The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-12-16
tCentinu.a From rass EIsht.)

NOVHtAMUG0 2 Court street line could never pass each other at that switch. The flexible capls pf one trolley had to be disconneclea 7 from one car and attached to the other The motormen there used to caii " swapping horses. Tn damp ,.s Wsaerel ro ceiye severe shocks. Vanderpoel and l spent no little part of our time trying fe devise some new attachment. On the oecasion of the visit of President and Mrs. Cleveland they were more inter esked in the trolley cars than in any thing else they had ever seen.
 one day in August. while we were in the Rankin House in Columbus, Ga, the idea of the trolley of the present day came to me. l drew a hurried diagram of it and showed 1t to Wander poel. It was to consist of a tube like fgas pipe near the hood of the car and q slender flexible steel bar nearer the wire which would take up the slack of the wire as the car ran along. The trolley was to be fixed on point and held against the wire by 8 weight ate tached to the lower end, near the top Of the car.
 First Trolley Made.
 .vanderpoel and I returned to Mont gonery from Columbus the next day. l went personally to the Montgomery Iron Works and had Charles Wilkins. It's president. make the first of the present trolleys ever constructed. I balanced the trolley so that it would bend on it's pivot with a. window wefght.which I bought from A. M Ken- nedy and which swung down through the h0@4 of the car to the car platform. The only improvement that has been made in the trolley since the first one I built in Montgomery has been the establishment of spring in the place of the window weight as a means of keeping the wheel against the wire.
 Under my contract with Vander- poel he was to retain the rights and privileges to all patents and improve- ments that would come out of practi- cal application of his electricaa motive power idea. So the trolley invention passed over to him to which l had agreed Some time later he disposed of some six patents and ideas on the use and application of electricity to the Thomas-Houston Company the pre- decessor of the General Electric Com pany. For his right in these patents and ideas the company paid $150,000 down and agreed to. pay in addition S10,000 a year for seventeen years. But vanderpoel died of penumonia at Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1893 a few years after the contract
 "The trolley idea was the cause of
 
 country and the story of 1t would be worth while If had the time to tell it or you had space to print 1t. The suit was between the General Electric :, Company which bought the patent of Vanderpoel and the Westinghouse and Eidison Companies, who tried to prove that the trolley had been in practical use over two years before the patent was issued. What the lawyers call "a pretty point of law, 1t involved and in settling that litigation no less than a million and a half dollarsAwas spent
 ''And yet when Vanderpoel turned his patents and ideas over to the Thomas Houston people he tried to get them to patent the trolley idea at once. a thing that he and I had not done. But Professor Thompson thought the thing so simple that 1t was not worth patenting. In fact he did not want to take the trolley Idea along with the other patents that his company had bought from Vanderpoel but in a short while the value of the trolley idea had proven itself and a movement was made to get 1t patented.
 Causes LEtigation.
 Under the patent laws any improve ment which has been in public use for a period of two years can not be patented.
 others appreciating the general de- mand for the trolley, for 1t had come to be recognised at it's true worth the necessary completement of the electric car sought to prove that the patent was invalid in order that it might get the advantage of manufacturing 1t on the same basis as the General Electric Company. Some of your Montgomery people are no debut familiar with this litigation which dragged it's way