IMPROVED MODES, MEANS, AND APPARATUS FOR AND CONNECTED WITH THE COPYING OF LETTERS AND OTHER DOCUMENTS
Year: 1870

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by George Barker and James
M'Farlane at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with
their Petition, on the 21st March 1870.
86
We, GEORGE BARKER and JAMES MCFARLANE, both of the City of
Glasgow, in the County of Lanark, North Britain, Engineers, do hereby
declare the nature of the said Invention for IMPROVED MODES, MEANS,
AND APPARATUS FOR AND CONNECTED WITH THE COPYING OF LETTERS AND OTHER
DOCUMENTS," to be as follows, that is to say:-
This Invention consists substantially in pressing and rolling the
copying book through or between one, two, or more pairs of small
nipping and pressing rollers revolving in journal bearings near their
ends, made adjustable to the thickness of the book, in side standards or
frames, so as to form a new or improved portable or fixed press for the
purpose of taking pressed copies of letters and other documents (written
and drawn up with copying ink) for mercantile, commercial, professional,
office, and private correspondence and business purposes; and which
mode and means and construction of press is more simple than heretofore
used, and adapted for more general use, particularly for portable
purposes, as for travellers and others requiring or desirous to carry such

page_text: presses with their personal luggage. One simple form of the said new
or improved press, applicable to portable purposes and private use, would
be having a single pair of the said pressing rollers revolving in their
journal bearings in the ends of a rectangular frame, having the bearing
bushes of one or both rollers adjustable in slots in the ends of the frame
by pinching screws, or other equivalent, with spiral springs or other
equivalent acting between the bearing blocks to keep the rollers at their
full width apart for the copying book to be easily entered and pushed
one, two, three, or more times back and forward between the rollers, or
the rollers pressed over the book to copy the documents; and the frame
with its rollers may be made to stand or lie on or be fixed by thumb
screws or other simple equivalent to any table, board, drawer, trunk, or
valise, so that the book might pass through the rollers horizontally,
vertically, or at an angle as desired. When made more particularly for
stationary and office purposes the end standards may be secured to a
portable sole of wood or metal capable of being fixed to a table, and may
have two or more pairs of the rollers, the lower roller of each pair
revolving in fixed bearings in the end standards at some distance apart,
with their upper rolling and pressing surface in a horizontal tangential
plane, either with or without brackets or small platforms in front of and
behind the rollers, which both carry the book by the under surface of its
cover or by a travelling, ridged, or flat, elastic or non-elastic carrying
sole below the book. The upper rollers being adjustable by their
bearings and screws above them in the end standards or other equivalent
means to the proper parallel height above the lower rollers to give the
necessary nipping and rolling pressure to the book to copy the
document in it, either by pushing or drawing the book by hand one or
more times to and fro between the rollers, or by turning one, two, or
more of the rollers by a small crank handle on one of their spindles, and
through lateral intermediate transmitting toothed or friction wheels or
driving bands, springs or other equivalent being used to hold up the
upper rollers for the convenient entrance of the copying book. To
assist the holding and entering of the book between the rollers, the edges
of the binding boards or cover may be made to project some distance
beyond the copying paper of the book. The rollers may be of wood,
metal, or other equivalent, and covered, when desired, by vulcanized india-
rubber or other tough clastic substance, and made a little longer than
the width or length of the book; and they may be plain or fluted, and,
when desired, the boards of the book, or a pressing cover for the purpose,

page_text: may be fluted so as to work into the fluted rollers and be drawn back
and forward between them, and thus receive the pressure on the top and
under side. In such cases a ridged pressing or scraping edge may be
used instead of the top roller, as in lithographic presses, adjusted by
screws or other equivalent, and in which case a tympan of leather or
vellum may be used on the top of the book. When two or more pairs
of rollers are employed an endless web band may be passed round the
upper or the lower set or round each of both sets.
Another modification consists of only one pressing roller carried in the
forked end of a light metal hand frame passed and rolled over the top
of the copying book only, which in this case is laid, when ready for the
operation of copying, on a small portable flat board, or it may be metal
tray, with edges projecting up at the sides to near the height of the book
along the sides of which edges a lateral groove or projecting feather is
formed. Lateral studs are fixed into small arms projecting down from
the forked ends of the hand frame nearly below the journals of the
roller. These studs, cither with or without antifriction rollers mounted
on them, are entered into the groove or below the lateral feather or
ridge of the side edges to the copying book, board, or tray when the
pressing roller then rests on the top of the book, and being run to and
fro along the book and groove by the handle of the frame the pressed
copy is taken, the desired pressure being given by adjusting the distances
of the studs from the roller, and by the raising or lowering of the handle
of the frame in the act of rolling and pressing.