D-MAN

The prior art example of mine referenced in the previous "215" patent application. DM

That's it exactly. DM

Mice routinely leave a trail of urine so they can find their way around in the dark. That is a bonus to have in your house! They also defecate abundantly, and that is a definite source of disease, some of which can certainly kill you. If you have vermin in your house, you NEED to do something about it. Also where there's one, there's many. They will exploit any niche they find, that is their nature. Cuteness aside, it is a serious health problem. I said it before, and I'll say it again: get a cat, because its clear that you need at least one. DM

Like I said before, the Khorn is not likely to have alot of problems with reflections due to the shape of the back chamber, it tends to break reflections up. However, a 16x16 "sheet" of 2 to 3" thick fiberglass mounted around the back of the driver should be sufficient. Enclose the back of the driver and staple in place. You will notice a difference in "clean-ness". That's it. Try it and find out. DM

Well, the USPTO has cashed the check, so I know they've got it. Here is the patent document on the 215. DM PATENT_DISPLAY.pdf

That is what YOU get if you let the mouse come back... That's why they call them VERMIN. You've evidently been watching too many Mighty Mouse cartoons. Your response reminds me of the people around here who protest when the city attempts to kill rats. Get real - and soon, please. DM

If you do, he'll just be back! The correct answer is: get a cat. Problem solved. DM

What is AK? DM

Somebody fill us (who missed the original thread) in - we missed all the fun! Aside from Al K. taking his toys and going home, what effect is this going to have on Roy? I, for one, still want Roy to participate freely in the forum and I'm afraid that it will have the opposite effect. DM

Gentlemen, do not forget the REAL OPERATIONAL FOOTPRINT required for these things. They actually take up MUCH MORE room than just their physical footprint! Like the space in front and the side walls needed for "correct" wave propagation. These things are all room-hogs. It's inherent in the design! No way around it physically speaking, except DENIAL. We just "adjust" mentally to make them "acceptable". Some "adjust" more easily than others. DM

Oh, yes you do! I beg to differ! The reflections come back through the cone out of phase. This creates what I can only call "muddiness". Only Klipsch doesn't use any absorptive material in the horn's back chamber, even when there are parallel walls like the LS, Belle and Jub. I would agree, however, that due to the Khorn having no parallel surfaces in the back chamber, that it suffers from less reflectivity problems than the others, but I also think that it can have less "muddiness" if reflections are suppressed, but that is my opinion only. Not really a good thing IMO. This does not mean that you need to add so much material that it alters the response of the driver, only to supress the interference from internal back chamber reflections and standing waves. DM

A Klone is the enclosure, not the drivers! The so-called "Klipsch" drivers are Atlas, EV, Eminence (and/or whatever is the cheapest for Klipsch to buy)... who cares about cheap drivers?! Michael, you've got to quit "worshipping" the wrong things... DM

Engineers crack me up! (as long as I don't have to work with them)! DM

Shheesh! It's not like he's dead or something - he has his own website, for crying out loud! www.alkeng.com He also has an email address: al@alkeng.com DM

Oh well, that's just good marketing then, ain't it? Dale (ha!)

Looks like it. That's why I thought they might be of interest. Appears that they run the gambut of a modified two-piece OB to the more elaborate "Karlson-type" slot form. DM

And after all the work I did on the plans, showing the order to do things in, too! But seriously, looks great, Chris! You're doing a fine job. Dana

Hey, Gil, I've looked but I can't find the actual reference without alot of further digging. But I will say this, the Pop-Tart is more easily defined in terms of prior art than, say, a ham sandwich. Also, in reference to recipes, how would one go about determining the prior art? It is logical that in terms of food, unless a very specific example of a particular process or manufactured product is produced, prior art cannot be adequately determined and the invention clearly determined as being a non-obvious "improvement" over prior art. The Pop-Tart patent is not only an invented "new form" of "food" that did not exist historically especially due to its packaging, but also represented the result of a discrete and "new" manufacturing and/or packaging process. I would agree that it was patentable (at the time). But like I suggested above, as a food product, a pizza would not be patentable in itself. A particular manufacturing process/packaging method that for instance, would make for microwavable frosen pizza bites (etc.) might be, as prior art concerned with pizza bites would be limited to frozen foodstuffs available since the invention of microwave ovens and freezers, etc. However, by itself, unless clearly a "new" invention, most food-related patentable material is going to be process or packaging inventions rather than a recipe, BUT it may include in combination a list of ingredients which sets it apart from its ilk (what makes Capt. Crunch different from all other box cereals). However, a list of ingredients by itself would not be patentable in that 1) how would one determine whether how much sugar (for example) could be included or excluded from the recipe before it is no longer what was "patented"? It is unlikely that a pure-recipe patent was ever issued. We would be inundated with hamburger patents in such a case, and you couldn't put a tomato or pickles on you BBQ hamburger without a license! It only makes sense. Dana

Like George Augspurger once said - "of a thousand ways to fold a horn, this is one of them". Nobody is going to come up with a completely new way to fold a horn, if that's what you mean - that cannot be done, because "all the notes have already been played". But not all the possible combinations. DM

Dang! Those were free?! Looks very nice. DM

There could be several things that are causing it... First, check for air leaks, are you POSITIVE that everything is sealed effectively? 2) wiring polarity is an issue, of course, if out of phase, you cancel. Start by ensuring all of the wiring is connected with polarity in mind. If in phase, suprizingly some cancellation depends on the room and its proportions. Changing ONE woofer polarity can give an indication of whether the room is providing some cancellation of low frequencies based on distances and reflections. If it gets louder with one woofer out-of-phase, then the room is a problem. 4) cabinets form an effective seal with the corner? This will increase the LF response. 5) the woofer may not be optimum for horn loading. I'm unfamiliar with the driver you mention. First, get and post the T/S specs for that driver and we'll go from there...

Sheesh, Gil - it's DANA - not DALE! How long have we been on the forum arguing about stuff?! Well, it says in the patent rules (off the USPTO website) that recipes and/or food are not patentable items because prior art cannot be accurately determined. 15" Jubilee? ========== I also did a 15" version of the Jubilee,i.e., a bifurcated throat design, etc., however, I came to certain conclusions and decided that a bifurcated throat design made the thing too big (wider than it is tall) for 15" drivers, and I considered that to simply be too large and cumbersome to be of any interest. The real clincher is that I measured my available corners, and I simply do not have the room required! That was enough for me! I went with an alternative design which has some added benefits of utility while maintaining a comparable footprint size with the genuine Jubilee itself. I considered having a comparable footprint size as being paramount. The inherent demands on width using a bifurcated throat folding pattern of acceptable channel width (2.5") would be approx. 44" wide, and I for one don't have that much available room in my corners. Additionally, the maximum throat size required by the 2.5" channel width would limit the throat opening to 54 sq. inches, not much of a gain, if any, compared to the 12" Jubilee. Not enough to make it worth doing, IMO. Any increase in the channel width(s) would cause a subsequent increase in overall footprint size, so that seems like a very limiting consideration as to the throat size and the appropriate drivers that could make use of a rather small throat opening, etc. Basically, the rather small throat size limitation of around 50 sq. in. is better suited to 12" drivers than 15's. So I decided the Jubilee bifurcated throat design and folding pattern, etc. is best left to the 12" drivers it was designed around rather than attempting to use a 15" driver. So I abandoned the bifurcated throat in favor of a more adaptable design. This is not to say that a 15" Jubilee-style enclosure is not technically possible, only that I felt that it requires too many compromises and limitations in order to make it work IMO. My figuring is that given a more compact enclosure that does essentially the same thing compared to a larger one, I would naturally choose the smaller of the two designs. Add to that the benefits of additional utility, and that clinches the deal for me. I did, however, come up with a satisfactory bifurcated-throat design using dual-15" drivers in a Khorn-sized footprint. It is not a free-standing version, though, like the Khorn. It's much simpler to build and is therefore lighter and more compact, but like we all know, there are considerations and compromises with any folded horn. In this case, it won't crossover as high as the J-style horns. Whether THAT is a main concern is up to you. Because of the constraints of acceptable channel width versus overall footprint size, the design is specific to a certain class of small-mouth/small Vb drivers, exactly like I was saying above. The more driver-specific your design becomes, the performance capability may increase, but the more limitations are imposed, too. Choose your tradeoffs, because there are going to be some! DM

While I'm on the subject of patents in general, here's what patents are and what they do. Thomas Jefferson set up the US Patent office to promote commerce, essentially. A patent provides legal protection for a given invention from being illegally copied and manufactured without permission for a period of 20 years. Every 3-1/2 years, a payment has to be made to keep the patent "active" (this is fairly recent). In the past, it used to be a one-time fee which was good for the whole 20 years. An invention has to be something that you can make. Recipes for food, for example, are not patentable, because they are not manufactured, etc. However, a shovel or a hammer is. So a shoivel or a hammer can be patentable. There are hundreds of hammer patents, for example, each one being slightly different than the previous. This gave rise to the need for an "appearance" patent, now called a Design patent, because hammers all tend to technically do the same thing, utility-wise, don't they? Although, if a hammer does soemthing different that all preceding prior-art hammers, then it qualifies as a "new" invention. If it is in the shape of a fish-head, that is also new if it doesn't look like other previous fish-head hammers, etc... There are 2 types of patents, a Utility patent like mine, or a Design patent. Did you know that PWK had a design patent on the Khorn 1956 - however, it's the model "C" without the riser, he never patented the best-looking one, the "B" with the riser that we are all familiar with. However, a Design patent only keeps someone from making something that LOOKS (in appearance) like the patented device, not how its actually made. An issued patent is a legal description of an invention which either is new to the art (the state of the art"), or is an improvement to something that already exists. The improvement has to be new to the art, in such a case. To be new, the invention must not exist in the market place OR be published or described in a document available to the public at any time in the past. So basically, a patent is a description of an invention (or an improvement) that exists in 4 parts, the first being the "Abstract", a drawing, textual description, and third, and most importantly, the legal-ese "claims". The Abstract is a paragraph which sets forth the specific properties of the invention for quickly ascertaining what the entire patent is about. The drawing has callouts called "reference numbers" that allow the parts of the drawing to be named and numbered for reference in the text portion of the patent. The same numbers can also be referenced in the claims. The claims are the most important part of the document, and they are the hardest to come up with. The claims serve to limit the invention to a specific set of elements (or parts). The claims have to be a single sentence, but multiple limits to the original sentence can be added by referencing back to the original (called an "independent claim) claim sentence. They can also reference any preceding "dependent" claim. The multiple claims are taken as a whole, the dependent claims are considered to take on all of the attributes of the all of the referenced claims (by number) above it. The text section is usually in 3 sections, the first being the "setup" for the invention which places it in context with the state of the art (the "art" being whatever field the invention fits in). In the case of my patents, they are exponential horn speaker enclosures, so that is the "field" that I refer to in the patents. This section sets out the problems with the current art that the invention (supposedly) provides a solution to. So you outline the issues that your invention solves here, describe the level of knowlege needed to comprehend the invention by supplying references and a discussion. Note that I said supposedly; in the case of a loudspeaker, it only has to SEEM to work as indicated. The degree to which the invention actually or scientifically "works" cannot be accurately and legally determined in a patent. That's not what a patent is for. There is a "Description of the Drawings" section which describes what each respective FIGURE in the drawings represents. The second textual part is the "Summary of the Invention", which is used to inform the general public (i.e., those who may not know or understand the technical issues involved) to read and get a "superficial" or more general understanding of the invention. This is the "quick overview" of the invention which lists its objects (design goals) and advantages, such as how it solves the previously mentioned problems with the current art. The third portion of the textual section is the "Description of the Invention" which is the technical part which describes what it is, how its built, its "specs" as it were. The description should be detailed enough that someone with a knowlege of the art could actually make the invention. Where this gets tricky is that it can be assumed that the person is reasonably knowlegable in the art, so alot of well-known things pertaining to the particular field need not be specifically pointed out. The specific ELEMENTS that make up the essence of the invention NEED to be put forth, though. The CLAIMS section then says EXACTLY what you think needs legal protection to keep others from "stealing" your invention and calling it their own. It has to specifically describe your invention. The patent (when published on the USPTO website) becomes the de facto published description available to the public, fullfilling the above requirement for what is "new" and what is "prior art". Once published, like mine are, they become public property, and that means that nobody can patent the invention again EVEN IF THEY DON'T ACTUALLY ISSUE! This is the "published description available to the public" thing that I mentioned in the beginning. DM

Why do you assume there is "zero air speed"? What force is exerted by the conveyor on the plane to impede the plane's forward motion? I have to go out for a while. So you have time to think. Are you NUTS?! the jet engines exhausting one way and the conveyor going the opposite direction at exactly the same compensating speed? Try ZERO air speed... To think otherwise is shockingly stupid, but I see you've already signed up for that one. I'm going out for awhile so you have time to not be as ... DM DM, As the biggest former proponent of "won't fly" I understand where you are coming from. but it will develop ground speed, thus having air moving over its wings. Think of it is ice, if you were in a car if you pressed the accelerator the wheels would just spin and spin, but with a plane you easly move forward. A plane, assuming tires with zero or no friction would just sit on the belt/moving runway in fixed position even if the belt is moving 100 mph in reverse. It is sort of a trick question, the wording makes you assume that the plane would remain stationairy because the belt is moving in reverse. However, with an airplane, brakes off, they are free spinning so the belt can move in reverse at 5 mph or 500 mph, they are just going to make the wheels spin, the plane can still go forward because the prop/jet will move the plane ahead independant of the wheels spinning in reverse. The wheels are free spining. As soon as you apply power to the airplanes engine it would roll forward because there is nothing to hold the airplane back. The way I originally read the question I thought that the plane would remain in one place, and I agree with you, it would not fly if it did so. But it won't remain in one place, it will move forward, it will gather ground speed, it will have air moving air over its wings, it will get up to stall speed, it will rotate, and it will take off, over just as long a distance as if it was sitting on concrete. Travis Travis, that's still incorrect. The free wheeling wheels corresponding to the backwards motion of the conveyor belt would mean that the plane itself remains stationary relative to the ground position, as long as the conveyor belt is exactly compensatory with the speed (force) of the engines. Stationary at the wings means no air flow over them, and hence, no flight, regardless how much the engines push, no forward motion is achieved. The whole thing relies on the conveyor belt exactly cancelling forward motion. Now, if the compensatory nature of the conveyor belt is "up in the air", then possibly, so could the plane be... but if I read the original premise correctly, flight would be impossible. DM

Why do you assume there is "zero air speed"? What force is exerted by the conveyor on the plane to impede the plane's forward motion? I have to go out for a while. So you have time to think. Are you NUTS?! the jet engines exhausting one way and the conveyor going the opposite direction at exactly the same compensating speed? Try ZERO air speed... To think otherwise is shockingly stupid, but I see you've already signed up for that one. I'm going out for awhile so you have time to not be as ... DM DM, As the biggest former proponent of "won't fly" I understand where you are coming from. but it will develop ground speed, thus having air moving over its wings. Think of it is ice, if you were in a car if you pressed the accelerator the wheels would just spin and spin, but with a plane you easly move forward. A plane, assuming tires with zero or no friction would just sit on the belt/moving runway in fixed position even if the belt is moving 100 mph in reverse. It is sort of a trick question, the wording makes you assume that the plane would remain stationairy because the belt is moving in reverse. However, with an airplane, brakes off, they are free spinning so the belt can move in reverse at 5 mph or 500 mph, they are just going to make the wheels spin, the plane can still go forward because the prop/jet will move the plane ahead independant of the wheels spinning in reverse. The wheels are free spining. As soon as you apply power to the airplanes engine it would roll forward because there is nothing to hold the airplane back. The way I originally read the question I thought that the plane would remain in one place, and I agree with you, it would not fly if it did so. But it won't remain in one place, it will move forward, it will gather ground speed, it will have air moving air over its wings, it will get up to stall speed, it will rotate, and it will take off, over just as long a distance as if it was sitting on concrete. Travis Travis, that's still incorrect. The free wheeling wheels corresponding to the backwards motion of the conveyor belt would mean that the plane itself remains stationary relative to the ground position, as long as the conveyor belt is exactly compensatory with the speed (force) of the engines. Stationary at the wings means no air flow over them, and hence, no flight, regardless how much the engines push, no forward motion is achieved. The whole thing relies on the conveyor belt exactly cancelling forward motion. Now, if the compensatory nature of the conveyor belt is "up in the air", then possibly, so could the plane be... but if I read the original premise correctly, flight would be impossible. DM