William Burnham Woods

“ The testimony shows that both capstans and auxiliary engines have been commonly placed forward of the boilers of the boat, and that, as early as the year 1847, an auxiliary engine had been used for rotating a windlass, both the engine and the windlass being forward of the boilers. In view of these facts, which are either matters of common knowledge or well established by the evidence, the only field of invention left for the patent to cover was the application, by the old and familiar arrangement of shafts and cogwheels, of the power of an auxiliary engine to a capstan instead of a windlass. ”

“ Each step forward prepares the way for the next, and each is usually taken by spontaneous trials and attempts in a hundred different directions. To grant to a single party a monopoly of every slight advance made, except where the exercise of invention somewhat above ordinary mechanical or engineering skill is distinctly shown, is unjust in principle and injurious in its consequences.' In the case of Pennsylvania R. Co. ”