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here's a fun trivia question. How many years did the Chamberlen family keep the invention of the forceps secret so they could enjoy monopoly profits?

• jlgreco 13y ago
  "The brothers went to great length to keep the secret. When they arrived at the home of a woman in labour, two people had to carry a massive box with gilded carvings into the house. The pregnant patient was blindfolded so as not to reveal the secret, all the others had to leave the room. Then the operator went to work. The people outside heard screams, bells, and other strange noises until the cry of the baby indicated another successful delivery." Holy hell...
  • ggchappell 13y ago
    It's worth pointing out that this is why we have patents. Inventors disclose how their inventions work, in exchange for a legally enforced temporary monopoly.
    • femto 13y ago
      Try keeping a secret since the widespread adoption of the Internet. Paradoxically, we now have trade secrets laws to help inventors help keep inventions secret, so they can obtain a patent, so they can reveal how the inventions work.
      • raverbashing 13y ago
        Elon Musk seems to be successful at this at SpaceX There was a story mentioning this some time ago "We don't patent anything that's part of our secrets"
        • femto 13y ago
          That's exactly my point! Musk almost certainly wouldn't be able to keep employees or visitors from spilling his secrets, if it wasn't for the laws that are in place to protect trade secrets [1]. I'd contend that it only makes sense to argue for patents on an information dissemination basis in the absence of laws to protect trade secrets. [1] http://acuriousguy.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/protecting-space-technology-through.html http://acuriousguy.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/protecting-space-...
  • riggins 13y ago
    yep, just over a century. The story of the forceps is both extraordinary and disturbing, because it is the story of a life-saving idea that was kept secret for more than a century. The instrument was developed in the seventeenth century by Peter Chamberlen (1560-1631), the first of a long line of French Huguenots who delivered babies in London. It looked like a pair of big metal salad tongs, with two blades shaped to fit snugly around a baby’s head and handles that locked together with a single screw in the middle. It let doctors more or less yank stuck babies out and, carefully applied, was the first technique that could save both the baby and the mother. The Chamberlens knew that they were onto something, and they resolved to keep the device a family secret. Whenever they were called in to help a mother in obstructed labor, they ushered everyone else out of the room and covered the mother’s lower half with a sheet or a blanket so that even she couldn’t see what was going on. They kept the secret of the forceps for three generations. In 1670, Hugh Chamberlen, in the third generation, tried and failed to sell it to the French government. Late in his life, he divulged it to an Amsterdam-based surgeon, Roger van Roonhuysen, who kept the technique within his own family for sixty more years. The secret did not get out until the mid-eighteenth century.
  • ddmf 13y ago
    could this be the etymology of "bells and whistles"?
  • throwwit 13y ago
    Even better, for a modern day example look at the true story behind the movie Puncture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puncture_%28film%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puncture_%28film%29