It's a Toy-Thank You Bonnie Richardson

Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Rain, warm,and high winds later in the day

It's a Toy

Thank You Bonnie

   It's about 1:45 A.M. in the middle of the night,and I got up to get a drink of water. I went to bed a bit early,and so my computer was on. I checked, and Eureka, Bonnie Richardson wrote to me several times to say that she had found the answer to her own question. The item that she asked me to identify as a toy or a tool turned out to be a toy!

  I posted yesterday about Bonnie's question to me, and couldn't find an answer to her question. I thought the item was a tool, but it turned out to be a toy.  Bonnie sent me the actual patent that someone else had found and sent to her.

Bonnie Richardson

(A Marquetry Specialist)

I'm always very happy when readers help me to finish a post, or especially 

when they send me more photos to help with a question. 

As it turned out, Bonnie is a  woodworker in marquetry. I had to look the word up, but shown have recognized that it is associated with the wood parquetry.

I wrote back to Bonnie and asked her to send me 

some samples of her work. I'm sure their excellent, and if you don't know already,

I am always ver crrious and like to ask lots of questions.

I hope Bonnie will have the time to reply.

Thanks for dropping by, and as always

have a great part of the day or night,

her ever you may be,

Stacey

toysearcher@gmil.com

Finally! A Match Between the Patent and An Old Toy

Monday, November 26, 2012
                 Cold, Clear, & Sunny
                  Block # 2 of the Day

Finally!

A Match Between the Patent and an Old Toy

     When I find something of interest such as information, I need to dig and dig,till I find what I want. And so it was with trying to match up a patent of an old toy and the old toy itself. For myself, the U.S. Patent Office is a very complicated place to move around.However, today, I was digging some more, and got a bit closer.

    When you consider just how many things are patented, then you better understand just what the Patent Office is so complex.   Every item has to be classified,and then sub-classified.  I thought  that

Carl Linneus and his Systema Naturae which came out in 1735 was complex. What Linneus did was to create a hierarchal structure that sorted out all plant (flora) and animals (Fauna). The system was based on common and diverse characteristics of everything living that allowed for every unique living entity to be classified.

     Returning to the topic of toys, the U.S. Patent Office devised a system to be able to similarly classify  all inventions (patents).  I haven't figured out how to find a specific toy, but I now understand the Patent Office website better.

Here's an example (made up on my own):

Item: Toy 

Type: Car, truck, doll, airplane

Material: Plastic, rubber, metal, cast iron, ....

Moving: Battery-operated,  electrical, mechanical wind-up

Paint: lithography, spray painted, hand painted

And the system goes on and on with a myriad of classes, subclasses, sub-sub-classes and so forth.

   Now I can better understand the reasoning behind the complex system at the U.S. Patent Office. 

You also have to understand that every unique invention  and part of an invention has to be patented. When I was teaching pro photography, I would try and show students why photographing a product had to be so carefully thought out. When the Gillette razor company first came out with their triple blade, I went to the U.S. Patent Office site, and downloaded the patent.  The download must have been 10-15 pages long!  At the time (early 1980's or earlier), the cost to produce the 

3-bladed razor was close to $ 400,000,000.00 - a huge amount of money anytime,even for that time.

And There is the Patent for a Wyandotte

by Arnold J. Decker

I can't download the images and writing in the normal manner,  

because they won't open on my computer.

On the U.S. Patent Office site, they recommended a few  suggestions to resolve the issue.

I tried one and it works.

I open all of my U.S> Patent Office downloads through my screencapture and scrolling capture program called  "SnagIt".

Every Patent has several parts to it.

One part is the diagrams, and the other is the written component.

Here is part oof the written component.

Once I finally had a recognizable toy, I could now search among my sources.

I've seen this Wyandotte car many times, so it's not so unique.

I decide to do a search on Live Auctioneers / Morphy Auctions /Wyandotte Car

I found the lot number and the date of the auction on Live Auctioneers.

I then went to Dan Morphy's website with the AUction Date and the Lot Number.

And here is the car!

This one has small lightbulbs for headlights, so it's a variation of the original patent.

At the patent office, I'm not even close to matching the patent to the toy.

Of course, there's always another day.......

Thanks for dropping by,

and 

as always,

have a great part of the day, wherever you may be.

Stacey

The U.S. Patent Office

Saturday, November  24, 2012
            Snow Flurries, Windy & Cold!

The U.S. Patent Office

http://www.uspto.gov

(please click on the above site to be redirected to the U.S. Patent Office)

     One of the most interesting places for me is the U.S. Patent Office. You can go there to find drawings of all kinds of patents and trademarks dating back to the early 1800's.  Of course, there are the toy patents, as well! It's a bit hard to navigate, and I'll need to spend more time figuring out how to find the toys that I am looking for.  However, I did find 1 of my favourite toys - the Wyandotte Art Deco Racer. I mentioned in another blog that I like it for its looks, as well as for its manufacture. I'm impressed at how engineers and designers of the time could figure out how to place cuts on a flat piece of sheet metal, so that when it was placed in a press, the part would bend in the shape of the racer.  The tear lines had been pre-determined, so the toy when pressed would press and fold in 1 piece!

The Patent was taken out by Mr. Charles A. Brethen for a "Toy Automobile". 

The paperwork was filed on June 19, 1933, and almost 18 months later, 

the patent was issued (Jan. 8, 1935).

      The population of the US between those years averaged about 126,000,000. So imagine  that the patent took 18 months to file then, and now there are 315,800,000 people in the U.S. in 2012. Also, imagine that back then  for example, a car design was much simpler, didn't change much from year-to-year, and didn't have all of the features as today's car's have. Those people in the U.S. Patent Office sure have lots of work to do!

     I didn't add the pages of written information that compliment the diagrams. There is usually a lot of detailed and specific information that needs to accompany each and every patent.

   I selected the battery-lit Wyandotte from Morphy Auctions as the photo. However, I'm not certain that this car was the one in the patent.  However, in the second set of diagrams, second row, left image, you can see the metal holes and frame for light bulbs.

   I had some trouble trying to download and see the images, so I decided to ask a question:

            Apple Support Communities > Mac OS & System Software > QuickTime > Discussions

   Fortunately, someone answered my questions (I'll ask if I can add his name here) with loads of patience. I also asked him to write in simple-to-understand terms. After several back and forth questions I had the solution to my problem.

   The problem that I was having was in not being able to see the actual images from the U.S. Patent site. The above screen capture is from my Apple Mac. The images are some type of TIFF format (I never bothered to figure out what all those formats are).

   The person who helped me, told me that I needed to use "Developer" in Safari. Naturally, Developer wasn't showing on my Apple Mac, and I needed to do a search for "Developer". I found what I was looking for, and when I found a toy patent (below) ,I was given several options in "Developer" as to how I wanted to open up the image.

Where "Developer" should have neen located, but wasn't.

Finally, after all my questions were answered, I was able to find a sample toy patent.

This is how the full page appears.

This is another view of the toy from a different page

   I always am curious about many different things, and like to investigate and explore. For sure the U.S. Patent Office is one of those places that you can get lost in!

I hope all my American viewers are recuperating from  their Turkey dinners and Black Friday mayhem, and that those of you who were hoit by the hurricane are starting to have things return to a more normal day.

Thanks to all for dropping by,

and have a restful Saturday wherever you may be.

Stacey