The river press., 1886-11-03
CRANKY INVENTORS.
A LAWYERS ExPERlENcEWITH MEN
or QUEER AND MIGHTY. IDEAS.

AAAAAAeSAS
meter The Mysterious Ingredients
A Lunaticss Wart Cure.
aTel me about queer ideas in patents"
"Oueer is no name for some Of them"
replied the patent attorney to whom the
request was addressed. aYou can't have
any notion of the phenomenally strange
ideas that some people have that they
want to put into the shape Of patents.
Sometimes L almost fall over In my chair,
they are SO queer"
@For instances" interjeeted the reporter,
who was in hurry and who saw that the
lawyer was aboutto branch off into a long
dissertation about ,cranks.
"Wen, said he, buckling down to the
subject. aI'u give you some instances. One
queer crank was Thomas Towles who
represented himself as being native OF
the eastern shore. He had recipe for
what he called his Angels Wings Elixir
He usually carried q sample bottle around
with him. The bottle was shaped
like that In which the druggists
sell soothing syrup, and it had q. big
red cork with picture on it Of 9 man with
wings flying over the housetops. The
angels, wings elixir was OF q greenlsh
color, with little white floats on its sur
face Thomas said his elixir would make
wings grow out on the human body In two
months. The dose sufficient to accom-
plish this wonderful end was two tea
spoonsfuI every third day, and four tea
spoonsful at the end Of each week as an
extra does, .sto make it more binding, he
explained He wanted to dispose of the
recipe for 81, 500, with a royalty Of $50 on
every pair of wings that grew out. The
60 - = frpYa
took quite an interest in him, and tried
TO find out Of what he made his elixir.
Finally succeeded. He confded to me
in the strctest confidence, that il was
composed Of three parts of dog-tail oil,
three parts of the extract of boiled duck
feathers, three parts of fried pigs liver,
and one part of moon juice The latter,
he explained, he collected by brushing
the surface of the full moon with a broom.
The moon juice, he said, sinfuses into
the wings the essence of eternal life He
gave me bottle Of his elixir, and J still
have it in my office closet slowed away
somewhere.
THE HUMAN LvANo-soLDERoMETER
Zone Of the queerest cranks ever met
was in August Of last year. was sitting
in my Office one rainy day when there
came a knock on the door. said, Come
in and in walked fat, elderly man, with
red face, yellow mustache, goatee,
cross-eyed, boW-legged, and leading lit
tie dog by string. The stranger seated
himself in chair by one Of the windows
and pulled out Of his pocket a stick OF
what looked like ordinary solder 1t was
covered with a chamois- skin cover. Pull
his chair close up to mine, he proceeded to
unbosom himself.
atHere is the greatest invention Of the
age he said, yanking the dog up into his
lap and patting it on the head with one
hand while he extended the solder to me
with the other.
asWhatis it?' I asked, spotting him for
crank right off,
"sThe human galvano-solderomet ne
replied Tt will solder on amputated
limbs SO that you can't tell they've been
cut off, A teaspoonful poured on the neck
of decapitated criminal will cause his
head to stick to the neck and grow there
again as naturally as though it had never
been cut off, I've tried it on several
white men who had their heads cut off in
France, and | restored every one of them
to life in less than three days. had an
engagement to 60 to Persia and sell out
my stock to his nibs the shah, but
thought I could make more by coming to
America, and here am. Do you want
it? Can I get q patent On .it?
II told him that in this country criminals
were hung and not decapitated and when
people get their legs cut off they didn't
usually want them back again.
It's splendid thing ia time OF war;
he continued. "A general with a bucket
full Of this salve can restore all his
wounded soldiers to life and strength in
in twenty four hours, and on the next day
his army will be a good as it was on the
day BEFORE
sIhumored him BY pretending to under
take his case and got him to give me-
the recipe of his salve.
A LIST OF INGREDIENTS.
"He told me it was made of two parts
concentrated extract Of civil service re-
form, two parts refined gingerbread, two
parts Of the essence Of comets tail, and
one part each of terrapin's toe nails, UNI
brellae handle soup, steWed type metal and
pulverized cerebro- spinal meningitis
aHe told me that without a smile on his
face, looking time SO solemnly and earn
estly as though bluff1ng me with small
pair at poker. I wrote it all down just as
he gave it to me, and told him to come
l. Il
patent ready for him. ! expected he would
get mad, but he didn't. He just smiled
and bowed himself out, and he and his
little dog disappeared in gust OF satisfac-
ton
perpetual motion IS the Will-of-t the
| wisp that draws a legion of cranks unceas-
! ingIy. There are some very amusing at
| tenpts made to obtain this motion. One
crank came to me not long ago and
| showed what he confidently assured
me was positively certain scheme for
perpetual motion. He had soldered two
Waterbury watches to q thermome-
ter, and around them all he had
wound piece Of India rubber string.
| One end Of the string was fastened to
The spring of one of the watches and the
,ther end was tied to the spring Of the
other watch. He claimed that the COM
! bined action OF the thermometer and the
rubber string kept the watches in perpet-
ual motion, and with q horseshoe magnet
| he proposed TO concentrate what he called
the spiral energy Of the two watches,
II 1nA