Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/523

 508 FEDERAL REPORTER. �into the employ of Pernot in the fall of 1855 or spring of 1856, and continued with him for several years ; that he was his foreman in 1858, and was married on the seventeenth of June of that year, and that the wedge and bar were added to the machine after that date ; that before these were attached Pernot made his needles by turning up to a square shoulder, and then filing them and grinding them down on an emery wheel. �Sach testimony throws serious doubts upon the truth of the state- ment of Pernot and his brother-in-law, Davis, that as early as 1853 the former invented and used in connection with his lathe the mechanism needed to taper the shoulders and sharpen the points of needles produced by bis machine. In view of the great commercial value of Buch a discovery in forming sewing-machine needles, it seems incredible that, after making the invention, he should so soon have abandoned it, and returned to the old and more imperfect and costly methods of producing them. �2. In consequence of such improbability, we have been led to care- fully consider the evidence which induced the learned judges who decided the former suit to hold that the Pernot machine was in fact an anticipation of the Spring invention, and we are bound to say, although with great diffidence, that we question the correctness of their conclusions. Spring's patent claimed to be and is an organized mechanism, capable of completely shaping sewing-machine needles, throughout their entire length from point to hilt, at one operation. If Pernot's machine, uncler any of the proved circumstances of its or- ganization and use, ever accomplished this, which we seriously doubt, it performed its work so imperfectly that the inventor laid no stress upon it, and preferred to sharpen his needles by hand, and soon laid aside the supplementary mechanism which had reference to the form- ing of a tapering shank. If it existed at all, its life was so fitful and uncertain that it must be put in the category of abandoned experi- menta; and such a failure ought not to be regarded as an anticipa- tion of the invention of the Springs, who, it is conceded, M'ere orig- inal inventors, and who, in our judgment, were the fu-st inventors of a successful machine which was capable of turning the barrel, point, and curved shoulder of a sewing-machine needle at one continuons movement of the eutting tool. �It only remains to consider the question of infringement, in prov- ing which the burden is upon the complainants. The evidence of infringement is slight. It rests mainly upon the testimony of John Armstrong, who commenced work with the inventors of the coniplain- ��� �