whither "Velo Research" ?

Quoted message said:

here's a patent for a bicycle-powered air-pump.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/patents/us/539/5397144/5397144.pdf

The patent is assigned to VELO RESEARCH

can't find anyone by that name on the Net.

anyone know their current name?

The name VELO RESEARCH is not registered as a corporation with the
State of Washington at this time, even in Inactive status. I suspect
that this means that the company simply failed.

In closely reading the description of the device and the material
parameters that were expected to be required as stated by the
designer, some of the flaws in the device become apparent. The
designer acknowledges that temperatures of 250F could be expected in
the cylinders, pistons, and cylinder ends, with the observation that
very special plastics would have to be employed in construction if
metal was not used. If metal was employed, manufacturing tolerances
would have had to be uneconomically close according to the documents.

In other words, it was possible to build the device, but it wasn't
going to be possible to build it cheaply using metal components, and
it wasn't possible to build it from plastic unless exotic and possibly
hard-to-employ materials were chosen. Potential puchasers might have
found the heat factor unacceptable in any event. Potential investors
may have been additionally concerned about the product liability
issues resulting from that heat. I can also see how potential
investors might have been put off by the simple stupidity of the
marketplace; how many of these pumps would have been returned damaged
by fools who would have tried to pedal *forwards* instead of back?
How many would have further filed liability actions because the device
wasn't designed to prevent them from trying that? And could the
inverstors have been found for an expensive (by comparison to its
competition, the hand-operated pump) gadget with a relatively small
market?

I can predict with some confidence that Ron Popeil wouldn't have been
interested.

It was a clever attempt, though; I'll give them that.

Lots of patents are issued for devices which never get produced. The
reasons are many, but "lack of commercial value" is the single largest
category.
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