Boots – shoes – and leggings – Boots and shoes – Occupational or athletic shoe
Patent
1982-04-15
1985-05-21
Schroeder, Werner H.
Boots, shoes, and leggings
Boots and shoes
Occupational or athletic shoe
36 50, 36 54, A43B 502
Patent
active
045177538
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This invention relates to shoes, particularly shoes where considerable strain is placed on the foot.
Previous development of sport shoes have aimed at producing shoes with good fit and a high degree of comfort, suited for these purposes in varying ways. However, in which respect an invention actually improved fit and comfort has not always been made clear. This invention considers three key problems central to any good shoe design. For sport shoes or other types of shoes, these problems are: stability, flexibility, and fit. A "comfortable" sport shoe must possess a sufficient amount of all three characteristics.
Stability of the shoe contributes to keeping the foot in the correct position. That is, the bones, tendons, and ligaments are kept in the correct position to each other regardless of the degree and kind of foot movement. The desirable degree of stability is to a large extent dependent on the sport for which the shoe is intended.
Flexbility is desirable since the foot should conform in innumerable, different, and anatomically acceptable ways so as to bend naturally where required, if it is to be experienced by the user as being comfortable.
Generally, stability and flexibility are characteristics which oppose each other; the more of one the less of the other.
One aim of this invention is to significantly counter the viewpoint that stability and flexibility are opposites, and that more of one necessarily means less of the other.
The fit of the shoe is the remaining key factor, if a high degree of stability and flexibility has been achieved. With shoes according to this invention, the degree of fit achieved actually depends on the same means used for achieving high degree of stability and high degree of flexibility.
For this purpose, a shoe, particularly a sport shoe, having side laces extending substantially in the longitudinal direction of the shoe and placed on the outside as seen from a longitudinal central line running from the shoe's forward edge of the foot opening to the front of the shoe, and a tongue lying under the lace and extending to cover from above a user's foot, has characteristics according to one or several of the appending claims.
Shoes according to the claims have, in testing, shown substantial improvements, compared with previously known sport shoes. These improvements are particularly noticeable with regard to how the shoe forms to the foot in many ways, giving the foot stability even after long use, as well as absence of problems often arising in combination with tongue and laces.
Shoes with a tongue covering a major part of the foot's upper side are previously known (U.S. Pat. No. 3,768,182) in the sense that such shoes simulate a smooth and soft inner shoe. However, such shoes is reality have not fulfilled expectations, in that the problem of tongue movement in the transverse and longitudinal directions has caused inconvenience due to wrinkling or other undesirable deformations of the tongue. Prior art regards these deformations as a serious and important problem (U.S. Pat. No. 3,299,542), but before the appearance of the present invention there has been no really satisfactory solution, even if, on the other hand, tongue movement in modern sport shoes with relatively small tongues has not been a real problem. But when a tongue is made large to cover major parts of the upper and side of the foot, then tongue slippage is a serious problem, as is wrinkling.
Fastening the tongue according to the invention solves the problem of tongue slippage and deformation by very simple means, thereby achieving the important benefits of large tongues, namely to cover the foot and simulate an inner shoe, and simultaneously providing high stability and good fit.
Fastening the tongue according to this invention inherently requires side laces, which is known per se (FR-PS No. 2000 667, SE-PS No. 88252) and by which the pressure on the foot of a normal central lace, acting from above on the middle of the foot, a pressure sensitive area, is replaced by a relatively even pressure of a smooth upper.
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REFERENCES:
patent: 1542848 (1925-06-01), Barnes
patent: 1809998 (1931-06-01), Wernmark
patent: 2088851 (1937-08-01), Gatenbein
patent: 2210430 (1940-08-01), Post
patent: 2241653 (1941-05-01), Weyenberg
patent: 4255876 (1981-03-01), Johnson
Alberts Robert
Rosenbaum Leslie
Graveline Tracy
Schroeder Werner H.
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