 90+% of “patents” are never commercialised ie no benefit (and great expense) to the inventor, but much benefit to the patent attorney.
The most important thing about an invention is BEFORE you patent it. Have you got real customers that will buy this product a t a price and quantity that makes the exercise worthwhile? You need to get on top of this exercise yourself. Don’t rely on others who may only feed you what they think you want to hear. For example, Patent Attorneys are particularly dangerous in this regard: “What do you think of my concept?”, the naive inventor asks. The answer is almost always “What a brilliant idea! You must patent it immediately!” Sigh!
The most important quality an inventor needs to develop is business acumen. Many – indeed most – ideas can still make a lot of money in the hands of the inventor if he is a capable businessman – regardless of a patent.
I am certain that the “patent industry” would resist this to the death, but perhaps the logical way to encourage inventiveness would be if you could just put your product or idea before the world accompanied by a simple timed and dated statement of your copywright. It would then be incumbent upon others to prove that they had declared the product or idea to the world before you had, and if successful merely give notice that you must cease to use their idea. This could scarcely be any worse than the current situation, and would allow an idea or product to be brought to market with no costs incurred but the development costs. One requirement of such a scheme would have to be that any accidental or genuine infringement of copywright would have to be written off without compensation unless the infringement had continued beyond he date that an infringement had been formally stated. Malicious claims would have to be subject to compensation to prevent the system being used to kill off valid competition.