Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/326

318 cation, Dr. Page said: "In making this application for a patent, according to the recent act of congress authorizing the same, permit me to say that, on the original application, filed February 2, 1854, the claim as first presented was rejected on the fifteenth of February, 1854, upon a publication of Dr. Golding Bird, in the London, Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine, for January, 1838. It so happened that, in the conclusion of that article, Dr. Bird gave me credit as the first inventor of what he at first supposed was the novelty of his apparatus, viz.: the automatic circuit-breaker. Finding, however, that the precise combination which I claimed was used by him before I used the same, I amended my claim, making it much broader than before, striking out the word compound electro-magnet, and substituting the word electro- magnet, and also claimed the automatic circuit-breaker in connection with a helix or helices. This amendment the examiner accepted, and admitted the claim to be good, but rejected the application on the ground of abandonment. I have not, therefore, in this application, reiterated the original claim, but have claimed the helix or helices, and compound electro-magnet, in combination with an automatic circuit-breaker, in which the length of vibration of the circuit-breaking bar is regulated by suitable devices. I have also claimed the combination of the helix or helices, and compound electro-magnet, with a circuit-breaker in which the retractile force of the vibrating or circuit-breaking bar is regulated. Both of these features are original with myself, and their introduction distinguishes these claims from the original. The introduction of these and other claims is in accordance with the provisions of the act of congress."

The defendant is a corporation which manufactures and sells telegraph burglar-alarms, in which a circuit-breaker acts automatically to make and break the circuit, so that, by the movement of an armature to and from an electro-magnet, a bell is rapidly struck by a hammer. The plaintiffs' specification, and figs. 10 and 11 of the drawings, show an arrangement whereby, when the circuit is broken and the magnet ceases to attract the armature, the armature is drawn