The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-12-26

The patent is nothing more than a
papier mache cat provided with lumi-
nous eyes. The papier mache cat is
plunked down before a rat hole, and it
is said that peering rats invariably flee
in terror at the sight of the imitation
cats blazing orbs.
ORVILLE GRANTS COW MIXER.
All sorts and conditions of patents
have been granted to farmers for rem
dering the job of milking cows easy.
Orville Grant, a brother of General
Grant, got out enc of these patents.
The fact that IL wasn't particularly
practicable was made manifest by
! General Grants description Of how it
worked.
"Orville tried the thing on an I'M
trained cow, with no respect for pat
ents," said General Grant. "He didn't
look so pretty when he got through,
but he knew a whole lot more
A Chicago man who stated that he
had been twice held UP by footpads,
neither of whom he cared to shoot to
death with the pistol he carried on his
person, because he didn't care to have
the shedding of human blood on his
soul, applied for a patent on bullet
with a gelatine tip. The hollow bullet
was filled with a certain sort Of pow
erful gas. Upon striking the miscreant
intended to be brought down the soft
gelatlne point of the bullet would drop
off, permitting the escape of the afore-
| mentioned powerful gas, the overpow-
ering narcotic properties of which were
designed to put the victim to sleep for
a considerable length of time. The
Chicago man didn't precisely prove his
| case, and he didn't get his patent.
TO BEAT HORSE RACES.
Numerous applications have been
filed within recent years for patents
upon devices whereWith to fraudulent
! ly beat the horse-racing game, such as
electric saddles and brides. Electric
saddles have been in use on the outlaw
| tracks for some time, but there is no
record of the electric brides having
been used. Any number of new gam
bling devices are patented from year
to year. The patent office was in no
wise created for the purpose of exer-
cising a censorship over the morals of
| the citizens, and when a new gambling
device comes along that presents pat
| entable features the inventor gets his
patent without any more trouble than
the more legitimate patentees expert
ence. Very few, however, of these new
| gambling devices are made to pay by
their inventors, for the probable rea-
son that the betting devices already in
operation present to the betting public
ample opportunities for them to burn
up their money.
An Oregon man who, when the Klon-
dixie fever broke out, figured that the
ordinary shedlike jails up in the
Alaska camps wouldn't be strong
enough to hold in the criminals put in
quod by the peace preservers, put in
an application for patent on a porta-
BILE steel cell, capable of being put to-
gether and taken apart in tri1e less
than no time.
HISTORICAL MODELS.
The fact is not often recalled that a
number of famous men have taken out
patents upon their own inventions. The
working model of Abraham Lincoln s
| device for raising vessels from shoals
upon which a patent was granted, is
still on exhibition in the patent office
model room. There is no model of the
glass-cased piano upon which Ole Bull
the great violinist of another genera
ton, took out a patent when he was
on his last tour in this country but
the specifications, claims and drawings
of his transparent piano are still or
file. The model of Mark Twains in
genious scrapbook, upon which he took
out patent many years ago, still lies
in one of the show cases in the patent
office model room. 1t is not far sen
arated from the model of a patent
babys rattle, the invention of a, little
6-year-old girl The patent was taker
out in the little ones name, and 6
sworn affidavit was submitted to the
effect that the child had, without any
assistance whatever, devised the in.
Vention