Henry Billings Brown

“ Indeed, it often requires as acute a perception of the relations between cause and effect, and as much of the peculiar intuitive genius which is a characteristic of great inventors, to grasp the idea that a device used in one art may be made available in another, as would be necessary to create the device de novo. ”

“ The past season we have put out many of these machines in difficult clays, and made it an obligation to work the clay both wet and dry, and each machine has done its work well and to the entire satisfaction of the purchasers.' This is a frank and apparently a just tribute to the merits of the plaintiff's invention, as well as a distinct admission that their own machine accomplishes the same result. ”

“ Under such circumstances, we have repeatedly held that a change of material was invention. Smith v. Vulcanite Co., 93 U.S. 486; Vulcanite Co. v. Davis, 102 U.S. 222. None of the cylinders to which our attention has been called resembled the Potts cylinder so closely as does this. None of them were used for the purpose of disintegrating, as distinguished from crushing or grinding, clay. The result appears to have been a new and valuable one; so much so that, within a short time thereafter, defendants themselves obtained a patent upon a machine of their own to accomplish it. ”

“ But, not only did the glass bars prove so brittle in their use for polishing wood that they broke and were discarded after a half and hour's trial, but they would undoubtedly have been whooly worthless for the new use for which the Pottses required them. Not only did they discard the glass bars, and substitute others of steel, but they substituted them for a purpose whooly different from that for which they had been employed. ”

“ So far as they are used for working clay, they would appear to differ radically in principle from the Potts patent. An exhibit much relied upon, known as the 'Creager wood-polishing machine,' shows a cylinder, provided on its periphery with a series of projecting strips or bars of glass, not differing materially in form from plaintiff's scrapers, and like them fitted into longitudinal grooves. ”

“ The employment of two parallel cylinders to co-operate in the performance of a certain task is so common and well known that the court may take judicial notice of such examples as are found in the ordinary clothes wringer, fluting rollers, straw cutters, printing presses, paper manufacturing machines, and grinding mills of various kinds. ”

“ The machine was used for polishing boards, which were run between the cylinder and a support and pressure roller journaled underneath, and connected with an automatic adjustable contrivance. Had this machine been used for an analogous purpose, it would evidently have been an anticipation of the Potts cylinder, since the substitution of steel for glass strips would not of itself have involved invention. ”