Schmertz Wire-Glass Co. v. Pittsburgh Plate-Glass Co.

168 F. 73, 1909 U.S. App. LEXIS 5377
CourtU.S. Circuit Court for the District of Western Pennsylvania
DecidedFebruary 5, 1909
DocketNo. 24
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 168 F. 73 (Schmertz Wire-Glass Co. v. Pittsburgh Plate-Glass Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Western Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Schmertz Wire-Glass Co. v. Pittsburgh Plate-Glass Co., 168 F. 73, 1909 U.S. App. LEXIS 5377 (circtwdpa 1909).

Opinion

BUFFINGTON, Circuit Judge.

This case concerns a comparatively new article of commerce called “wire-glass,” which is a sheet of plate glass having imbedded in its center a fine wire-web. This web strengthens the sheet and prevents its being shattered by fire or a blow. Rough wire-glass is cast in two varieties, one adapted for polishing, the other not. Unpolished wire-glass is used for skylight and area purposes. Polished, or wire-glass plate, is used as ordinary plate glass in large buildings for window lights. In addition to window-light service, however, wire-glass plate, by reason of its imbedded mesh, serves the further purpose of an iron shutter. It is thus a protection against entry and a fire retardant. A just estimate of the radical difference between rough, unground, sheet glass and polished plate glass recognizes the qualities which permit the one and forbid the other to be polished. One is limited to coarser use and smaller price, while the other may be applied to higher and wider uses and commands better prices. An appreciation of these important manufacturing and commercial factors is essential to a just estimate of the patents here involved. It follows, therefore, that the use of the generic term “wire-glass” as alike applicable to the development of both rough, but unpolishable, wire-glass, and rough, but polishable, glass is misleading. All wire-glass is, when it comes from the casting table, rough glass. The rough glass proper ends its development at that point and passes to the uses to which it is limited. The other, while it is of course adapted'to like uses, has the higher possibility of being ground and polished and thus reaching the condition of polished plate, with the superadded qualities which flow from the imbedded netting. To displace blown glass in window lighting, the plate-glass manufacturer was forced to produce a very thin sheet of plate. This was imperative to get light-weight windows to raise, and also for economy of space and cost in counterweighting. The extra weight of plate over blown glass virtually forbade the use of cheap iron balances and necessitated more expensive lead ones. These factors of cost and space determined the choice of plate or blown glass in buildings, and, as the height of buildings and window space grew, plate thinness became a greater factor in widening the use of plate. This condition was met by the production of very thin plates, and as a result they have largely superseded blown glass in both private and public buildings where the use of the heavy plate of the old art would have been impossible. But with this use of a light, thin plate in modern tall buildings a greater danger from fire became apparent, for these light sheets were shattered by fire; and pieces, falling from heights, made them very dangerous to firemen. It therefore became apparent, after rough wire-glass was successfully made, that, if the wire mesh could [75]*75l e so regularly and centrally imbedded in a thin sheet as not to prevent its being ground and polished, a new and valuable factor of utility and safety could be embodied in modern construction. But it was equally dear that, if at any point of the sheet any single part of the wire came near either surface so that its strand would be bared by grinding, the 'beet could not be polished.

Now the first thought in connection with this art is that, when the idea of making wire-glass is once suggested, the manufacture must be very simple; in other words, that the inventive thought, if one exists, consists in the conception of wire-glass. Casting tables and rollers for smoothing glass are old. The casting of sheets of rough glass is obviously simple, and grinding and polishing a developed process. What, then, more simple than to cast a sheet, then lay a web of wire netting upon it, and on the two pour and cast a second sheet? And that such should be the first impression is quite natural, for this was the idea and practice for years of the whole glass art, and it found expression in the patent development of three foreign countries and in the name “European process.” But experience, as we shall see, proved that this seemingly simple method did not and could not produce wire-glass, and that even rough wire-glass was only a hoped-for product, until, in 1892, Shuman, an experienced American glassman, solved the rough-glass part of the wire-glass problem in a totally different way. And as Shuman’s invention was a step in the development of rough, unpolishable wire-glass, which culminated in Sehmertz’s polisliable wire-glass and in the new commercial article of wire plate, it is necessary, in order to understand Schmertz’s final development, that Shuman’s partial development be clearly grasped. In his device Shuman discarded the theory of sandwiching the wire netting between two sheets cast at different times, or, indeed, of using rwo sheets at all. He conceived the idea of forcing the web into the body of a single sheet and then closing up the scars caused by this insertion. His machine was a long table mounted on and heated by a furnace and provided with three rollers above it. Molten glass was poured on this hot table and pressed to the desired thickness of the sheet by a front, plain-faced roll. A second or rib roll, engaging the netting delivered in a chute back of the first roll, then pressed such netting, in a waving, uneven line, into the body of the sheet. The third roll, which was plain-faced, followed and covered the openings nade by the insertion of the wire. Shuman’s patents for machine and process were sustained in the Circuit Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, in Streator Cathedral Glass Co. v. Wire-Glass Co., 97 Fed. 950, 38 C. C. A. 573, Mr. Justice Brown, of the Supreme Court, sitting and delivering the opinion. It was there said Shuman’s process involved “not merely the function of a mechanical device, but certain elemental action. * * * It is, in fact, a series of acts performed with molten glass and wire-gauze, by which they are transformed into a separate manufacture, within the definition of a process patent in Cochrane v. Deener, 94 U. S. 780, 24 L. Ed. 139”; and if was held the proper subject of a process patent. The relation of Shuman’s [76]*76invention to the practical commercial origin of wire-glass was stated by Justice Brown:

“The Shuman patent was evidently the first practicable method of making wire-glass, and appears to have attracted a good deal of attention in this and other countries, and various medals were awarded to the inventor.”

Judge Jenkins, in a concurring opinion, says:

“Others * * * had conceived the thought of wire-glass, and provided certain means for the manufacture; but they never achieved success, or pointed out any practical means for its accomplishment. There was no wire-glass in use or upon the market, either in Europe or in this country, when Shu-man obtained his patent. Charging him, as we must, with knowledge of the prior art, he was not the first to conceive the idea of wire-glass, but was the first to make it possible.”

These judicial findings that the prior wire-glass art was theory and had produced no practical results restate the estimate of the commercial and scientific world. The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, in awarding a medal to Shuman, in the report of its committee said (volume 187, No. 819) :

“In conclusion, they find that the process and machine of Mr.

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Bluebook (online)
168 F. 73, 1909 U.S. App. LEXIS 5377, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/schmertz-wire-glass-co-v-pittsburgh-plate-glass-co-circtwdpa-1909.