Northern Telecom & BNR Patents Donated by Clifford Read.
Many of the patents never made it to market as actual products: When Northern Telecom / BNR were planning new residential product lines, a range of concepts would be developed as finished models and presented to selected groups of telephone customers for consumer research in controlled settings. Since it wasn’t yet known which designs or styles would be preferred, it was necessary to protect all of the potential ideas.
As a result, the often simple or rough patent illustrations were primarily intended to provide broad “umbrella” legal protection for the underlying concepts rather than represent final production designs.
