IMPROVEMENTS IN ADVERTISING APPARATUS."
Year: 1878

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Edward Reed at the Office of the
Commissioners of Patents on the 28th May 1878. A communication from
abroad by Edward Bostock, of the City of New York, and Louis Theodor
Simon, of Brooklyn, both in the State of New York, United States of
America.
EDWARD REED, of Great Winchester Street, in the City of London, Merchant.
IMPROVEMENTS IN ADVERTISING APPARATUS." [A communication from abroad
by Edward Bostock, of the City of New York, and Louis Theodor Simon, of
Brooklyn, both in the State of New York, United States of America.]
The object of this Invention is to display business advertisements and announce-
ments in a novel and attractive manner, so as to give thereto the largest amount of
publicity, both by day and night, at a very small outlay.
The Invention consists, firstly, in employing a screen made of any suitable
material and form, one or more sides of which are covered with any suitable
material (preferably looking-glass). Such screen is provided with a suitably shaped
space or aperture, spaces or apertures, placed in the centre or in any other conve-
nient position on one or more of the sides thereof, and surrounded by a gilded
moulding or other suitable ornamentation. Such space or aperture, spaces or
apertures, are made of a sufficient size so as to display only one of the several
longitudinal rows of advertisements placed behind the same, as presently men-
tioned.
The second part of the Invention consists of a rotating vertical skeleton cylinder,
which is made of any suitable metal or material, and is placed either within or
behind the screen already described, and is divided into longitudinal sections by
vertical ribs or bars, each of which longitudinal sections is again subdivided into
spaces or squares of any suitable size and shape by means of horizontal or angular
bars. These squares or spaces are glazed, either with stained glass of appropriately
brilliant and attractive colors, or with highly colored ribbon or glass, colored only
on one side, or with any other suitable equivalent which will admit of illumination,
preferably so arranged that no two squares or spaces of the same color adjoin each
other.

page_text: The third part of this Invention consists of a suitable arrangement of clockwork,
whereby such cylinder is caused to rotate for any desired period with a continuous
automatic intermittent motion, so as to exhibit one or more of the longitudinal
panels of advertisements into which it is divided through the openings or apertures
formed in the screen for a sufficient space of time to allow of their being observed
by the passers-by.
Such automatic intermittent motion is one of the principal features of novelty of
this Invention, as the cylinder thereby remains perfectly stationary sufficiently long
to enable the spectator to read all the advertisements which occupy the longitudinal
section or sections of the cylinder appearing at the aperture or apertures in the
screen before another movement of the cylinder takes place, thus shewing only one
or alternate sections of the cylinder at a time, and preventing the eye of the spectator
becoming confused or dazzled by simultaneously beholding several adjoining sections,
as would be the case if the screen firstly described were not employed to partially
conceal such cylinder.
Such improved apparatus may either be placed in a window or any other suitable
opening; or it may be carried on a car or waggon, and so perambulate the various
streets of a town or the country, and it combines the two great advantages of being
immensely attractive and exceedingly inexpensive.