Nathan Clifford

“ With ordinary care I should consider an apparatus, constructed in accordance with the descriptions and drawing of the coil apparatus in the patent of Tilghman, a perfectly safe practical apparatus for heating the materials to a lead-melting heat. I do not see that any practical difficulty would be incurred in its operation. So long as the temperature be limited to the melting-point of lead, an apparatus as strongly constructed as those with which I have been familiar, would be almost absolutely secure against explosion. ”

“ Doubts of a very serious character are also entertained by the court whether the patented process, unless divested of its extreme and unparalleled conditions, can ever be reduced to practice by the means and in the mode of operation described in the specification, so as to practically useful or safe to the operator, but the proofs are very conflicting upon the point, and inasmuch as it is impossible to foresee what future experiments may do in the way of overcoming the existing doubts and difficulties, the court is not inclined to rest their decision entirely upon that ground. ”

“ Whoever discovers that a certain useful result will be produced in any art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter by the use of certain means is entitled to a patent for his invention, provided he specifies the means he uses in a manner so full and exact that any one skilled in the science to which it appertains can, by using the means he specifies, without any addition to or subtraction from the described means, produce precisely the result he describes. ”

“ You may obtain a patent for a mode of carrying a principle into effect; and if you suggest and discover not only the principle, but suggest and invent how it may be applied to a practical result by mechanical contrivance and apparatus, and show that you are aware that no particular sort or modification of form of apparatus is essential in order to obtain benefit from the principle, then you may take your patent for the mode of carrying it into effect, and are not under the necessity of describing and confining yourself to one form of apparatus. ”

“ It is impossible to retain water in a liquid state, in an open vessel, after it has reached that temperature. If the vessel in which the water is heated, however, be overed, and the cover be fastened down, the water can be heated to any temperature whatever, and will still remain in the liquid state. The tendency of the water to pass into vapor increases with the degree of heat applied to it, and there must, therefore, be a proportionate pressure or restraint by the inclosing vessel on the heated water to overcome this expansive tendency, or tendency to pass into a state of a vapor. ”

“ That Tilghman's patent does not require the use of a heat so high as melting lead, but merely prescribes it as a maximum, and announces that no fixed degree of heat can be given, as the different fatty or oily substances that may be used will require different degrees, and that by starting the vessel at a low heat and gradually increasing it, the best temperature may be ascertained for the particular substance used. ”

“ What does it prove, but that these manufacturers, these practical men, these men who have to pay for using this process, all regard the lower degrees of high heat and the use of a dash of alkali, and an apparatus unlike the coil, as within Tilghman's patent. Like the four great experts, they distinguish accident from essence, incident from substance, an illustration from the principle receiving it. We have here, then, a construction of the patent from a very high source. Besides, they all declare that with higher heat, and water and pressure merely, they can produce the results very well ”

“ High temperature, in the view of the patentee, is indispensable, and inasmuch as the vessel must be closed it follows that the vessel must be one of great strength, as the high temperature will necessarily produce very great internal pressure. Hence the requirement is that the vessel must be one of great strength, and the patentee suggests, as the best mode of carrying his invention into effect, that the mixture, prepared as described, be passed through a tube or continuous channel, heated to the before-mentioned temperature, that is, to the melting-point of lead. ”

“ Means of a mechanical character are prescribed in the specification for intermingling the fat and the water into what is called an emulsion, which is the mixture to be subjected to the patented process, but the difference between such an intermingling of one substance with another, which may be accomplished by a stirrer or by the churning process, and the actual union produced by chemical affinity between two or more substances, is as wide as one thing well can be from another. ”

“ That the use of a close vessel of sufficient strength to resist the pressure of water when heated, or any pressure needed when using water to decompose other substances, was known to, and practiced by, men of science and manufacturers in this country and elsewhere long before the alleged invention; that highly heated water when used as described is an elementary principle open and free to all, and that such a principle is not one that is subject to a patent ”

“ About 1816, Braconnot, a French chemist, discovered that all natural fats were merely mechanical mixtures, in various proportions of fats entirely solid and hard, now called stearin, with a more fluid fat or oil, called olein. He found that simple pressure very slowly applied, squeezed out the more fluid part, and that the remainder made harder candles. But the process of separation by pressure was difficult and imperfect.
Chevreul, in 1825, discovered that all fats were chemical compounds of a substance called glycerin, with fatty bodies having slight acid characters called fatty acids ”

“ Power to issue letters-patent is conferred upon the commissioner of patents, and inasmuch as such grants are executed by public authority and in pursuance of an act of Congress, the rule is that the patent, when introduced in evidence by the complaining party in a suit for infringement, affords a prim a facie presumption that the patentee is the original and first inventor of what is therein described and claimed as his invention. ”

“ Why else did he prescribe apparatus of the strength which he does; apparatus to be tested at a pressure of 10,000 lbs. to the square inch; with a safety-valve loaded to a pressure of 2000 lbs. Apparatus demanding such high pressure, he must have known, even if scientifically safe, is never-and for good reasons, seeing that they have no men of science to watch their engines-liked by manufacturers; the class whom alone could make his labors practically valuable. ”

“ Tilghman's apparatus the fat is only pushed forward with the water by means of a piston, through a long tube coiled up, escaping at one end in proportion as it is pressed in at the other extremity. The first extremity is closed by a safety-valve charged to stand a pressure of not less than 130 to 150 atmospheres. Now, it is doubtful that if this safety-valve is once opened by the pressure of the forcepump, if not by the expansion of the steam necessarily formed when some exit presents itself, a great deal more of the contents will escape than is forced in at the other end. ”

“ All they claim is that their invention consists of an apparatus wherein water and the fatty substances are heated separately in two different boilers, the first boiler being heated in the furnace, called in the specification the source of heat, while the second boiler, called the cylinder, is heated from the first boiler. ”

“ Issues of the kind cannot be intelligently determined without a clear understanding of the nature and scope of the invention secured by the letters-patent, as it is the patented invention which it is alleged the respondent has infringed, and in order to such an understanding it becomes necessary, as a preliminary step in the investigation, to construe and define the claims of the patent, as the most efficient means of ascertaining the precise nature and extent of the inquiry involved in the respective issues presented in the pleadings. ”