REVIEW OF THE RELATED TECHNOLOGY Many games for gymnasium or playground employ horizontal bars or rods, for example"limbo"and hurdle jumping. Children, being inventive, can also generate many other games using bars. In addition horizontal bars are useful for training in sports such as track and soccer.

One conventional system for setting up horizontal bars uses plastic cones which are somewhat like traffic cones, but having holes into which bars can be inserted.

This system has several drawbacks.

For one, the bars cannot be knocked sideways out of the holes so that if a child trips over the bar there in great inertia from the mass of the two cones holding each end of the bar, and the child is liable to trip and be injured. It would be safer if the bar could easily be kicked out of the way.

For another, the holes cannot be closely spaced and the increments of bar height are too coarse.

A third disadvantage is that the holed cones are less usable for other purposes, being unusual in appearance and weaker than standard cones because of the holes.

Another disadvantage is that these holed cones are more expensive. They cannot be produced in a simple mold, like the ordinary traffic cones which have no undercuts.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION Accordingly, the present invention has an object, among others, to overcome deficiencies in the prior art such as noted above.

The invention thus provides a simple, inexpensive, and rugged system or kit for adapting a standard traffic or game cones and horizontal bars. The kit includes two elements, a ring hanger and a bracket slat.

The ring hanger has a circular central hole which fits over the tip of a standard cone, allowing the ring hanger to slide down over the cone until it stops where the cone diameter equals the central hole diameter, preferably 2 and 3/4 inches (7 cm). The ring hanger also includes a number (preferably four) of slots generally parallel to tangents to the circular hole, into which a hooked upper end of the slat can fit. Thus supported by the ringer hanger, the slat hangs along the inclined side of the cone.

On the side of the slat opposite the upper end hook is a set of brackets, each bracket being generally parallel to the others and protruding from the outer slat surface at an angle of about 10 degrees. This is the angle at which the side of a standard cone is inclined to the vertical; thus, the brackets are substantially horizontal when the bracket slat is hung on a cone and the cone is set on a level.

The bracket slat is preferably 14 and 1/4 inches (36 cm) long. At this length, when the bracket slat is deployed down the inclined side of a standard 18-inch cone, it reaches nearly to the base plate of the cone, permitting bars to be set very close to the ground on the lowermost bracket. When the bracket slat is hung on a standard 28- inch cone the uppermost bracket is quite high off the ground. A large range of bar heights, and many angles of slant for inclined bars, are available.

The bracket slat is preferably 1 and 1/2 inches (4 cm) wide. There are preferably six brackets at intervals of 2 and 1/2 inches vertical distance when hung at 10 degrees.

Each bracket extends outward from the outer slat surface a distance preferably of about 1 and 1/4 inches (3 cm). To hold bars of diameters up to the full width of the slat, and even beyond, each brackets on its upper side (the side facing toward the end hook) has a generally cylindrical indentation with a diameter of about 1 and 3/8 inches (3 and 1/2 cm). Smaller bars will rest within the indentations, and larger ones can rest on the shoulders of the indentation.

With these dimensions, the depth of the indentation is only about 3/10 inch (8 mm), so that while a bar is held from rolling out it is quite easily dislodged when accidentally kicked. This is a great advantage for both safety and convenience, since cones are not knocked over by kicking the bars and they need not be set up again each time there is a mis-step; and there will be no"domino effect"when many cones are linked by rods, e. g. when setting up a maze, in which several linked cones fall over.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING The above and other objects and the nature and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description of an embodiment [s] taken in conjunction with drawings, wherein: Fig. 1 is a perspective view of the invention in use.

Fig. 2 is an exploded perspective view of the invention.

Fig. 3 is an elevational side view.

Fig. 4 is a frontal elevational view taken along lines IV-IV of Fig. 3.

Fig. 5 is a plan view.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT Fig. 1. shows one use of the present invention, a system of kit for use of cones C and bars B. A user U is skipping over a bar B suspended on either end by two brackets 220. The brackets 220 are integrally molded into bracket slats 200 which clip into a ring hanger 100 slipped over the apex of the cone C.

Each ring hanger 100 includes several slots 120 into which the bracket slats 200 fit as described below, so that several bracket slats 200 can be hooked into the slots 120 to hang down against the inclined side of the cone C.

Various bars B can be supported between bracket slats 200 hung on neighboring cones C.

Each bracket slat 200 preferably includes six

brackets 220, giving 36 possible positions for a bar B running between any two brackets 220, at various inclinations. Traffic/game cones come in two sizes, 28-inch (shown at lower left in Fig. 1) and 18-inch (at right an above in Fig. 1), and the ring hanger 100 and bracket slat 200 of the present invention can be hung on either equally well. Thus the inclination of the bars B can be varies additionally by choosing an 18-inch or a 28-inch cone C, which permits greater bar inclinations, allows leveling of bars over uneven ground, etc. The invention also contemplates ring hangers and bracket slats adapted to smaller and larger cones (not shown).

Fig. 2 shows the invention in more detail. The cone C is the conventional type usually molded in one piece of plastic, with a base pedestal P and often with an apical open top O. These are widely used and are often already possessed by playgrounds, camps, or schools.

The bar B can be of any sort, but preferably is fairly light so that it can be easily dislodged from the bracket 220; this is for safety reasons, as explained below.

The preferred embodiment of the bracket slat 200 accommodates a bar B up to 2 inches (5 cm) in diameter.

The ring hanger 100, which is also shown approximately full size in Fig. 5, has a central hole 130 which accepts the apical portion of the cone C. The interior surface of the hole 130 may be angled or conical, to better fit the cone and for mold release; this is depicted in Fig. 5 (which shows the bottom of the ring hanger 100) by closely-spaced concentric circles. The angle of the hole 130 may match the standard traffic cone angle of 10 degrees.

The slots 120 may have interior sides angled slightly in the other direction, to more easily accept the slots 210 at various angles of insertion (and, again, to aid in release of the ring hanger 100 from a mold). In spite of these orienting features, the ring hanger 100 can function with either side up.

The ring hanger 100 is preferably of plastic, but

may be stamped from metal or otherwise made in any conventional material and by any conventional means. The preferred number of slots 120 is four, but any number can be used in the present invention.

Fig. 2 and Figs. 3 and 4 show the bracket slat 200 which includes a backing plate 201, which rests against the side of the cone C in use. Figs. 3 and 4 are approximately full scale. The brackets 220 preferably are molded integrally with the backing plate 201 as a unit, of suitable plastic. The lower part of the backing plate 201 is shown broken away in Figs. 3 and 4, and only two of the exemplary six brackets are shown in those figures.

As best seen in Fig. 3, the bracket slat 200 includes a hook 210 which is generally shaped to slidably fit into the slot 120. The hook 210 is preferably of generally constant cross-section and extends (perpendicular to the paper in Fig. 3) almost the full width of the backing plate 201, to just under the length of the slot 120 of the ring hanger 100, into which it fits. In the present invention the elongated rectangular slot 120 shown in the drawing is only one possible hook-accepting or latch-hook opening, and it can be replaced within the present invention by a latch-hook opening of any shape. Preferably, the shapes of the latch-hook opening and the hook do not permit substantial rotation of the hook within the opening.

All of the brackets 220, which are preferably six in number, preferably extend from the backing plate 201 in similar orientation and are similarly shaped. The upper side of each bracket 220 includes a generally cylindrical recession 227 of diameter approximately about 1 and 3/8 inches (3 and 1/2 cm) and extending the full length of the bracket 220. The distance from the top of a lower bracket 220 to the bottom of the adjacent higher bracket 220 is about 2 inches (5 cm).

Because of the dished shape of the bracket 220 provided by the recession 227, a wide variety of bars B can be held stably but loosely in the recession 227. Looseness is important so that the bar B can be knocked out of the

recession 227 easily, preventing injury from trips, collapse of cones or systems of cones (e. g., Fig. 1), and damage to the bar B, bracket slat 200, and ring hanger 100. (The cone C is usually quite flexible and difficult to damage.) Besides the illustrated exemplary cylindrical recession, any recession shape that will stably support the bar B, and from which it may be dislodged, is within the scope of the present invention. In general the recession will include some sort of concavity. The recession may be defined by side lips parallel to the bar instead of by the illustrated cylindrical surface. The recession may also be defined by a transverse ridge at the end farthest from the backing plate 201, where the ridge has a lowered center portion; this shape will permit the bar to be held at various horizontal angles to the backing plate 201. For use with bars having ball-shaped ends, the recession may be a spherical concavity or a hole in a horizontal plate smaller than the ball end. The present invention contemplates the use of any recession shape which holds a bar end stably but from which the bar may be easily dislodged.

The present invention includes various combination of bar or bars B, cone or cones C, one or more ring hangers 100, and one or more bracket slats 200, in all combinations.

In particular, it includes just the support system consisting of the ring hanger (s) 100 and bracket slat (s) 200.

An alternative embodiment (not shown) provides a bracket slat with a narrower upper end hook adapted to fit directly into an open top O (Fig. 2) of the traffic cone C, so that a ring hanger is not needed. In this embodiment the irrotational feature of the bracket slat 200, which is provided in the illustrated embodiment by the mating slot 120 and hook 210, can be provided by portions of the bracket 200 linking them together, e. g., hooks and eyes on opposing sides of each bracket.

Such structures could be used to form a ring about the cone without the use of a separate ring (exemplified by the illustrated ring hanger 100), simply by hooking the

brackets together. The brackets could also be belted to the cone, or hung in various ways by any means for hanging the brackets over the apex of the cone.

The industrial applicability is in playground equipment. The problems solved by the invention is the inability to use standard traffic/game cones for supporting bars and the problem of cones being knocked over cones when bars are knocked over.

The foregoing description of the specific embodiments will so fully reveal the general nature of the invention that others can, by applying current knowledge, readily modify and/or adapt for various applications such specific embodiments without undue experimentation and without departing from the generic concept, and, therefore, such adaptations and modifications should and are intended to be comprehended within the meaning and range of equivalents of the disclosed embodiments. It is to be understood that the phraseology or terminology employed herein is for the purpose of description and not of limitation. The means and materials for carrying out various disclosed functions may take a variety of alternative forms without departing from the invention.

Thus the expressions"means to..."and"means for..."as may be found in the specification above and/or in the claims below, followed by a functional statement, are intended to define and cover whatever structural, physical, chemical or electrical element or structure may now or in the future exist carries out the recited function, whether or not precisely equivalent to the embodiment or embodiments disclosed in the specification above; and it is intended that such expressions be given their broadest interpretation.