The Australian Army Inventions Board, otherwise known as the Army Inventions Directorate, was a government body of the Commonwealth of Australia, set up in 1942 to handle the thousands of inventions submitted by the public. These inventions numbered some 27,000; a mere 127 of which were eventually accepted by the Army as being of notable value or suitable for military purposes. The best known invention accepted by the Army Inventions Board was the Australian-designed Owen Gun, a machine carbine which took a few years to get off the ground[citation needed].