Gibson v. Smoot Engineering Corp.

28 F.2d 123, 1928 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1452
CourtDistrict Court, D. Delaware
DecidedAugust 28, 1928
DocketNo. 601
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 28 F.2d 123 (Gibson v. Smoot Engineering Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Delaware primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Gibson v. Smoot Engineering Corp., 28 F.2d 123, 1928 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1452 (D. Del. 1928).

Opinion

MORRIS, District Judge.

Six patents and 47 claims are here sued upon. Of these, the plaintiffs, George H. Gibson, patentee, and Leeds & Northrup Company, his licensee, charge the defendant, Smoot Engineering Company, with the infringement of five patents and 41 claims, while by counterclaim the defendant charges the plaintiffs-with the infringement of 6 claims' of the remaining patent, which was granted, to-Herbert T. Herr. The art to which all these patents relate is automatic furnace-regulation or combustion control, particularly in steam-generating furnaces. The defenses are invalidity and noninfringement..

In steam-generating plants the chief object is to maintain the desired steam pressure even under varying load conditions. A secondary, but nevertheless important, aim is to' accomplish the primary object efficiently, with the greatest possible economy in fuel and labor. The sine qua non of a maintained steam pressure is a heat input equal to and balancing the heat output. Ordinarily heat output is due mainly to-steam output. Heat input is had through combustion, the chemical union of quantities of fuel and air. The rate of combustion, or heat input, varies with, is fixed and controlled by, the volume of draft. The efficiency of the combustion depends upon the-ratio of fuel volume to air or draft volume. The presence or absence of the proper ratio-is ascertainable by the CO2 content of the effluent gases. That content is revealed by constantly visible registering and recording devices. If several boilers discharge steam into a common main or header, it is essential to efficiency that each boiler do its share of the work, supply its share of the total steam output. These facts and the advantages' of a controlled furnace pressure, of a pressure having a certain relation to atmospheric pressure, were widely known long before the date of any inventive concept here involved.

The problems of the art have been to find the means or methods that can be employed, so to make use of this knowledge as best to bring about, automatically, a balanced heat input and output, .obtain the greatest value from the fuel, cause each boiler to contribute its share of steam and control the furnace pressure.

Of Gibson’s contributions to the solution of these problems, the patents and claims in issue are: First patent, No. 1,-166,758, applied for June 1, 1914, dated January 4, 1916; claims 1 and 2. Second patent, No. 1,167,343, applied for Oct. 3, [125]*1251914, dated January 4, 1916; claims 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12,13,14, 15, 16. Third patent, No. 1,522,877, applied for November 9, 1915, dated January 13, 1925; claims 9,10, 11,12, 13,14,16,17,18,19. Fourth patent, No. 1,537,044, applied for September 22, 1916, dated May 5, 1925; claims 19, 22, 23, 27, 30, 38, 52, 53,. 58, 59. Fifth patent, No. 1,582,648, applied for May 25, 1918, dated April 27, 1926; claims 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16.

The first patent is directed to means for balancing heat input and output; the second, to means for proportioning-fuel and air, feeding them into the furnace at a rate depending upon service conditions, and for insuring proper load distribution among the several boilers in a plant; the fourth relates in part to different or improved means to accomplish the same results; while the third, fifth, and the remaining part of the fourth patents are concerned with means for regulating furnace pressure. The means employed by Gibson to accomplish the basic object — the balancing of heat input and output — are specified in the first claim, which may be considered typical of this group, of the first patent, thus:

“The combination with a steam-generating boiler, of means responsive to the amount of steam being withdrawn from the boiler, means responsive to the volume of draft through the furnace, and means controlled jointly by the two first mentioned means for regulating said volume of draft.”

The means for regulating the volume of draft is a motor adjustable damper in the air inlet conduit. The action of the motor in direction and degree is controlled, through electric currents, by the movements of a balanced lever. The lever is subjected to opposing forces, one on each side of the fulcrum. One force, in the first patent an electrical current, in the second compressed air, is proportioned in strength by the first-mentione,d means of the claim to the rate of flow of the steam output. The other or opposing force is made proportional in strength, by the next-mentioned means of the claim, to the volume of flow of gaseous products of combustion through the furnace. If the force transmitted to the balanced lever by the means responsive to steam flow exceeds the opposing force to which the lever is subjected, the lever, by-being thus thrown out of balance, causes the motor to adjust the damper to increase the volume of inflowing air, and- hence boiler heat input, and thus to bring about and restore the equilibrium between the forces acting upon the lever. In like manner an excess of inflowing air results in a partial or total closing of the damper.

Gibson was not the first to conceive or describe means or methods for automatic furnace regulation or combustion control. Automatic regulators for stokers, for blowers, for dampers to control draft volume, as well as dampers to control furnace pressure, had been employed before he came into the art. Almost, if not, exclusively, however, the automatic controller of the prior art was actuated by steam pressure, not steam flow, changes. The volume of intake air was gauged and controlled by the intake pressure. Volumes and ratios were ascertained indirectly from pressures rather than by direct measurement. In his first two patents Gibson departed from the old practice, and substituted therefor regulation by flow; that is, by direct measurement of volumes.

The plaintiffs state: “Gibson’s inventions in mechanisms and methods for proportioning various combustion factors in boiler furnaces to steam load conditions all involve the idea of [directly measured] volume control of the draft and the maintenance of a predetermined relation between the volume of draft and the volume of steam output, or the maintenance of a definite relation between the volume of draft and the fuel feed, which definite relation is dependent upon boiler steam load conditions.”

Again they assert, as their main proposition, that Gibson was the first to provide “a system in which a balance is maintained-between a force which is a significant measure of the rate of combustion, as the volume of draft ,is in a grate-fired boiler furnace, and a control force which varies with the load. ’ ’ They consider the first and second patents as pioneer patents in the modern art of combustion control, and the fourth as disclosing and claiming highly useful improvements upon the first and second.

There has been and is no commercial embodiment of the specific structures of these patents. There has been no commercial use of their principle or substanee, unless it is to be found in the installations of the defendant, or in the Livingston plant of the corporate plaintiff. These installations are practical, efficient, and productive of great economy in fuel and labor. The plaintiffs seek to explain the failure of Gibson’s patents to make any impress upon the [126]*126art, at least until defendant’s installations, by tbe fact that he bad no organization of bis own, and was obliged first to interest another in tbe patents and proceed through a licensee, and by tbe inference that be was ahead of bis time.

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Bluebook (online)
28 F.2d 123, 1928 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1452, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gibson-v-smoot-engineering-corp-ded-1928.