Mario Puratić

Mario Puratić (usually spelled Puretic, and sometimes Puretich, in English) is a Croatian-born American inventor who made major advances in fishing technology, such as the Puretic power block.

Puratić was born in 1917 in the town of Sumartin on the island of Brač in a Croatian family of farmers and fishermen.^[1] In 1938 immigrated to the United States. To facilitate extraction of the net from the sea, he invented revolutionary fishing equipment that was^{[peacock term]} relatively easy to use. Due to his invention, Peru increased its fishing pelagic fish by 300 percent. Within a few months, during 1953 in San Pedro^{[disambiguation needed ]} he invented the Puretic power block. A job which once needed 8 to 10 people could now equally quickly be done with only 5 or 6 people, but still no one was interested in the product.

In 1955 the company Marco from Seattle, specialized in sea building and design, recognized the potential of his invention and its engineers produced a product for practical use called the Power Block. It has a form of evening pulley with aluminium skeleton and the central rotating element, often wrapped in hard rubber, which can work. Quality of the product was very quickly recognized and up until 1960, most fishing boats in the northern seine fleet had installed the power block. It made possible the renaissance of the moribund United States distant water tuna fleet, an event that put the United States into the forefront of the fishing world and has kept it there, helped by the adoption of synthetic fibers for netting.

The puretic power block revolutionized the fishing industry in such a way that FAO stated that no single invention has contributed more to the success of purse seine net hauling than extensive line of Power Blocks.^[2] In 1972 Canada issued a five dollar bill with a salmon seiner on the reverse.^[3] In 1975, Mario Puratić was proclaimed the inventor of the year in the United States and also one among Americas most famous 100 inventors of the 20th century.^[4]

References

1. ^ "King of Purse Seine Fishing". http://www.croatians.com/seine.htm. Retrieved 20 March 2009. 
2. ^ "Power block". http://www.fao.org/fishery/equipment/powerblock. Retrieved 20 March 2009. 
3. ^ "Mario Puratić" (in Croatian). http://hakave.org/index.php?Itemid=206&id=1933&option=com_content&task=view. Retrieved 20 March 2009. 
4. ^ Žubrinić, Darko. "History of Croatian Science". http://www.croatianhistory.net/etf/et22.html#puretic. Retrieved 20 March 2009. 

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Name	Puratic, Mario
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Date of birth	1917
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