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Washing-Machine Company v. Tool Company U.S. 342 (1874)

handle is hein.slavery/ussccases0470 and id is 1 raw text is: 842        WASHING-MACHINE Co. v. TOOL C0.       [Sup. Ct.
Statement of the case.
WASHING-MACHINE COMPANY V. TOOL COMPANY.
1. The reissued letters-patent (No. 2829) for a new and improved clothes-
wringer, granted to Sylvanus Walker, assignee, on the 31st day of De-
cember, 1867, construed to. be for a U-shaped yoke or frame for sup-
porting a wringing-machine, and for the combinati6n of such a yoke
with a clamping device, when employed to hold a clothes-wringer to
the side of a wash-tub, and the U form of the frame is essential to it.
2. The use of a portable support for a wringing mechanism which has some
of- the features of the patentee's device, but which has not the U-formed
yoke, or frame, is, therefore, no infringement of the patent.
APPEAL frown the Circuit Court for the District of Rhode
Island.
The Washing-Machine Company, assignee of Sylvanus
Walker, this last being assignee of one Sergeant, filed a bill
in the court below against the Providence Tool Company,
for an infringement of Division No. 2829, of a patent for
an improvement in clofhes-wringers. The original patent
was granted to Sergeant, July 27th, 1858, and was reissued
in two divisions, the one in suit being dated December 31st,
1867. Although the matter which was in issue in the pres-
ent suit was confined, so far as the complainant's title was
concerned, to the reissue No. 2829, it may be well to de-
scribe the wringing-machine which was the subject of Ser-
geant's original patent, and out of which the invention pat-
ented in the reissue No. 2829 was carved.
The original machine belonged to the class of clothes-
wringers long known as twist wringers.  In these, clothes
are wrung by twisting them into a rope in the same manner
as without a machine the washerwoman twists them by
hand. This sort of machine diffhrs from another and well-
known class of wringers, in which squeezing rollers
squeeze out by pressure water from clothes passed between-
them. Both sorts of machines had been in use for many
years prior to the patent to Sergeant.
In the original machine of Sergeant, Figure 1 represents
a yoke-frame of U form, the curved portion being an arc of

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