How the standard, high-quality disaster-relief tarpaulin came to be

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Good news everyone! I’m sure this is patent PCT/DK93/00314 (anchoring eyelet for tarpaulins and similar coverings). According to the database of the DPMA the fees weren’t paid in 2010 and the European patent is invalidated :slightly_smiling:

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The idea of a patent for eyelets at the corners sounded pretty suspicious to me as well. Eyelets in the corners have been around for 100 or more years. You can clearly see the use of eyelets along the edges of WWII era field tents, which combined 2 half tents carried by individual soldiers into a single 2 man pup camping tent. https://onlinemilitaria.net/products/824-US-Khaki-Shelter-half/

The Monarflex patent is for eyelets that are woven/extruded into the sheet material as part of the production process and and NOT PERFORATED and the accompanying waterproof eyelets which can be used to connect edges as well as mid-sheet guys. Which is pretty damn clever actually. And kudos to the company for having an engineer work with agencies to develop a solution that isn’t proprietary.

Looking at the video in the actual article, I see black reinforcements strips running across the white tarp and one closeup shows that the black strip has 2mm or so perforations through the black tape, but NOT through the white tarp. This would allow the same mid sheet perforation, but going low tech, like putting a string through the hole, tied to a stick or rod on the inside, then gooping the hole closed with caulk. We used to do the same thing with duct tape on the edges and centerline of clear visqueen plastic as ultra cheep lightweight tents when I was in scouts (which will last maybe a month in daily sunlight). Not as elegant, but avoiding the particular patent (and dependence on a single manufacturer’s eyelets instead ubiquitous materials.

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Further evidence that overreaching IP laws have real human victims.

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Well, sure, it sounds nice, but who can afford a high-quality disaster these days?

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so where’s the link to buy one?

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Well, someone has to do this, might as well be me.




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those are great houses, too

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In America, we shorten tarpaulin to “tarp”. Also we call bedclothes sheets. And there is no way a teenager in San Francisco would use either of those commonwealthisms :anger:. Why yes, I did recently read Little Brother, how did you guess?

Maybe the unwritten backstory there is that the American teens speak a Commonwealthish type of Nadsat due to the lingering aftereffects of a Canadian psyops campaign.

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except when they don’t as in this instance.

my thought too. that’s a damn nice tarp.

Shhhhhhh! Thats SECRET Canadian psyops campaign dammit!

Do we need to release Bieber 2.0?

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