Sometimes an idea seems so simple and obvious you wonder why no one thought of it before.

TranslucentConcrete by Andreas Bittis is from the December 2007 issue of DeZeen design magazine. It gives an idea by Andreas Bittis:

Translucent Concrete is a combination of optical fibres and fine concrete. Thousands of fibres run side by side transmitting light between the two surfaces of each element. Because of their small size the fibres blend into concrete becoming a component of the material like small pieces of ballast. In this manner, the result is not only having the two materials mixed - glass in concrete - but a third, new material, which is homogeneous in its inner structure and on its main surfaces as well.

This may sound very exciting and innovative, but comments subsequently given on the site pointed out that the idea was not new, and that Aron Losonczi had already invented it with his Litracon® product. Someone claimed that Bittis had been the German salesman for Litracon®, and Losonczi himself wrote in to point out that he had a patent. Only his company was authorised to sell Litracon®.

Losonczi’s international patent application WO 03/097954, my Patent of the Month, had been filed in 2002 from Sweden, where he was an architectural student at the Royal University College of Fine Arts. The concept was part of his course work.

As the glass fibres are precisely parallel with each other there is no loss of light. The  distinct shadow of a person can be seen, for example, and their movement is clear to see. As the wall is as tough as a normal concrete wall there are security advantages (or dangers ?) in its use. About 4% of the wall is the glass fibres, and the wall could be  be up to 20 metres thick ! A four metre high Europe Gate was built from the stuff in 2004 in the Hungarian town of Komarom.

A problem is that the material is very expensive to make in quantities big enough for a building. At present the LitraCube is available. It consists of four interlocking panels forming a hollow cube, as a lamp, for 595 Euros. Perhaps it could be used also as a “window” for an interior room. This is what it looks like.



One comment has been that it would reduce heat loss from buildings as windows might not be needed, but as the cost of the product is so high this is unlikely to be seen as worth it. Perhaps this is a product whose day will come if the cost of optical fibres is able to come down drastically.



Our Patent of the Month is provided courtesy of Steve Van Dulken from the British Library.  Steve is a patent specialist at the British Library and has his own blog at http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/patentsblog/

Steve has worked since 1987 as a patents librarian at the British Library. Author of Inventing the American Dream, Inventing the 19th century and Inventing the 20th century, both popular science, and of British patents of invention, 1617-1977: a guide for researchers and editor of Introduction to patents information.