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Farming-Related Patent Models
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As the United States grew westward during the nineteenth-century, growing crops for food and other uses became extremely important. The fall harvest season is an excellent time to look at Hagley’s growing collection of farming-related patent models.
So far there are more than fifty patent models which are primarily related to improving machines and tools for growing corn, potatoes, grain, hay, cotton, and tobacco. The most prevalent include a variety of plows, cultivators, and stump pullers for preparing land for planting. Most of the stump pullers are machines. Later, DuPont advertised explosives for a much quicker way to remove stumps from fields.
These patents represent quite a diversity of patentees located in twenty states from New York to Georgia to California with a very large concentration from the Midwest. Three countries are even represented including France, Austria and Canada. The only woman patentee was from Canada - Pauline Herse’s 1879 Improvement in Cockle-Separator which was used in grain processing.
Hagley is fortunate to have one of Lewis Miller’s patent models. Miller (1829-1899), a prominent inventor with more than ninety patents is represented with his 1878 Improvement in Grain-Binders patent model. This is a harvesting machine with an automatic binder attached. From Akron, Ohio, Miller was well-known for his improvements to farm machinery. Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006, he also held a connection with another famous inventor as his daughter Mina married Thomas Edison. Passionate about continuing education, he was one of the co-founders of the Chautauqua Institution which still exists today.
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In Case of Fire…Disassemble Bed?
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In our home, the kids’ bedrooms are on the second floor. None of these rooms have a porch or roof below their windows. Although that decreases the likelihood that my kids will sneak out as teenagers, in an emergency the kids would have a long and dangerous jump to safety.
Cue an internet search for escape ladders. Yikes! Those things are expensive! Not to put a price ceiling on our kids’ safety, but perhaps there was a cheaper option. Sure enough, I found several unused ladders for sale on-line. A slightly awkward, socially-distanced cash transaction between two anti-coronavirus masked strangers later, and my wife and I could sleep better knowing that in the event of a fire our kids could escape.
Months later, I cataloged a patent model from the Rothschild collection that offered a similar—yet unique—alternative to doing a sidewalk swan dive out of a burning building. In 1879, Frederick Swinden and Alfred Buxton of Naugatuck, Connecticut received a patent for a combination bedframe and escape ladder. The bedframe consisted of four iron ladders laid side by side. A separate iron rod secured the ladders to a wood box to complete the bedframe. Conical springs attached to the bottom surfaces of the ladder supported the mattress. (Mattress not included)
In case of fire or other emergency, the mattress could be thrown off and the rod connecting the ladders to the bedframe withdrawn. First, the user located the ladder with chains attached to the top. The withdrawn rod was fed through two hoops at the end of the chains. The iron rod spanned the width of the window frame to hold the ladder in place. The other three ladders had hooks on the top so that they could be hooked onto the bottom rung of the other sections of ladder as necessary. If that was not enough to reach the ground, the inventors attached another length of ladder on each section that could be swung out from underneath thereby doubling the length.
The springs also had a role in the safety ladder configuration. Not only did the they cushion and steady the ladder against the building, but by pushing the ladder away from the building slightly, the springs made it easier for the user to grip the rungs tightly while preventing scraped-up knuckles from the building’s facade.
This sounds like an ingenious design. I was surprised to learn that this bed/ladder combo was not a novel concept in 1879. Swinden and Buxton state that “we are aware that a bed-bottom composed of ladders having helical springs, adapted to support the bedding, and serving as fenders to hold the ladder from the wall, is not new…”. But the use of the rod to hold the bedframe together, its function as an anchor for securing the ladder to the window frame, as well as the addition of a second jointed section of ladder beneath the primary, made their contributions to the design unique. And worthy of a patent: [Link](https://patents.google.com/patent/US211275A/en?oq=us211275)
I do not know if this bedframe was ever used in “large hotels, hospitals, and other frequented places”, as the inventors intended. But if it were available today, I might have considered buying it for my second-floor guest room. Not for my kids’ rooms, though. They might try to use it to sneak out!
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Paging Doctor Thornton: New Discoveries about the First Superintendent of the Patent Office in Hagley’s Collections
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As a recent hire, I am still becoming familiar with Hagley and its collections. Sure, I spend most of my time laser focused on patent models, but the models are only a part of the museum collection. And I have not had the opportunity to explore the library collection. That all changed after a random database search that served as an example of the richness and depth of Hagley’s holdings.
At the time, I was working on a presentation and researching the first Superintendent of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Dr. William Thornton. Who is Thornton? To even touch upon his biography would take up too much space. His Forrest-Gumpian talent for being present at important moments during the formation of our early republic warrant a book of its own. For this article, it is my research into an object in our museum associated with him that established a surprising connection between Thornton, the DuPont Company, E.I. du Pont, and Thomas Jefferson.
It all started when, on a lark, I simply typed Thornton’s name into our museum collection search engine. To my astonishment, we had an object associated with him in the collection! It is pictured here. It is a tiny, three-inch tall tin container with a label that reads:
English Canister Pdr.
from a Blocktin Can.
Presented by Dr. Thornton/Novb 1824.
This container entered Hagley’s collections through the old DuPont Company Museum. How did it get there? Who did Thornton send this to and why? Did it contain a sample of powder for testing or was the container itself unique enough?
All these questions inspired me to do some more digging. Unfortunately, there was little information in the museum object files. If this was presented to the DuPont Company, was there any other documentation in the company’s archives? If I struck gold in Hagley’s collections once, could it happen twice?
Spoiler alert: Yes! Just like before, I typed Thornton’s name into a search engine. But this time, I focused on the library’s holdings. Not only was there a book in the stacks written by Thornton with a personal dedication to E.I., but the archives contained 16 letters written by Thornton to E.I. and others in his circle! Could these letters provide any information about the powder container?
Well, no. But they did highlight a shared interest between Thornton, E.I., and Thomas Jefferson. While I already knew Thornton advised E.I. on his patent application for a gunpowder graining machine, and I knew that Jefferson was critical to helping E.I. with his gunpowder business, the letters proved there was more of a personal connection between these three men.
The focus of that connection was the breeding of merino sheep. All three were passionate about these animals and the potential for developing a domestic market for their wool. Thornton stated that Jefferson was sending “a thorough bred ram to every County in Virginia”. E.I. allowed his prized rams Don Pedro and Don Ferdinand to pay conjugal visits to Thornton’s flock. Thornton, who in addition to being a physician, knew a great deal about animal husbandry and veterinary care. He offered E.I. advice on how to care for Don Ferdinand after he became ill. Thornton also received a gift of French sheepdogs from Jefferson and promised to set aside one for du Pont.
Thornton shared some rather interesting viewpoints on Jefferson’s mountaintop home, Monticello. I shared the existence of these letters, as well as Thornton’s impressions, with the folks at Monticello. They were thrilled to hear about the letters and requested digital copies. Hopefully together our two institutions can continue to reveal new information about the relationship between these three men who contributed immensely to the growth of American industry.
And it all started when I simply typed “Thornton” into our search engine. Who knows what new connections we can trace? Isn’t technology grand?
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When is a Patent Model not a Patent Model?
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Until 1880, the United States Patent Office required models to be sent with a patent application to the United States Patent Office. These models were usually smaller versions of the invention. The models were concrete evidence of the plans and drawings provided by the inventors in their applications. The Patent Office displayed the models in large cabinets, which became a popular tourist attraction in Washington, D.C. Many patent model makers (yes, that was a small industry in its day) and inventors worked hard to ensure that the models would be both useful in attaining a patent and eye-catching to any potential visitor.
However, patent models were not the only miniature models being made in the nineteenth century-. Salesman in this period also often had small models they carried with to show potential customers. This was especially true when the salesman were selling things like furnaces, which would be pretty inconvenient to carry around! These models helped to make the concept of the product clear, and the tactility of the model was alluring. In this way, salesman models weren’t so different from the patent models- both of them were trying to make theoretical objects appealing and material to potential “customers,” whether they were actual consumers, or officials at the patent office.
The actual difference between the patent models and salesman models lies in the fine print- literally. Generally, nothing is considered a patent model unless it has a tag from the patent office. These tags give the name, date, and patent number for the patent the model was a representation of. Without these tags, or clear provenance that these tags did exist, the status of a model is unclear.
A recent accession to the collection highlights this conundrum. We were recently given a model of a coke oven (for turning coal into coke) made for a patent application from William G. Merriman by Dr. Stephen & Mary Ann Smith of Exton, Pennsylvania. The object was accompanied by the official patent and the drawings of the patent application. The object itself, however, lacks the official patent office tag that would mark it as a patent model.
So, is this model a patent model or salesman’s model? The key piece of information in this case is the date- The patent was obtained in 1882. This is two years after the patent office stopped requiring models for most patents. In all likelihood, the model was prepared as a patent model, and William Merriman decided to keep his model, or it was returned to him, after he was informed there was no need for it.
While William Merriman’s model isn’t technically a patent model, and it isn’t salesman’s model, it does share the defining characteristic of both: An innovative idea brought to life through a physical object.
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The du Pont Story on a Hooked Rug
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Many times, people have asked me what my favorite artifact in the collection is. But I have too many to just give one. Here is one of my favorites. This artifact is an incredible work of art. Not only is this magnificent, hooked rug visually interesting, it combines both of our collecting areas admirably. It represents important icons from the history of the du Pont family in America and was made from DuPont Company’s nylon.
The artist who designed and made this rug was a du Pont who was a direct descendent of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, the founder of the DuPont Company. Born Nancy du Pont Reynolds (later Mrs. Edward W. Cooch, Jr.), she began making this rug in her late 20s. It was intended for use in a house but ended up in storage where it remained until it came to Hagley.
The process began by her drawing the pattern you see below and determining what kind of material to make the rug out of. Typically, hooked rugs were made from wool, but she decided to use nylon instead. Introduced to the public in the late 1930s, by the late 1940s DuPont chemists were exploring new uses for nylon including for carpets and rugs and this had great appeal to her. It was so new that all colors in the rug had to be customed-dyed using experimental dyes to her color specifications. This is probably the only hooked rug made from nylon. Ultimately nylon turned out to be a poor choice even though the colors are as brilliant as they were when new. But in limited active use, the rug began to fray and pill on the surface when it was walked on and there is evidence of that on the rug.
The rug depicts the history of the du Pont family and the DuPont Company in America. Each image shows a time, event, invention or symbol in the du Pont story. The design centers around the “American Eagle which was the ship that brought E. I. du Pont and his family to America. He later founded the DuPont Company. The date 1800 indicates the year they arrived in America and 1950 represents their 150th anniversary. Images include buildings on the Hagley property such as the barn and first office towards the top and a gunpowder roll mill on the Brandywine River on the lower right side.
Mrs. Cooch was an artist and I believe this is her masterpiece! One of the most amazing things she told me was that she started it in the middle and worked her way out to the edges. After she finished almost half the rug, she discovered a mistake and pulled everything out and started over again! Remarkable!
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George May Phelps and the Magic of Smartphones
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Are smartphones magic? As you hunch over your smart phone and scroll through your social media feed, do you ever stop for a moment and think just how in blue blazes does this thing work? Probably not. That is, until it *doesn’t* work.
Thanks to this job, I actually think about it a lot. As I continue opening boxes and cataloging the Rothschild patent model collection, each day I look at these steampunk-like contraptions and try to figure out how they work. I am constantly amazed by the genius of some of these men and women and the lasting impact of those old jumbles of wood and metal.
One of these “magicians” was George May Phelps. I recently discovered that Hagley owns the patent model for one of his most celebrated inventions, the Combination Printer. Not only is it the ancestor to that printer sitting there in your office, but many of the devices so critical to our Information Age owe a debt to its inventor—including that smartphone glued to your hand.
In the age of the telegraph, there were two ways to receive messages: write it down or connect the telegraph to a printer. Trouble was, both used Morse code. At least one trained operator was needed to send and another to translate the message. If the printer was used, another person called a “Grinder” turned a crank that powered the printer. The printers were complicated machines that often broke down, were difficult to repair, and slow and expensive to build.
Phelps fixed all that. An expert machinist that manufactured and assembled those ornery telegraph printers, Phelps was hired by The American Telegraph Company (later part of Western Union) in 1855. They recently bought the rights to a new type of printer and asked him to fix its problems. He took the best of the old machine, some of the new one, and added components of his own. In a rare moment of humility in the Age of Invention, he called it the “Combination” printer thereby recognizing how the other machines influenced his design.
Phelps’ improvements increased the speed, reliability, and durability of the machine. Best of all, no special operators were needed. Instead of Morse code, it used a lettered keyboard, printed in regular type, and its powerful electromagnets could be hooked up to any power source. It sent messages at about 60 words per minute on some of the highest traffic lines in the nation for decades. Even after printing over 5,000 miles of paper, the components showed little wear. One Phelps printer was still working into the 1920s! Do you expect *your* printer to work for 50-plus years?
Phelps is remembered as one of the leading inventors of early communications components. He worked closely with Thomas Edison—even going so far as to build some of his patent models. Besides the telegraph, Phelps’ designs ensured the success of the telephone and the stock ticker. Phelps even set New Yorker’s watches by creating a device that used a telegraph signal to drop a ball mounted on a pole high above the city skyline precisely at noon.
Ta-da!
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Who was the inventor known as the ‘Edison of Lancaster’?
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This month we bring you back into the world of patent models with an inventor who has ties to a place many of Hagley’s visitors will be familiar with. Anthony Iske, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was a prolific inventor who didn’t seem to commit to one industry in particular. Rather, he held a variety of patents across multiple disciplines, totaling in over 200 patents! We are lucky enough to have one of his models in our collection.
This Improved Hospital-Bedstead (Patent No. 77,193) [Patent Link](https://patents.google.com/patent/US77193A/en?oq=us77193) was patented by Iske on April 28, 1868. Iske states that “my invention consists in providing a means to enable an invalid to be relieved from the calls of nature without exertion on his part, and with ease to the attendant, and to facilitate the regulating or raising and lowering of the patient’s head and shoulders, and other minor additions and changes.”
Anthony Iske was born in Alsace, France on April 28, 1832 to a machinist father and a mother whose father was a cabinetmaker. After apprenticing in his grandfather’s cabinetmaking business, he assumed its management. One of his specialties was in the construction and decoration of altars. It seems as though Iske’s skills were well-known, even across the sea in the United States. In 1853, he received a letter from a priest suggesting that he come to Lancaster because a skilled craftsman was needed for the construction of a new church.
He obliged, and made his way to the United States. The letter had requested he come to Lancaster, New York. By mistake, Iske found himself in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Regardless, Iske’s skills made him invaluable, and he easily found work constructing altars and pulpits. He settled permanently in Lancaster, never exploring the original opportunity in New York.
Eventually, Iske put most of his focus on his inventions, the variety of which is truly astounding. He is most well-known for patenting the first meat cutter or slicer, as well as a widely-used fire extension ladder. Other inventions include a cigar press, a door bell, [Patent Link](https://patents.google.com/patent/US378317A/en?oq=us378317), motors, velocipedes, and fire alarms.
His son, Albert, was also included on a number of the patents. These included a milk-protector, a cork-driver, [Patent Link](https://patents.google.com/patent/US491052A/en?oq=us491052), a device for holding fire alarm keys, and a reversible window sash.
The patents listed above only skim the surface of what Anthony Iske achieved before his death in 1920. A quick Google search of Anthony and/or Albert Iske will retrieve pages and pages of results… It really is no wonder that Anthony Iske was known as the ‘Edison of Lancaster’.
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An Insubordinate Patentee
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The main goal of the museum’s inventor research project is to learn as much as we can about the people behind the patent models in our collection. With sometimes just one patent number, and one inventor name to go off of, our amazing volunteer is able to unearth mounds of information such as birth and death dates/places, marriages, occupations, other patents they held, and so much more! Yet, for every story that is fleshed out, is another that has seemingly been lost to us. This month, I’d like to share with a patent model that wonderfully represents this issue.
In 1877, two women by the names of Mary Augusta Requa and Eleanor Dunn were granted Patent No. 189,574, [Patent Link](https://patents.google.com/patent/US189574A/en?oq=us189574) for an Improvement in Copy-Books. And then, in 1881, they were granted a reissue of the same copy-book. I opened the research folder to review it, and noticed that we weren’t able to find any life details for Eleanor Dunn. Mary Augusta Requa, on the other hand, had an abundant online presence! We even found out that Requa’s sisters, Ella and Emma, held patents and designs in their names.
Mary Augusta Requa was a native of New York City. She was a patentee, held a Masters in Pedagogy, an M.D. from the Women’s Medical College of New York, and a law degree from NYU. At the height of her career from 1896-1904, she was supervisor of physical education for Manhattan and the Bronx.
But, her term as supervisor would not last. In 1894 she was dismissed for “insubordination” when she refused to step down to an Assistant position after a restructuring instated a new Director that would oversee the entirety of New York City. After failed attempts by “a group of masculine legal minds” to reinstate her position, Requa took it upon herself to become a lawyer and fight her own case.
The 1910 Census lists Requa’s occupation as a Supervisor at the public schools, and a 1915 New York Directory lists her occupation as Director. It seems as though she was successful in her own defense!
With more and more records being digitized and made available to the public daily, I’m hopeful that one day we will be able to populate Eleanor Dunn’s research file. Til then, we’ll celebrate Dr. Requa’s tenacity, and the assumption that she too would want her co-patentee to have her 15 minutes of fame in Hagley’s Research News.
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Inventor Emily Evans Tassey and The Hunt for Red October
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Skip Tyler: “This, this could be a caterpillar.”
Jack Ryan: “A what?”
Tyler: “A caterpillar drive. Magnetohydrodynamic propulsion. You follow?”
Ryan: “No.”
Tyler: “It’s like a, uh, jet engine for the water. Goes in the front, gets squirted out the back.”
That little exchange is from one of my favorite movies called *The Hunt for Red October*. Based upon a book by Tom Clancy, it features Alec Baldwin as a CIA analyst trying to locate a Russian nuclear submarine captained by Sean Connery. The sub’s engines, described above, sucks in water at the front and squirts it out the back making the sub so quiet that it is virtually undetectable by the US Navy. Little did I know that I would run across an invention by Emily Evans Tassey way back in 1876 that does the same thing! And Hagley holds not one, but two models, from this groundbreaking female inventor.
Born in 1823, Tassey’s father was a merchant who owned a textile mill as well as a general store and post office in the town of McKeesport near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Educated at Steubenville Seminary in Ohio, she taught school in her hometown and later at Pittsburgh High School. At age 21, she married lawyer William D. Tassey and had three children. William died unexpectedly while on a trip to Memphis, Tennessee. A widower by age 34, she moved back to Pittsburgh and started teaching again to support her family.
By age 52 she returned to her hometown and began inventing. She did not have to wander far for inspiration. By then, McKeesport was one of the fastest growing municipalities in the country. The local steel mill, as well as the steel industry as a whole, was booming. Barges full of coal, ore, and finished steel products as well as steamboats carrying cargo and passengers plied the rivers around Pittsburgh. As the first dry-docks in the area were built in McKeesport in 1836, shipbuilding and repair also became important industries. In only four years, from 1876 to 1880, Tassey would earn five patents—all related to marine technology.
Like many women inventors, Tassey did not become rich or famous through her inventions. Sadly, she ran afoul of the law in her later years. By age 62, she was found guilty of erasing and changing figures in her brother’s account ledgers to keep from paying the store clerk his full salary. Later, she was charged with larceny and receiving stolen goods and paid a hefty settlement for violating a contract.
Still, Emily Tassey’s unique contributions to American innovation deserve respect and recognition. Who knows what other inventors looked at her ideas and found inspiration for their own? Visitors to Hagley’s exhibit, *Nation of Inventors*, will see Tassey’s model, learn her story, and perhaps find their own inspiration. Maybe the next Tom Clancy will be one of them!
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Patent Models - This Inventor Played His Cards Right
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While reading through the patent document for Andrew Dougherty’s Improvement in Registering Mechanism for Printing-Presses, I was surprised to find his claim that the invention was “especially serviceable in printing… playing-cards” (Patent No. 178,608). [Patent Link](https://patents.google.com/patent/US178608A/en?oq=us178608)This was a very specific claim, so I decided to look up Mr. Dougherty to see if I could find out any more information on his life, career, or other patents. I was blown away by his story and success!
Andrew Dougherty and his parents immigrated to the United States from Ireland when he was only 7 years old. When he was a teenager, he held a variety of jobs. He worked for a time as a whaler off the coast of New England, and then at some point moved on to work for a playing card company. If you ask me, these are two of the most opposite gigs I can think of.
In any case, the playing card industry seemed to appeal to Dougherty, and at age 21 he had saved up enough money to open his own playing card business in New York City. This business would eventually merge with the Coughtry brothers and become Coughtry and Dougherty. This company created stencil-colored cards.
Once Coughtry and Dougherty dissolved, Dougherty went into business for himself again. By 1870 his company could produce three and a half million decks a year. Dougherty is also credited with developing and patenting two finishes for cards: the Linoid finish and the Pegulose finish. The Linoid finish was an extra coating that decreased stickiness, while the Pegulose finish allowed for the cards to be washed if soiled. Dougherty also patented Triplicates, which was a design feature that included two small depictions of the card in the top left and lower right corners.
Dougherty’s business was eventually purchased in 1907 by the United States Playing Card Company. One of Dougherty’s decks, named Tally-Ho, is still for sale to this day. The deck’s packaging has ‘A. Dougherty’ printed on it, and the cards are coated with the Linoid finish.
[# Andrew Dougherty 1848-1930](https://www.wopc.co.uk/usa/dougherty/index)
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