Samuel Blatchford

“ In order to more fully understand my mode of preparing hides, I avoid the use of lime, acid, and alkali; for, just to the amount a hide is impregnated with such substances, it suffers in its tensile strength and toughness; a slow but constant dissolution is going on with hides so impregnated. If the effects of the aforesaid substances are in some way neutralized, which must be a chemical one, the hide suffers again in this process. The power to resist abrasion, and the extreme tensile strength for which pure rawhide is noted, are irreparably lost. ”

“ The words in the claim, 'prepared rawhide,' refer to the completed article as prepared for final use by the treatment set forth in the specification; and the claim is one for the treatment or process by which rawhide is put into the condition resulting from the treatment it receives by the entire process applied to it. After the hair is removed from the hide by the process of sweating, and it has afterwards lost its stiffness by being inserted in water, it is subjected to 'the process of fulling,' with a mixture of tallow, wood tar, and resin applied to it. ”

“ The plaintiff contends that the treatment covered by the claim consists only in subjecting rawhide to a fulling process, and at the same time, by the same mechanical action, working into it the stuffing composed of tar, resin, and tallow, and that he was the first to manufacture rawhides into a new article of commerce, called 'fulled rawhide.' If the plaintiff did make such an invention, and was entitled to claim a patent for it, he has failed to secure such a patent. On June 10, 1873, he put in a claim to the mode of preparing rawhides by the fulling operation and the preserving mixture. ”