[et's daddy]

LONDON — Ladies and gentlemen, because of signaling problems in the Venus area, and the wrong kind of asteroid on the line at Jupiter, the 11:27 for Uranus is running approximately 3½ light-years behind.

Back in the distant days of nationalized railways, when they should have been concentrating on congestion at Crewe and uncurling their on-board sandwiches, the members of the British Railways Board were busy filing a patent for a spaceship.

Deep in the archives of the European Patent Office, researchers have found evidence that in the early 1970s railway chiefs envisaged an era beyond slam doors and tilting trains — they registered a design for a nuclear-powered flying saucer.

Had the application been filed on April 1 it would have been understandable, but it was lodged at the Patent Office, in London, by Jensen and Son on behalf of British Rail on Dec. 1, 1970, and the patent, numbered 1310990, was granted on March 21, 1973.

Charles Osmond Frederick, an engineer and inventor, was commissioned by the rail board to come up with a "lifting platform."

What he produced was a space vehicle, with its passenger compartment upstairs, like the pod of a jumbo jet, and engines powered by "controlled thermonuclear fusion reaction ignited by laser beams."

source

[xstortionist]

this is very old news to me. I've read many aviation weekly's in my years and this is old news.

[et's daddy]

Quote

this is very old news to me. I've read many aviation weekly's in my years and this is old news.

so, youre saying youve heard this before ?

[xstortionist]

not that it was patent by a brittain, but this idea has been around for ages.

[Shadow_Wolf]

Quote

not that it was patent by a brittain, but this idea has been around for ages.

The patent filing was published in 1973 so its hardly news! The description and claims do not match, and the filing was probably abandoned when the examiner rejected the application. There was no subsequent application in the US derived from from this GB filing (which is the common route for any patent protection), so the invention wasn't of any apparent commercial worth - this rather suggests the invention didn't work!