APPEAL from the Circuit Court for the District of Rhode Island.
The Washing-Machine Company, assignee of Sylvanus Walker, this last being assignee of one Sergeant, filed a bill in the court below against the Providence Tool Company, for an infringement of Division No. 2829, of a patent for an improvement in clothes-wringers. The original patent was granted to Sergeant, July 27th, 1858, and was reissued in two divisions, the one in suit being dated December 31st, 1867. Although the matter which was in issue in the present suit was confined, so far as the complainant's title was concerned, to the reissue No. 2829, it may be well to describe the wringing-machine which was the subject of Sergeant's original patent, and out of which the invention patented in the reissue No. 2829 was carved.
The original machine belonged to the class of clothes-wringers long known as 'twist wringers.' In these, clothes are wrung by twisting them into a rope in the same manner as without a machine the washerwoman twists them by hand. This sort of machine differs from another and well-known class of wringers, in which 'squeezing rollers' squeeze out by pressure water from clothes passed between them. Both sorts of machines had been in use for many years prior to the patent to Sergeant.
In the original machine of Sergeant, Figure 1 represents a yoke-frame of U form, the curved portion being an arc of a circle. This yoke had a pair of jaws and a clamp-wedge for securing the frame to the side of a tub. To the yoke frame a hinged frame E was attached, which, when in position, stood at right angles with the yoke, as shown in the engraving. At the middle point of the cross-bar which united the two sides of the hinged frame there was set a 'hitching-pin,' F, around which the clothes to be wrung were partially wound and held fast by the left hand of the washerwoman, while with her right hand she turned the rotary clamp in Figure 2, which formed a part of the machine, and which gave to the clothes the twist which expelled the water.
The rotary clamp shown at Figure 2 must be supposed to be set in the yoke B of Figure 1. It had a ring, H, with
flanged edges to hold the clamp in the yoke. I and J were lever jaws which jammed against the portion of the clothes inside the ring, and K was a gag for locking the levers. The outer edge of the ring, H, was furnished at intervals with notches, with which the pawl, P (Figure 1), could be made to engage, so that the rotary clamp, when the clothes were twisted, could be prevented from turning backwards, and the washerwoman would be able, if she wished to do so, to gripe with both hands around the hitching-pin, F, the portion of the clothes 'rendered.' With the exception of the model in the Patent Office, there was no evidence that a machine of the kind had ever been constructed. It was too complicated to be practicable.
Such being the machine, the Washing Machine Company, complainant in this case (or Sylvanus Walker, rather, from whom the complainants got it), bought the patent of Sergeant, and obtained the reissue on which this bill was founded.
The apparent idea in getting the reissue was that the apparatus shown at Figure 2 was a wringing mechanism, and was the equivalent of a pair of squeezing rollers; that the yoke-frame (Figure 1) was an apparatus separable from the clamp (Figure 2), and performed the office of supporting such wringing mechanism; and furthermore, that such supporting mechanism was peculiar in the fact that it had a clamping jaw attached to it which made it capable of being temporarily fastened to a tub. The complainant proposed, therefore, to divide the machine and to claim the yoke-frame and its device for being clamped to a tub, as a separate structure, without regard to whether the wringing mechanism used with such 'supporting and connecting apparatus' were rollers or a twister.
The cut, Figure 3, on the page opposite, represents the structure claimed in the reissue under consideration. The specification and claims in this reissue were thus:
'SPECIFICATION.
'The first part of this invention consists of a portable machine, which may be temporarily attached to one side of a common wash-tub, or readily disconnected therefrom, whenever desired, and is especially adapted to wringing clothes.