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Users' Experiences.

16th February 1911
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Page 1, 16th February 1911 — Users' Experiences.
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

Some 17 pages of this issue are devoted to the reprraluetion of more than 100 letters of testimony from owners: Costs and results are given in their own terms and words. NinLi-tenths of the communications have been penned since New Year's Day, and fully half within the past few days, but they concern performances which often extend over a term of several years—as many as nine or ten years, in a few instances. A perusal of these pages must be convincing to the observer of current events in. the transport world, and must give pause to those who have been selfappointed and partly-accepted critics of commercial motors in the past. We do not altogether quarrel with this hesitancy in relation to years gone by—while steam wagons were being evolved, or while motorbuses were being tried out. Does everybody, we ask, yet realize how rapid has been the march of events during the years 1909 and 1910 ? That is the crux of the situation. Is it appreciated as it deserves to be that heavy motors of all approved types have ii0001110 proved instruments of commercial worth and known capabilities? That fact is indisputable. If not recognized now, it should be, and one of the objects of this week's issue is to send home the vital points that there is no longer occasion to wait, and that the uses to which commercial motors can be successfully applied are nearly ail-embracing. In conjunction with The pages named (496 to 512), we advise a study of the guide. to the North of England Show (pages 484 to 487), which display will be opened by the Earl of Derby to-morrow (Friday) at Manchester. Intending buyers cannot afford to delay the mutter of placing orders, and all in the district simuld visit the flue. Exhibition Hall at Rusholme.

Standardization of Particular Components in Relation to Military Needs.

We desire to hark back a matter of five months, to the somewhat-lengthy editorial reference to a measure of standardization in military-owned or subsidized commercial motors. That leading article (issue of the 22nd September last) was entitled " Chaotic Mechanical Transport for the British Army." It attracted much notice and some comment at the time, but the War-Office mills do not grind quickly. To the manufacturer, who may seek to demonstrate the stupidity of looming proposals because they are not in consonance with his existing designs, and who is in consequence ready to vote against certain points which are under discussion, we would address these questions Why are your views about a partieular example of design more likely to be correct than those of, say, throe other competent, experienced and reputed makers who do not suffer from that individual handienp upon the expression of an impartial and unpre judiced opinion? Also, have the convened parties (we refer to a conference and its adjournment) any desire to wreck the scheme by the aggregation of personally-dictated deletions? Again, is not the fens et wig() of each peculiar idiosyncrasy of judgment obviously understood of the Committee whose members are conducting the inquiry which we have in mind ?

We bow, of course, to the ruling which requests us to observe silence as to the exact situation. Collectively, however, to the makers and their designers, we commend the course which eliminates conceit and complacent selfsatisfaction in regard to pet methods of carrying out this, that, or the other constructional detail. If they once get so far along the road to agreement, they can well demand, it appears to us, an initial monetary consideration from the War Office. It is not good enough, in our opinion, to expect even two or three makers to fall into line with admitted departures from their established practice, if the request be addressed to them solely in anticipation of prospective business. Finally, therefore, as the closing word of advice in this short reference, we urge the makers jointly and severally to hold out for a cash sum down of not less than £2,000 each. The proffered inducement for radical changes is wholly inadequate, and the War Office knows it. The maker deserves financial support at the outset; the purchaser, afterwards.

The Uselessness of Patents.

During last year, there were considerably over 30,000 applications lodged at the British Patent Office, and of these perhaps 500 may be classified as pertaining to suggested improvements in connection with motor vehicles and their accessories. These figures afford hut little guide to an actual investigation of the utility of securing patents upon new and original devices generally, but they do reveal at least some indication of the amount of time and money that must be spent annually by inventors, many of whom are under the impression that the possession of the Patent Office's hall-mark is undeniably the first step to great fortune. In our last issue, we hail something to say of the need for a means whereby the industry, as well as the motor-using public at large, might be enabled more readily to identify improvements which had actual merit. The sifting of the small amount. of wheat from the overwhelming quantity of chaff, if conducted systematically and drastically, should be a matter of little difficulty; it primarily would call for treatment at the hands of men who have real commonsense, commercial perspicacity and plenty of practical application at the back of them. We do not know that it is any particular concern of the motor industry, or of any other enterprise for that matter, to take means to .save the confirmed inventor from himself. lie must still be permitted, if he be constitutionally so affected, to secure what protection he may for ideas which are commercially not worth the ink with which they are specified. No advice, as a rule, will cure the chronic nonskid inventor, nor will words of warning check the enthusiast, one of whom is known to us, who regularly invents a new carburetter every six weeks. He will insist

onosfeuring his patents, and probably, owing to the distinct foolishness of many of his schemes, lie will encounter but little opposition to his applications. It is, as a general rule, misplaced kindness even to offer criticism to the man with whom invention is a life-long habit, if not a mania. It is almost unknown, that that type of personality should produce anything which will bring along either money or renown. Again, many inventors, some of them very-clever people, spend years perfecting a device, which in itself is a marvel of ingenuity, but which is almost, if not quite, useless when it is completed. They expend limitless energy on something which economically does not matter. Here and there, of course, is to he found the inventive genius who cannot work on stereotyped lines, but who is constantly evolving little improvements and simplified or time-saving methods. He invariably, however, is of practical stock ; he is no dreamer of constructional nightmares; he is rather an evolutionist than an inventor. The world owes much to him, as well as to the occasional brilliant scientist who has the sprat wit to pursue abstruse investigations along lines which he knows have promise of successful financial termination. It is not, however, to endeavour to check the inventor that these lines are written, but rather to suggest that in very-few eases indeed is the possession of letters patent of much financial value to the original inventor ; it sometimes brings profit to the exploiter. Especially is this true in all branches of the motor industry. A glance through the advertisement pages of any leading motor journal, dealing with either the industrial-vehicle or the pleasure-ear side of the business, will not disclose more than one or two patented specialities which have the field, in any substantial degree, to themselves. Patented carburetters, spare wheels, magnetos, ignition plugs, acetylene generators, non-skids, ball-bearings, engines, and a host of other components and accessories: practically in no one of these cases can it be indisputably claimed that the patent has secured to its owner a monopoly of the fruits of his idea. It is perhaps not too much to say that in no one of the cases could the patentee honestly claim that the principal objects of his invention cannot be practically attained by other means than his. We would instance the wild and almost-amusing scramble that has taken place since the proving of the Knight sleeve engine, in the course of which patentees have racked their brains to endeavour to secure the sole rights to manufacture similar engines, differently operated in one or other of many slightly-varying ways. The Patent Office has recently been full of the claims of designers whose ideas have been founded on Knight's invention, and there are very few of them that will prove to have been worth the patenting. Unless a patentee can " unload " his property without delay, more often than not he will have laboured in vain. How few are the eases where car makers have paid royalty on an invention? What chief draughtsman is there who could. not, were he set the task, " get round" any patented idea, if the application of that idea fell within the scope of his actual training? Many a patentee has had his hopes raised high, because some well-equipped manufacturer has sent his carburetter or his ignition kit to the experimental shop to he "tested" He does not know that the experimental shop is, as often as not, the museum and the intelligence de-. pertinent of the drawing office. Here and there a new patented plug or a new spare wheel may command a meteoric success, but it is not long before such patented speciality has enterprising rivals. It is difficult to persuade many incurable inventors that their patented efforts, though ingenious, are useless; it is difficult for a patentee with a good idea to get anything more substantial than good wishes for his ingenuity; and it is difficult to secure monopoly for a patented idea of merit--it costs more to fight infringers than the profits allow. Here and there are isolated exceptions, but they are as a rule, the result of exceptional circumstances rather than of exceptional ability. It is generally more difficult to secure financial support than to evolve the actual patent. Patentees will not be slow to admit the truth of this statement.

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