We shall consider each of the patents in the order above stated. The invention described in the O'Haire patent consists of a combination and arrangement of devices by which the rear door of a street car can be opened and closed by the driver from the front platform where he stands, in order to let passengers into or out of the car. The drawing by which the specification is illustrated shows the frame of an ordinary street car provided with a door which is supported upon and moves back and forth upon suitable pulleys and ways, which, it is said, may be arranged in any desired manner. Passing through the bar from which the hand-straps are suspoended, and which is made hollow, is a rod or rock-shaft which has a lever or crank upon its front end within easy reach of the driver. Upon its rear end is a similar lever or crank carrying a roller, which works up and down in a rectangular guiding-frame secured to the rear edge of the door, and by which the door is opened and closed. The driver, by a slight push upon the front lever, can open the door, or, by a pull towards him, can close it without moving off his seat. The claim is as follows: 'The rod, i, crank or lever, 3, and guiding-frame, 6, secured to the door and combined with an operating lever for the driver, substantially as shown and described.'
The infringement charged against the defendant was the use of cars containing an 'improvement in operating car-doors,' described in the patent of George M. Brill, dated December 1, 1874. The device covered by this patent was substantially the same as that described in the O'Haire patent, except that the rock-shaft ran along the bottom of the car instead of through the bar from which the hand-straps were suspended. There is no evidence to show that O'Haire's invention antedates the application for his patent, which was made on June 27, 1873. Considering the state of the art at that time, we are of opinion that the device covered by his patent does not embody anything new which the defendant infringes. The opening and closing of the rear door of a street car from the front platform is not new. The specification of the O'Haire patent says: 'I am aware that it is not new to operate the door from the front platform of the car, as this has heretofore been accomplished by means of an endless cord which passes through the rods to which the holding-straps are secured, and I therefore dis laim such invention.' At the date of O'Haire's application it was well known, as is shown by the evidence, that doors and window-shutters guided by slides, both in vehicles and apartments, were opened and closed by mechanism used by persons placed in such situations that they could neither reach nor open and close the doors or shutters directly. The device of O'Haire must, therefore, to be the subject of a valid patent, embody some new means for accomplishing this end. The elements of which his contrivance was made up were the rod or rock-shaft, reaching from the front to the rear of the car, the lever by which a rocking motion was given to the shaft, and the means used for communicating motion from the shaft to the door.
The testimony is conclusive to show that there is nothing new in the rock-shaft or in the lever by which it is moved. Long before the date of O'Haire's application, the evidence is clear that rock-shafts operated by a lever or crank were used to open and close the doors of furnaces, and the window and door openings of sugar refineries, by persons standing at a distance from the windows and doors to be opened and closed. A rock-shaft moved by a lever at the end of a railway carriage for the purpose of opening and closing the sliding-doors of the carriage was described in the English letters patent set out in the record of John Johnson, dated March 3, 1857. The use of a rock-shaft for a similar purpose, namely, the opening and closing of sliding window-blinds, is also shown in the patent of David Kidder, dated June 8, 1869. Rock-shafts, for the same purpose, are shown in the patent of Darwin D. Douglass, dated June 11, 1861, and the patent of W. H. Brown, dated February 23, 1864. The shaft in the Brown patent was moved by a lever, and in the Kindder and Douglass patents by a knob attached to its end, which is the well-known equivalent of a lever. It appears, therefore, that the use of a rock-shaft actuated by a lever for communicating motion was an old device which had been in use long before the date of the O'Haire patent.