MyPatent.co.za

(Extract from MyPatent’s Patent e-Book)

 

After a major storm hit the East London harbour in 1963, Eric Mowbray Merrifield, a East London harbour engineer, began considering methods to dissipate rather than block the energy of waves. Merrifield wanted a block designed in such a way that it could be "sprinkled like children's jacks", presenting very little surface area to the wave action, making them difficult to dislodge.

 

Kruger went home for lunch, cut three sections off the end of his wife's broomstick, knocked them together with nails into an H-shape with one leg turned through 90 degrees, and the dolos was born.

 

 

Being easy and cheap to manufacture, simple to distribute along shorelines, the dolos proved an immediate success world wide. Each kilometer of shoreline requires ten thousand 20 ton dolosse, with millions having been scattered along beaches.

 

 

Pitfall 1 – do not pass the opportunity of protecting your

intellectual property by without good reason.

 

 

Unfortunate for Merrifield and Kruger, no patent or design protection for the dolos was secured, and no commercial benefit was received by either inventor for this incredibly successful invention.