Unaipon took out provisional patents for 19 inventions but was unable to afford to get any of his inventions fully patented, according to some sources. Muecke and Shoemaker say that between '1910 and 1944 he made ten ... applications for inventions as varied as an anti-gravitational device, a multi-radial wheel and a sheep-shearing handpiece'. Provisional patent 15,624 which he ratified in 1910, is for an "Improved mechanical motion device" - that converted rotary motion which "is applied, as for instance by an Eccentric", into tangential reciprocating movement, an Example application given being sheep shears. The invention, the basis of modern mechanical sheep shears, was introduced without Unaipon receiving any financial return and, apart from a 1910 newspaper report acknowledging him as the Inventor, he received no contemporary credit.