IMPROVEMENTS IN APPARATUS FOR REGISTERING THE NUMBER OF PASSENGERS CARRIED IN PUBLIC CARRIAGES, AND THE DISTANCE EACH HAS TRAVELLED
Year: 1873

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by George Edmund Donisthorpe
at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition,
on the 22nd April 1873.
I, GEORGE EDMUND DONISTHORPE, junior, of No. 13, Queen's Square,
Leeds, in the County of York, do hereby declare the nature of the said
Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN APPARATUS FOR REGISTERING THE NUMBER OF
PASSENGERS CARRIED IN PUBLIC CARRIAGES, AND THE DISTANCE EACH HAS
TRAVELLED," to be as follows:-
The object of this Invention is to improve registering apparatus (such
as is described in the Specification of a former Patent, granted to me,
No. 2985, in the year 1870), in which the several seats of the vehicle arc
made depressible and are connected by ordinary bell-hanging appliances
with marking levers, which when the scats are depressed by the weight
of a person sitting upon them are caused to bear against and mark a
strip of paper to which a slow travelling motion is imparted.
The object of the improvements is, first, to so construct the apparatus
that the register paper shall have marks made upon it by the apparatus

page_text: which will enable any one inspecting the register to determine whenever
a change in the marking takes place on the register paper, whether such
change in the marking results from a person having simply left one seat
and occupied another, or whether he has left the vehicle and another
person occupied the same or a different seat. To effect this I arrange
the step of the vehicle to be slightly depressible by the weight of a person
coming upon it, and I connect the step by bell-hanging appliances to a
lever carrying a pawl, so that cach time a person leaves or enters the
vehicle the pawl shall cause a ratchet wheel to turn partly round. On
the axis of the ratchet wheel is fixed a drum from which project pins
which are ranged in a single spiral around it; in front of the drum is
placed a row of levers one for each pin. As the drum revolves the pins
act in succession upon the levers, and as cach lever is acted on a
marking punch or instrument carried by it is caused to mark the register
paper, and these punches or instruments are ranged in the same line
with the marking instruments connected to the seats, thus it will be seen
that whenever a person enters or leaves the vehicle a mark will be made
upon the register, but if a person simply moves from one seat to another
no such mark will be made.
If the vehicle is so made that there are two or more ways of entrance
to it, then one or other of the steps at each such entrance is made
capable of being slightly depressed, and is connected to a ratchet lever
to act in the manner before mentioned.
In order to transmit a slow revolving motion to the rollers over which
the register paper is led, I use a wheel placed underneath the vehicle
and carried by an inclined arm which is capable of swinging on a hollow
axis beneath the vehicle. On the axle of the wheel is a worm gearing
with a worm wheel on an axis which is led up parallel with the swinging
arm, and at its upper end carries a worm which gears into a worm
wheel on one end of a short axis which passes through the hollow axis
upon
which the arm swings; this short axis carrics at its opposite end a
bevil wheel from which motion is transmitted in any suitable manner to
the rollers over which the register paper is led. All of the gear wheels
are enclosed by casings carried by the swinging arm.
The same arrangement of gearing may be used to transmit motion
from the nave of one of the ordinary running wheels or the axle of a

page_text: In order also that when the apparatus is applied to a tram car which
sometimes travels in one direction, and at other times in the opposite
direction, that the register paper may be caused always to travel con-
tinuously in one direction when the car is in motion, I place upon the
axis of the roller which drives the register paper two bevil wheels loose
upon the axis, and both gearing into another bevil wheel on a shaft to
which motion is transmitted from the running wheel, so that the two
bevil wheels on the axis of the roller are driven in opposite directions,
each bevil wheel when turned in one direction is made fast with the axis
of the roller by a ratchet and ratchet wheel, so that when the car is
running in one direction the roller will be driven through one of these
bevil wheels, and when the car is travelling in the opposite direction it
will be driven by the other bevil wheel.