Long before hijacked airliners smashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, inventors were working on ways to secure airports and planes.
The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted at least two dozen patents for such technologies, including: A portal, vaguely resembling a "time warp" chamber in a science fiction movie, that can quickly detect tiny traces of substances associated with drug trafficking and explosives on air passengers' bodies. An "unpickable" lock to secure the cockpits of commercial aircraft from hijacker intrusions. It is similar to some that are already in use on hundreds of private and corporate aircraft. Technology to imprint a passenger's fingerprint, facial scan or iris pattern on his or her baggage claim, making it virtually impossible to put luggage on a plane without the owner -- to say nothing of mixing up the suitcases at the baggage carousel. And if none of those things work, a pill whose computer chip contains identifying data that can be used by recovery crews at crash sites to sort out the bodies.
A search of an online database of US patents, using the words "terrorism" and "aircraft," revealed 23 inventions that have been patented since Jan. 1, 1996. A search using the word "bioterrorism" produced one patent, for a test created by University of Wisconsin scientists to disclose the presence of the bacteria that produces botulinum toxin.
President Bush was to unveil a new federal airport security program yesterday in Chicago
But Federal Aviation Administration officials were not saying Wednesday whether a "sniffer portal" patented three years ago by researchers at the Energy Department's Sandia National Laboratories will play a role in future airport security plans.
After a week-long test at Albuquerque International Airport in 1997, "we kind of handed it off to FAA, and I haven't heard anything about it since then," said Sandia spokesman Howard Kercheval.
"For security reasons, we don't divulge any equipment we have deployed anywhere in the world," said FAA spokesman Hank Price.
The portal works something like airport metal detectors.
"Enter the portal," a friendly male voice instructs each passenger. "Turn left. Exit the portal."
In the few seconds it takes the passenger to comply with those instructions, the device passes a "quiet and gentle puff" of air over them and analyzes it, according to a 1997 Sandia news release.
Although officials do not disclose the substances the instrument can detect, Sandia researcher Kevin Linker said it will pick up all "explosives of interest."
Jim Jetton of Dallas, Texas, offers a somewhat simpler contribution to an aircraft's security. Jetton, whose father was a pilot for Braniff Airlines, has invented "an improved door handle" that can seal off the cabin of an airliner.
Jetton, owner of an aircraft security company, said he usually installs his "unpickable" locks on the many little doors built into the fuselage of private or corporate aircraft, so that owners can feel confident no one has vandalized or tampered with the plane.
"You can open the locks that come on those doors with a desk key, if you jiggle it," Jetton said, "but you cannot open one of our locks without our keys."
He said he had offered the new cockpit door lock to major airlines, but they showed no interest in it.
Malaysian inventors received a US patent in 1997 for a system that collects "biometric" data -- a palm print, facial scan, iris pattern or even the unique shape of one's ear -- from each passenger and digitally records it on a luggage tag and boarding pass.
"At the security checkpoint, the passenger is requested to interact with the biometrics data input device while also inserting the boarding pass into the improved security identification document interface device," they say in their patent description. No match, no go.
Guenter Schaefer of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was awarded a patent in 1999 for an electronic "capsule" that can receive, store and transmit a specific code. The capsule would be placed in each passenger's luggage, and the passenger would carry a boarding pass with a corresponding code. Luggage would not be placed on a commercial aircraft until the boarding pass code and the luggage "capsule" link up through a brief radio handshake.
Schaefer also has a patent for a "smart pill" that a passenger would swallow. "Resistant to stomach acids," the pill would contain a battery, antenna, microprocessor and whatever else it needs to communicate with the traveler's bags.
In the event of a crash, he noted, identification data stored in the pill could be used to identify remains, a system that he noted currently depends on such clues as "a fragment of skin with a partial tattoo, a trace of a prescription drug or a tooth with a filling."
Noting that priceless rescue time and effort often is spent searching for victims who turn out to have already died, a German inventor has patented a system that he says uses exceedingly low-frequency "signals" emitted by living bodies to locate victims at the site of a disaster.
Gerd Jeuergen Schmidt of Frankfurt said he had discovered that heart beat and respiration cause a living body to send these "signals," somewhat like radio waves, for a distance of around 3m. His patent describes a device he says can detect the signals, alerting rescuers to the presence of a living human being.
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