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N0KFQ > TODAY 10.07.13 22:24l 54 Lines 2473 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Jul 10
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Jul 10, 1962:
U.S. Patent issued for three-point seatbelt
The United States Patent Office issues the Swedish engineer Nils
Bohlin a patent for his three-point automobile safety belt "for
use in vehicles, especially road vehicles" on this day in 1962.
Four years earlier, Sweden's Volvo Car Corporation had hired
Bohlin, who had previously worked in the Swedish aviation
industry, as the company's first chief safety engineer. At the
time, safety-belt use in automobiles was limited mostly to race
car drivers; the traditional two-point belt, which fastened in a
buckle over the abdomen, had been known to cause severe internal
injuries in the event of a high-speed crash. Bohlin designed his
three-point system in less than a year, and Volvo introduced it
on its cars in 1959. Consisting of two straps that joined at the
hip level and fastened into a single anchor point, the
three-point belt significantly reduced injuries by effectively
holding both the upper and lower body and reducing the impact of
the swift deceleration that occurred in a crash.
On August 17, 1959, Bohlin filed for a patent in the United
States for his safety belt design. The U.S. Patent Office issued
Patent No. 3,043,625 to "Nils Ivar Bohlin, Goteborg, Sweden,
assignor to Aktiebolaget Volvo" on July 10, 1962. In the patent,
Bohlin explained his invention: "The object... is to provide a
safety belt which independently of the strength of the seat and
its connection with the vehicle in an effective and
physiologically favorable manner retains the upper as well as the
lower part of the body of the strapped person against the action
of substantially forwardly directed forces and which is easy to
fasten and unfasten and even in other respects satisfies rigid
requirements."
Volvo released the new seat belt design to other car
manufacturers, and it quickly became standard worldwide. The
National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 made seat
belts a required feature on all new American vehicles from the
1968 model year onward. Though engineers have improved on seat
belt design over the years, the basic structure is still
Bohlin's.
The use of seat belts has been estimated to reduce the risk of
fatalities and serious injuries from collisions by about 50
percent. In 2008, an all-time high 83 percent of front-seat
occupants in the United States buckled their seat belts.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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