Patent Application
20120152991
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of packs used for carrying items stored therein. The invention herein is more specifically related to a pack system that more evenly distributes a weight load on both the back and chest area and onto the hips to avoid the risk of injury in back-only-type packs. This invention, while applicable to all persons who must carry substantial loads over long periods of time, is especially directed to school-age children who often have to carry heavy loads of books and other school-related items in a backpack where such weight is disproportionately localized to the student's shoulders, neck and back.
2. Background Discussion
It is alarming how often the load weight of books and other school material borne by a student's back, shoulders and neck, results in injury to school children. Orthopedic physicians have expressed concern especially in regard to younger children who risk serious physical and developmental problems from the continuous stress of carrying a heavy backpack laden with books, gym clothes, cell phones, computers, pads and pencils, lunch and snacks, drinking water, extra outerwear and on and on. While the experts recommend a limit of about 12% of a child's body weight (i.e., less than 20 lbs for even bigger high school teenagers), some are carrying closer to 30% or more of their body weight. Of equal concern is that in conventional backpacks, substantially all of this weight is on the child's back and neck. They also warn that children, who already have even slight scoliosis, can exacerbate that mild condition into a more pronounced curvature of the spine, especially from wearing heavy and unbalanced backpacks. It would be extremely helpful if there were a pack system which would distribute the backpack weight in a more balanced fashion and also transfer at least some of the load to the hip area.
There are issued U.S. Patents directed to attempts to provide a more balanced load as compared to conventional backpacks. U.S. Pat. No. 5,497,922 for example discloses the use of a multiple front pocket system for balance. However, such multiple front pockets are too small to carry many items normally carried in the backpack and particularly large textbooks and the like and are therefore of limited use as a solution for school children. Moreover, the manner of their side to side connection is more complex and inconvenient as compared to more conventional school packs. Still further, there is limited versatility in that the front packs cannot be deployed without the backpack and there is no provision for removing the front packs for occasional use of the back pack alone.
The present invention comprises a pack system designed to both better distribute weight front and back and transfer some load support to the hips in order to reduce the burden on the back and shoulders. In the preferred embodiment described herein, the pack system comprises a back member and a front member releasibly interconnected by shoulder straps and buckles. Each of the back and front members is a large pack having at least one large compartment capable of receiving a significantly large and heavy load such as big text books or the like.
The back member is provided with a waist belt terminating in buckles that can be interconnected on the abdominal area of the user so that at least a significant portion of the back member load is supported at the hips to help reduce the burden on the back and shoulders. The back member also has a central lightweight, rigid frame on the inside surface and attached to the waist belt. A number of smaller pockets are also provided for storing smaller objects such as cell phones, calculators, pens and pencils.
Extra straps and connectors are provided on each of the front and back members so that each can be used independently of the other using shoulder straps that would normally otherwise interconnect the two members. This unique feature provides a degree of versatility not found in known prior art pack systems that are particularly useful to school children who need a balanced load that can be conveniently and frequently removed and installed.
The aforementioned objects and advantages of the present invention, as well as additional objects and advantages thereof, will be more fully understood hereinafter as a result of a detailed description of a preferred embodiment when taken in conjunction with the following drawings in which:
Referring to the accompanying drawings, it will be seen that
Each of the front and back members 20, 10 comprises a readily accessible large compartment 25, 13. These compartments are both configured to accept and enclose the largest and heaviest of the contents of the pack system. In other words, each of the front and back members constitutes a full size pack capable of containing the large items typically carried by today's young students including the biggest textbooks or laptop computers. These packs also provide other pack features such as pockets 12, 14, 16 shown in
It will also be noted that back member 10 comprises an integral waist belt 15 having opposed buckles and straps 17 and 29 to be selectively interconnected at the abdomen or waist area of the user to permit a significant fraction of the back member load to be borne by the user's hips instead of the user's shoulders. As seen best in
A significant advantage of the present invention not normally found in pack systems having front and back members, is the ability to separate the two members and re-connect straps to permit either the front or back member to be used alone independently of the other. In this regard,
Having thus disclosed an exemplary embodiment of my invention for the purpose of illustrating the principal inventive features thereof, it will now be evident that the ultimate configuration can vary and have numerous modifications compared to the particular embodiment shown and described herein. Accordingly, the scope hereof is to be limited only by the appended claims and their legal equivalents, which may cover many possible variations as compared to the described embodiment.
