Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 8.djvu/446

 432 FEDERAL REPORTBB. �Kellogg ruffler patent of December 2, 1862, does not show a fl<3xil)le ruffler, and the ruffler is hinged to its carrier. The suggestion, in the specification of that patent, that the crimper may be a spring, gives no details of construction, and cannot take an earlier date than the oath to the specification, June 21, 1862. Pipo's invention pre- ceded that date. The Arnold patent of May S, 1860, does not show anything that is in No. 6,565, nor does the Puller and Goodall patent of June 5, 1860. The evidence of Kellogg, Manville, and Wilmot shows nothing but abandoned experiments. The crimpers tried by the Elm City Company were all of them hinged to their carriers. The Cary and Homans machine is not established with accuracy as prior to Pipo. Cary does not go back with certainty to the spring of 1862, and Homans has no books or written evidence, but really relies solely on abstract memory. There is nothing in anything he states as to events which makes it necessary that the date he assigna for the machine should be correct. �Claim 1 of No. 6,566 has three elements in it: �(1) A spring or flexible blade; (2) the acting edge of the blade turned or bent towards the surface against which it acts ; (3) the blade rigidly attached to its carrier. �It is not necessary, in claim 1, that the carrier should cause the pressure of the spring to increase in advancing and decrease in re- treating. The spring blade has a springy action in respect to goods transversely as well as lengthwise. That transverse springy feature is in claim 1, and is in the defendants' rufi9ers. So, too, the longi- tudinal springy action enables the blade to follow, in moving forward, the plane of the opposing surface. The blades in the defendants' ruffler^ are springy lengthwise, and sueh lengthwise springiness is availed of by the defendants, and enables the edge of the blade, as it advances, to be certainly pressed on the cloth plate by the action of the presser foot and the cloth plate, whatever be the motion of the carrier. In regard to claim 1, and other features in the patent, much is said, in the evidence on the part of the defendants, as to the obvions character of this or that arrangement, and that any mechanic would know enough to do this or that. This is the often- repeated story, in belittling inventions. The invention consista primarily in finding out what mechanical operation is necessary to produce the practical resuit arrived at. When such operation is hit upon, the mechanical work is easy. It is easy, when the mechanical operation is seen, to say that it was obvions that certain mechanical arrangements would effect it ; but mechanical arrangements are tried ��� �