Excelsior Needle Co. v. Morse-Keefer Cycle-Supply Co.

101 F. 448, 41 C.C.A. 448, 1900 U.S. App. LEXIS 4422
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Second Circuit
DecidedApril 3, 1900
DocketNo. 128
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 101 F. 448 (Excelsior Needle Co. v. Morse-Keefer Cycle-Supply Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Excelsior Needle Co. v. Morse-Keefer Cycle-Supply Co., 101 F. 448, 41 C.C.A. 448, 1900 U.S. App. LEXIS 4422 (2d Cir. 1900).

Opinion

LACOMBE, Circuit Judge.

The patentee has been connected for 35 years with the Excelsior Needle Company, the complainant, a manufacturer of steel articles such as needles, bicycle spokes, etc., and assigned both patents to it. The machines built under these patents have been used for the manufacture of double-butt swaged bicycle spokes, and, as the bicycle industry increased enormously during the period between 1893 and the taking of the proofs in this case, it is not surprising to find that the output of such spokes has run up into the millions. The douhle-butt swaged bicycle spoke appears to be an improvement upon those which preceded it, viz. the “straight,” the “upset,” the “drawn,” and the “single-butt swaged”; but there is no indication that any effort was ever made to patent it. The patent in suit, No. 474,548, which, it is claimed, first made it practicable to swage by machine a spoke having a butt, or enlarged and unswaged portion, at each end, does not, from beginning to end, contain any reference to bicycle spokes. It is adapted to swage wire for needles or other purposes to different diameters without stopping the machine. A piece of metal, such as a wire blank, is swaged by subjecting it to repeated blows, and rotary machines for doing this work were well known before this patent. There is, of course, a general similarity between such machines. The blows are administered by suitable blocks of metal calk'd dies, between which the wire is fed. These dies are,arranged in a revolving head, power-worked to rotate at a very high rate of speed, and which is itself inclosed within a sta- • tionary shell. This rotation produces centrifugal motion in the dies, causing them to separate, until they (or additional “die blocks” or “followers,” which contact with the dies) strike against projections, spoken of as “tappets” or “rollers” secured to the shell, and which protrude into the circular pathway, through which the dies or followers revolve. As soon as they come in contact with these projections, the dies are driven sharply in a centripetal direction, and their faces strike the wire. The high speed of rotation produces a very large number of blows per second, and, when the portion of the wire subjected to such action has beep swaged, the blank is moved further along, and a new portion submitted to the strokes of the dies. The mode of operation will be readily understood from an inspection of an earlier patent to Dayton, No. 376,144, Jan. 10, 1888. for machine for swaging needle blanks. It had been found by experience with sewing machines that the needle sometimes became heated by friction. To avoid this, it seemed desirable to produce' a needle of which the body above the eye should be reduced in size. To accomplish this result, Dayton reorganized an earlier machine so as to swage the needle “of a smaller diameter at one part than at another part.” The following figure from No. 376,144 illustrates that machine, a being the rotating shaft, b the stationary shell, and 1 the rollers, of which there are a dozen, arranged around the interior of the shell.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
101 F. 448, 41 C.C.A. 448, 1900 U.S. App. LEXIS 4422, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/excelsior-needle-co-v-morse-keefer-cycle-supply-co-ca2-1900.