OEM No/Model: VW FORD GM CHEVROLET
New Good Quality Airbag cover airbag cover Driver airbag cover with logo
The airbag specified for automobile use traces its origins to air-filled bladders as early as 1941.[8]
The invention is also credited independently to the German engineer Walter Linderer, and to the North American John W. Hetrick who in 1951 registered for the first of his airbag patents.[9] Linderer filed German patent #896,312 on 6 October 1951, which was issued on 12 November 1953, approximately three months after American John Hetrick was issued United States patent #2,649,311 on 18 August 1953.[10] Linderer's airbag was based on a compressed air system, either released by bumper contact or by the driver. Later research during the 1960s showed that compressed air could not inflate Linderer's airbag fast enough for maximum safety, thus making it an impractical system.[11][12]
Hetrick was an industrial engineer and member of the United States Navy. His airbag was designed based on his experiences with compressed air from torpedoes during his service in the Navy, combined with a desire to provide protection for his family in their automobile during accidents. Hetrick worked with the major American automobile corporations at the time, but they chose not to invest in it.[13][14]Although airbags are now required in every automobile sold in the United States, Hetrick's 1951 patent filing serves as an example of a "valuable" invention with little economic value to its inventor because its first commercial use did not occur until after the patent expired when in 1971, it was installed as an experiment in a few Ford cars.[15]
In Japan, Yasuzaburou Kobori () started developing an airbag "safety net" system in 1964, for which he was later awarded patents in 14 countries. He died in 1975 without seeing widespread adoption of airbag systems.[16][17][18]
In 1967, a breakthrough occurred in the development of airbag crash sensors when Allen K. Breed invented a mechanically-based ball-in-tube component for crash detection, an electromechanical sensor with a steel ball attached to a tube by amagnet that would inflate an airbag in under 30 milliseconds.[19] A small explosion of sodium azide instead of compressed air was used for the first time during inflation.[12] Breed Corporation then marketed this innovation first toChrysler. A similar "Auto-Ceptor" crash-restraint, developed by the Eaton, Yale & Towne company for Ford was soon offered as an automatic safety system in the United States,[20][21] while the Italian Eaton-Livia company offered a variant with localized[further explanation needed] air cushions.
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