Big Fortunes in Little Inventions.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVII, Issue 9, 28 February 1912, Page 57

Big Fortunes in Little Inventions.

By WILLIAM ATHERTON Of Pl Y. in “Scientific American.” z~yVERY time anybody iu the United V/ States pulls the cap off a beer • 61 bottle or a soda water bottle with the intent to quench a thirst, temperately or otherwise, he puts the frac tion of a cent into the pocket of one William H. Painter, of Baltimore. A good many people have pulled these caps in the last few years and Painter is consequently an ever increasing millionaire. Yet the cap for bottles is a small thing, an idea crystallised and patented. The patent is the source of the millions. Painter, however, carried his patent in his pocket for six yVars before he succeeded in interesting capital in its manti facturc. Then a man of means advanced the necessary capital in return for a half interest in the patent and a company was formed. At the end of the first year

he and Painter each had a net 27,000 dollars in his pocket. Now the invexftiok has crowded all other stoppers for fizzy water off the market, and a big factory in Baltimore turns out the caps by the million every day. Before the time of Painter there was a man by the name of De Quillfeldt who lived in New Jersey and who invented a stopper that took The trade away from the corks of our youth. This stopper was of rubber and na> tightened by a wire attachment which was pulled down as a lever on the outside <,>f the bott* A decade ago they were generally used on milk bottles. De Quillfeldt is said to have made 15,(MX).0fi0 dollars out of h s patent. He might have amassed a competence had it not been for William Painter and another equally clever person who fitted a piece of pasteboard into the neck of a milk bottle and took the business away from him. An idea that is perhaps simpler than the pasteboard stopper is the *'hiunp” on the hooks that furnish so much c.iiployment for married men just before theatre time. Women had been fasten ing their dresses up with hooks and eyes for a generation and it is probable that someone had made a lot of money out of the original invention. But hooks had a way of‘coming unfastened much to the chagrin of the neat and fussy. Then came the genius of the hook and eye. A man who ' was wide-awake despite his residence in Philadelphia, bent one of these hooks, so as to make a hump in it lie tried hooking it up and found th J

It remained hooked. He patented it and has monopolised the business through hi, “see that hump’’ advertisement ever since. One day a man stood behind his wife while she put up her hair. The hairpins oi those days were straight pieces of wire. They did not “stay put’’ very effectually. The woman in this ease bent her hairpins before putting them in. Her husband saw her do it. The result was th<- Invention of the crinkly hairpin which is to-day used in carload lots by the women of the world. So important f n invention as the tele-

phone was made by turning a screw onefourth of one revolution. All the millions that have resulted from the invention of the Bell telephone, depended upon this slight twist of the wrist of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. There had been men before Dr. Bell who had come near finding a way to make female gossip and masculine commercial intercourse easier. Tire Reis patents came nearest success. But in the Reis patents the current was intermittent. It had to leap a gap. Dr. Bell closed that gap when he turned the screw. But Dr. Bell was not trying to invent a telephone when he incidentally

(.tumbled upon his secret. He was working on a method of making speech visible, for his wife was deaf and dumb and he was seeking an easy method of conversing with her. Instead he found the method of talking over a wire to people at a distance. He did not patent 'the idea, however, and it knocked about his house for months. Finally he demonstrated it to some friends and they saw the possibility of its application. Upon their advice he patented the invention. This patent was filed at 10 o’clock in the morning, and at 3 in the afternoon another man applied for a patent on the same

thing anj lost a hundred million dollars by a nose. j) Such are the stories that the of the Patent Office gossip about in thjl moments of their leisure. They tell you* for instance, of the Selden clutch which! is one of the vital patents that has much’ to do with the control of the automobile business of the country. It is this clutch' that enables the operator of the machine to stop and start without having to get; out and crank his machine—sometimes. It is interposed between the running gear and the motor, where it keeps the

ear marking time while the crossing is blockaded. This dutch was invented before autoinobiles were. For a decade after its indention there was no opportunity of applying it to any good purpose. Then the Automobile was invented. In fact George "ft, Selden was one of the early 'builders of automobiles, and it is logical to suppose that he built them that he might ftiake an opportunity to use his clutch. Certain It is that be long had a clutch op the automobile business. Before his patent was declared invalid about 2,000,000 dollars had been paid by nearly ninety automobile makers, who found it Cheaper to pay than to engage in expensive litigation. f Thaddeus Fairbanks was a New England fanner with long whiskers and piueli Yankee ingenuity. In his time oldfashioned steelyards were the only accurate means of weighing the produce of the farm. Platform scales were unknown, iiobody had ever worked out a method of arranging the levers that supported the platform in such a way that an object would pull equally no matter upon what part of the platform it rested. Old Thaddeus Fairbanks used to tell the story of the evolution of the arrangement of these levers. For a long time the problem was upon his mind. He used to lie awake nights and attempt to arrange those levers. It was in the dead of night that his thinking finally bore fruit. The arrangement unfolded itself and the Fairbanks scale was the result. >So did a farmer practically monopolise the scale business of the world and so 'did he write his name upon platform scales wherever civilised man buys and Helis by weight. It was a man by the name of Hyman J,. Lipman, likewise a resident of Philadelphia, who invented the rubber eraser that throughout our generation lias been attached to the lead pencils in common use. It Was in 1858 that the invention Was made. In those times people talked jq much smaller figures than nowadays. Lipman was, however, able to cash in his patent for a cold hundred thousand dollars when dollars went much farther than they do to-day. feo did a man by the name of Heaton, resident ■ of Providence, notice that mother was’ occasioned a great deal of trouble because the buttons constantly game Off the children’s shoes. Heaton devised the little metal staple that holds on the shoe buttons of to-day and realised a fortune for his "pains. No . less clever was a man of the name of Dennison who pasted little rings about the hole in a shipping tag and'thus made an “eye” that would not pull out. Elias Howe conceived the idea of placing a hole near the point of a needle and under, tire encouragement of this small thought was the sewing machine developed- Howe was one of the Columbuses in the development of a machine to sew yearns, and deserves a monument from the women he emancipated from needlework. When he asked Congress to extend the term of his patent for a short time (one extension had already been granted) he admitted that he had collected 1,185,000 dollars in royalties, but Considered himself entitled to 150,000,000 dollars. Howe, had many followers who improved the sewing machine. One of the cleverest of these was the man who patented the stitch his machine made instead of the machine itself, and thus fnade infringements more difficult. An-

other man, Allen B. Wilson, a journeyman cabinet-maker of Pittsfield, Mass., Who exhibited the first model of what has since become known as the four-mo-tion feed. . He afterward founded tbe firm of Wheeler and Wilson and became immensely wealthy. Tn the “Scientific American” of 1849, James C. A. Gibbs saw a picture of Wilson’s machine. The working of the device was clear down to the point where the needle perforated the cloth. He wondered what happened after that. Finally he decided to make the needle work. After much thinking and infinite whittling he worked out the ingenious little revolving hook which became the important feature of the Willcox and Gibbs machine and which made that firm wealthy. The man who was born too early to wear, as a boy, red top boots with a brass tip across the toe, was also born too early to feel the true thing in the way of pride run rampant. Silverthorn brass tips, they were called, and they were most serviceable in preventing holes in the toe. Silverthorn made his fortune out of them. There is a palatial mansion up the Hudson with a private yacht moored beneath the Palisades that is a monument to the millions that Adams made in the chewing-gum business. It was in 1871 that chewing gum was patented, and millions of willing jaws have wagged industriously upon it ever since. Harry Hardwick invented an ingrain carpet with the threads of it so interwoven as to prevent wrinkling, and Hardwick is now 4,000,000 dollars better off for his pains. A towel manufacturer found that his machinery was not working right and that his towels were suffering a vast tangling of threads. "While adjusting the machine he used one of the damaged towels to dry his hands. He found it pleasingly absorbent, and from the idea to which that gave rise was born the bath towel and a fortune to the patentee. The man who invented tin cans made it necessary for somebody to invent an opener. This was done and the money corralled. A can opener is not a very laborious thing in the using, but the public is always ready to pay for things that are made easier. So, just recently, an iii-

ventive genius made a can with a seam just below the top, and when the owner wants it open he has but to strike it a blow where the aeam breaks and the top is off. A single Chicago packer ordered ten millions of these cans as an experiment, and others followed suit. The inventor has a fortune, and the thing is but just begun. So does the story of the making of big fortunes out of patents on very small and apparently unimportant things pyramid as one goes into the subject. There is a current belief to the effect that but few of the many patents issued are of any practical value. The writer had occasion recently to look through a series of the issues of the Patent Office “Gazette” and was struck with the number of patents and found that one in . three was assigned, this meaning that a third of all patents issued were sold before completed. These patents must be of value or they would not sell. There are others, of course, that are of value that are retained by the patentee. So it would, on this basis, seem reasonable to estimate that half the patents being issued are of value. Many of them are of stupendous value. An estimate of the revenue being to-day received from patents of the United States would be impossible to make, but it seems safe to say that many of the great staple crops will have to look to their honors if a census of patent profits is ever taken.