My father in law was a prolific "inventor" though "Improver" may be a better term. When he died, I deposited most of his papers in our local record office. I still own them, but they are now accessible to anyone who wants to access them.

Amongst his inventions, for which he never received a penny, were the wire rope crash barriers, and the use of epoxy resin for socketing ropes on suspension bridges. He also improved the design of dies used for wire-rope drawing.

I study family history, and was quite upset on viewing some parish records at a county archive (which shall be nameless) to find they had been handled so many times without gloves that the grease on the edge of the pages had made many of the entries indecipherable.

John