AMONG THE INVENTORS Snowballs in the Sahara

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33241, 2 June 1973, Page 11

AMONG THE INVENTORS Snowballs in the Sahara

' By

PETER BARRACLOUGH

In the dimly lit bowels of a provincial library, I found just what I was looking for ... BP 1,031,309. The index number—despite dust and discolouration—was clearly visible. There was no mistaking Arthur Pedrick’s master plan for transforming the Sahara Desert into the garden of the world.

For seven years the library has been a proud custodian of this well-guarded scheme which, says its creator, would solve this planet’s impending food shortage in one multimillion pound stroke. Pedrick’s concept certainly makes the mind boggle. He seriously proposes irrigating the Sahara by flooding the parched sands with melted snowballs rolled down from the polar regions along huge pipes.

It may sound laughable, but this retired engineer has worked out his plan to the last detail. He points out that as the Antarctic mountains rise to a height of 10,000 feet, 10-foot high snowballs—fed into the pipe at the rate of 50 a second—would hurtle down to sea level purely by gravitational pull — reaching speeds of 500 miles an hour. Six-hour journey Pedrick is convinced that providing the pipes were positioned correctly, the earth’s rotation would keep the snowballs rolling along at the same speed for 3000 miles. In six hours they would arrive in the Sahara where the sun would melt them into a large reservoir, providing gallons of fresh water which would “make the desert bloom." The scheme certainly is within the bounds of modern technology. It is purely a matter of expense and administration. But Pedrick himself would be the first to admit that the possibilities of the world taking up his proposals are remote indeed. He is just one of the hundreds of inventors in this country who have pinned their hopes on that strange monopolistic device — the British patent. Specially selected centres —the provincial library is one of them—keep duplicate specifications of the thousands of ideas registered in this country since the patent was first put into operation nearly 400 years ago. Continuing demand The centres receive boxloads of specifications from the British Patent Office in London. Many of the brainwaves put to the office are, of course, dismissed out of hand because of their complete unworkability. Yet the demand for patents continues unabated. In many cases it is simply a case of satisfying ego. Some inventors go to great lengths to get their notions into print—and posterity. But before rushing off with your own ideas —a word of warning. Taking out patents can be an involved, drawn out and highly expensive business; it can cost anything from £5O to £5OO depending on the complexity of the subject. The average charge is around £lOO. Weird and wonderful suggestions like Pedrick’s Sahara scheme are very much the exception. Ninety-nine per cent of the patents are boring, tedious, but extremely necessary details of technical devices.

Transport a favourite

There was a time when inventing was very much an amateur business. But the image of dotty eccentrics tinkering away in cluttered attics is fast disappearing.

There is no room in the white hot technological revolution of the seventies for the Heath Robinsons of this world. Today the multiinternational corporations with their heavily financed research departments have a virtual monopoly in the inventing field. But every now and then the Arthur Pedricks do steal their thunder. Not so long ago a certain Mr Cockerell risked derision by patenting an idea for a revolutionary form of transport — a vehicle which would travel across land and sea on a cushion of air. Today we call it the hovercraft. Transport has always particularly intrigued the more eccentric boffins. Last century Clara Wells registered her suggestion for connecting Europe and North America by a system of train rails suspended across the oceans by a series of air balloons. It was never taken up. , A great dreamer The remarkable Miss Wells also proposed controlling and utilising the heat from volcanoes by directing it along subterranean pipes to factories and towns. She was a great dreamer. But her ideas were always too grand to put into operation. Pedrick has had the same problem. His “snowballs in the Sahara” scheme is just part of a grand design which includes farms located on giant saucers floating on the sea — and unmanned nuclear powered submarines ferrying food supplies to the countries of the world, guided by short wave radio signals transmitted from satellites.

Funnily enough an idea does not necessarily have to be new to be patented.

Twenty years ago George Yates registered his suggestion for an all wing aircraft comprising a body in discus form and driven by j?ts. Yes, it was a flying saucer. The “smellies” In 1959 Hans Laube borrowed from Huxley's “Brave New World” and came up with “smellies” or as he called his device, “Motion Pictures and Synchronised Odour Emission.” It was simply a system for releasing certain smells to coincide with the pictorial representation. But there was the obvious drawback of dispelling one stench before another could replace it. It is the frustratingly simple ideas like cat’s eyes—one of the most lucrative ideas ever patented—that

makes the man in the street say: “Now why didn’t 1 think of that?” But it is only too easy to be wise after the event. Some patent index numbers hide the most macabre items. B.P. 3163, for example, suggests the provision of air pipes in coffins, together with alarm bells, so that people buried alive have a chance of survival. Another idea was somewhat more ruthless—a coffin equipped with capsules of highly poisonous gas which would be punctured when the lid was nailed down, ensuring that the body would be well and truly dead. Involved approach From time to time plainly illogical ideas sift throught the patent net —like the lavatory seat furnished with

rollers to prevent people standing on it.

Some inventors approach everyday problems in the most involved and roundabout ways. One gentleman patented "reversible trousers” with two sets of flies in a bid to prevent the old problem of baggy knees. However flippant these ideas may seem, they have all been registered in complete seriousness by their creators.

But the vast majority of applicants never see a return for their investment. Pedrick, for example, admits that he is nearly bankrupt because of his insistence on patenting all his brain-waves. But clearly there will always be those willing to pay tor the proof that enables them to claim proudly “I thought of it first.”