Patents from the archive: Nicolls and Wavex

In the late 1880’s Levi James Nicolls created a novel method of making a bat handle, for which he subsequently filed a patent (No. 14,250) in October 1888.  The handle was referred to as ‘The Automatic Bat Handle’ in magazine adverts.  One of these bats was used by WG Grace to score over 1,000 runs, and his 100th century.

The handle was a two-piece unit that fitted together with opposing curved (sinusoidal) faces. The idea was to interlock the two sides of the cane handle with curves instead of the traditional flat surfaces. The two curved faces were interposed by a strip of gutta percha (that's a type of rubber in modern language). The claimed benefit was improved vibration damping, although Nicolls used the more prosaic words "automatic non-concussive handle".

Nicolls wasn't the first to use rubber slips to improve vibration damping. The curves running up the handle could have had some additional benefit that Nicolls knew worked, but couldn't explain why.

Fast forward in time to the 1990’s and the creation of a concept by a Taiwanese Dr. Suk-Ho Ryu, and commercialised by Canadian company Wavex.  The idea was initially proposed as a solution to reducing tennis elbow in tennis players, but was then put forward as a shock-absorbing feature for many applications that involved humans and repetitive impacts, such as hammers and power tools.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have survived as a viable commercial product, which calls into question its benefits over more conventional and standard methods of vibration damping.  The Wavex company claimed their idea would offer benefit to cricket bats, and this was covered by a patent application in December 2002 (No. 2,396,563). It was later licensed for cricket bats to Kippax in the UK.

How does the Wavex idea work and look on a cricket bat? It uses a curved surface pattern on the handle (sound familiar?), but this time on the outside of the handle, and with a shallow curvature.  Alongside the claimed benefit of reducing vibration, there is also a claim of increasing bat power (see the Kippax website).

The veracity of the Wavex claims for increasing power in cricket bats is debatable, as is the vibration damping properties of a shallow curved surface in a continuous solid.  This will be the subject of a future blog when I have found time to do a little experimentation to back-up the theory.

For the moment though, I am struck by the echo of the past in the future. Two completely unconnected events, yet similar ideas.