The device is usually mentioned as a joke between engineers, in the manner of a fool's errand, since there is no evidence of one ever having been constructed until very recently.
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One of the earliest printed references to these devices was made by Richard Feynman, who was told by a colleague at Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia that the cable-passing version of the device had been used during both world wars on German naval mine mooring cables, to prevent the mines from being caught by British cables swept along the sea bottom.
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