Noah Haynes Swayne

“ Evidence of the state of the art is admissible in actions at law under the general issue without a special notice, and in equity cases without any averment in the answer touching the subject. It consists of proof of what was old and in general use at the time of the alleged invention. It is received for three purposes, and none other,-to show what was then old, to distinguish what was new, and to aid the court in the construction of the patent. ”

“ The patent is not for the principle long and well known to physicists, that a low degree of cold, like a high degree of heat, prevents the decay of animal matter; nor is it for the freezing of the articles to be preserved before or after they are placed in the preserving chamber; nor is it for applying, by means of an apparatus with any particular details of construction, cold to the articles to be preserved; nor is it for the frigorific effect of the freezing mixture upon the atmosphere of the inner chamber ”

“ If the cream were taken out of the freezer, and fish put in, there would be, in all substantial respects, the same apparatus, process, and result. If the preserving chamber were as tight as the freezer, either might be convertibly used for the purpose of the other.
'The preservative effect of cold, and especially of dry cold, is well known and exemplified in the keeping of meat and fruit in ice-houses. Animals have been found undecomposed in the ice of Siberia which belong to extinct species, and which must have been embalmed in ice for ages.' Tit. ”