Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 8.djvu/106

 9S FEDERAL REPORTER. �"The plunger, a," (says the specification,) "is made of the form which is desired to be given to the inside of the article to be made, and of any suitable construction, with this addition, that It is graduated as at a', to any desired scale, and from the lower end upward to any desired distance. * * * if the plunger be accurately graduated the work produced will, in eyery case, be equally con-ect," etc. �It is objected that the specification does not disclose how an accurately-gi'aduated plunger is to be made. But this is a matter so obvious that it was unnecessary to add anything to what the specifi- cation stafes and the drawings exhibit. The specification, it seems to us, concisely but very clearly explains Hobbs' apparatus and method of producing internally-graduated hollow glass-ware. But the novelty of his invention is called in question; and the defend- ants have put in evidence two earliers patents — one to William Hodgson, Jr., dated February 18, 1862; and one to Samuel H. 8im- mons, dafced September 18, 1866, which it is claimed anticipates Hobbs' invention. But by Hodgson's invention the glass measures have exterior graduations communicated from graduating marks on the interior walls of the mold. �Timmons' patent shows a cup attached to the stopper or neck of a bottle, with graduation marks to indioate its capacity, "the gradua- tion being in the interior if the cup be of metal, or blown or eut on its exterior if the cup be of glass." He does not expressly state how the interior graduations are to be made in the case of a metallic cup, but there is nothing in his specification to indicate that they could be,formed otherwise than by turning eaoh graduation by a separate operation, — a tedious process as compared with the great rapidity with which glass-ware may be intemally graduated by Hobbs' method. It is quite evident, moreover, that a metallic cup is liable to the objection — a most serions one in the case of powerf ul, medicines — that the quantity of liquid in the cup cannot be accurately deter- mined by looking down into the cup, whereas by holding the glass up to the light the quantity of liquid can be readily and accurately dis- cerned. Timmons' patent does not show, or in the remotest degree suggest, internai graduations upon glass-ware, or any method of pro- ducing the same. On the contrary, he declares that if the cup is of glass, the graduation is to be blown or eut on its exterior face. .From the uncontradicted evidence it appears that Hobbs' invention is a decided improvement upon the anterior methods by which arti- cles of glass-ware were graduated on their outer faces, in that it secures accuracy in the graduations and perfect uniformity in the ��� �