Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/618

 606 ■ ' FEDEEAL REPORTEE. �ant must establish that Hall reduced what he coneeired to practice in the form of an operative machine, and embodied it in some practical and usQful form before Pope made fais application, it being a fact in the case that Pope had not reduced his idea to practice before his application. Elli- thorpe V. Robertgon, 2 Fisher, 85; Union Sugar Refinery v. Matthiesson, 3 Cliff. 639. The law on the subject of the pri- ori ty of right between two in dependent inventors is substan- tially as it was laid down by Judge Story in Read v. Cutler, 1 Story, 590: "In a race between two independent invent- era, he who first reduces his invention to a fixed, positive, and practical form wbuld seem to be entitled to a priority of right to a patent therefor. The clause of the fifteenth sec- tion of the aot of 1836, now iinder consideration, seems to qualify that right, by providing that in such cases he who invents first shall have the prior right, if he is using reason- able diligence in adapting and perfecting the same, although the second inventor has, in fact, first perfected the same and reduced the same to practice in a positive form." White v. Allen, 2 Fisher 440 ; Reeves v. Keystone Bridge Co. 5 Fisher, 456; Agawam Co. Y.Jordan, 7 Wall. 583. �Hall, during the summer of 18T2, was thinking over the same idea which Pope had, and about December 21, 1872, «ame to the mental resuit that a one-battery System was feasible. He forthwith wrote to hia son, who was in Boston, to join him in Meriden. The son complied with the request, and, with the assistance of other employes, made a working model in accordance with his father's instructions in the upper room of the defendant's shop. Hall, as the manager of the defendant corporation, was constructing at this time, for the Eastern Eailroad Company, his system of signais upon the manifold-battery plan. Early in January, 1873, he described the new plan to the manager of the company, who agreed that it might be placed upon his road in lieu of the old plan, at the defendant's expense, if not subsequently ap- proved. About January 20, 1873, Hall telegraphed to George H. Snow, his assistant, to stop work on the railroad and «ome to Meriden, where he was employed upon the signais ��� �