IMPROVEMENTS IN TICKETS ISSUED TO PASSENGERS ON TRAMCARS, OMNIBUSES, OR OTHER VEHICLES, AND IN METHODS OF PREPARING AND UTILIZING SUCH TICKETS SO AS TO PREVENT FRAUD BY THE PERSONS ISSUING THEM
Year: 1879

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Adolf Ellissen at the Office of
the Commissioners of Patents on the 31st October 1879.
ADOLF ELLISSEN, of 40, Southampton Buildings, in the County of Middlesex.
"IMPROVEMENTS IN TICKETS ISSUED TO PASSENGERS ON TRAMCARS, OMNIBUSES,
OR OTHER VEHICLES, AND IN METHODS OF PREPARING AND UTILIZING SUCH
TICKETS SO AS TO PREVENT FRAUD BY THE PERSONS ISSUING THEM."
My Invention relates to the card or paper tickets ordinarily issued to passengers.
by tramcars, omnibuses, or other vehicles in exchange for the fares paid by such
passengers to the conductor of such vehicle. In using tickets as at present prepared
for such purposes, consisting ordinarily of cards having printed thereon the limits
of the journey and the amount paid by the passenger, it is found that great
opportunity offers for fraud on the part of the conductor or other person receiving
the money and issuing the tickets, the only check upon such person being a com-
parison between the number of tickets remaining in his possession of those supplied
to him and the sums of money in his possession and supposed to represent the
nominal value of the tickets which he has distributed in exchange.
In order that this system of check should be effective it is necessary that every
passenger should receive and retain a ticket corresponding with the money or fare
paid by him, but it is found in practice that many passengers will not take the
trouble to demand, or if demanded to retain in their possession, the tickets which
they should so receive, and consequently great loss is incurred through dishonest
conductors who receive fares from such passengers without handing to them tickets
in exchange, or from the tickets issued being thrown away and re-collected by the
conductor, in either case the check upon the receipts from the amount corresponding
with the absent tickets not being available.
My present Invention has for its object improved methods of preparing the
tickets so that inducement may be offered to the passengers to demand the tickets
which they should receive, and to retain them in their possession when demanded.
For this purpose I prepare ornamental or other designs on a sufficiently large
scale in black and white, and I reduce these designs in the way well known and
practised by means of photography to so small a size that they cannot be deciphered
by the naked eye of an observer, but that a microscope is necessary for the purpose,
and print, photograph, or emboss the designs so reduced upon the front of the card
ticket which has printed upon it in the usual way the distance for which it is
available and the fare which has been paid. I prefer to make the reduced designs

page_text: as described of such size that their general tendency may be discerned without
magnifying, but that a microscope is necessary in order to ascertain their signifi-
cation and decipher their details. Instead of designs ornamental only they may
be made to contain one or more enignatical figures, or figures only discoverable on
careful examination, or they may contain written or printed legends or inscriptions,
alone or in combination with the enigmatical designs, as already described. Or
such legends or inscriptions may be in the form of verbal or literal puzzles or
acrostics. By this means the tickets themselves will prevent features of such
interest as to induce passengers to demand them from the conductor and to retain
them for the purpose of examining and deciphering them at leisure by the aid of a
microscope; or where verbal or literal puzzles or enigmas are used, they may be
printed sufficiently large to be read without enlargement; and in order further to
encourage passengers to retain and demand them, prizes or rewards may be offered
at intervals by the proprietors of the vehicles to those passengers who submit the
best explanations, answers, or solutions of the design or puzzles upon the tickets.
For the same object as that already described I sometimes prepare upon the tickets
designs or puzzles printed in what is ordinarily known as sympethetic ink, or ink
which only becomes visible after having been heated, or after having been treated
with a second material, the combination of which with the ink is necessary to
render the latter visible.
When the designs of whatever kind prepared upon à sufficiently large scale have
been reduced as described to the desired size, so that a photographic negative can be
obtained of them, the card tickets may be printed from such photographic negatives
in any of the ways ordinarily used and practised, either by the use of salts of, silver
sensitive to light, or by means of what is well known as photomechanical printing;
or separate sheets of paper so printed way be pasted or affixed to the backs of the
tickets.
Another method which I sometimes adopt instead of those already described
consists in making the design, whether ornamental or literal, of such a size that
when complete it covers the back of a considerable number of tickets, such tickets
being printed at one operation upon a sheet of card of corresponding size.
This sheet is then cut up into the several tickets, each of which has a part of the
design (such for instance as a map) upon its back.
Passengers will be induced to demand and retain such tickets with the object of
having in their possession eventually a sufficient number of tickets in the proper
order to complete the whole design.
•
By my methods of preparing the tickets for passengers by tramcars or other
vehicles, an inducement is offered to such passengers to demand the tickets on
payment of their fares, and to retain them in their own possession, and in this way
the probability of dishonest returns by the conductor who receives the fares and
issues the tickets is lessened and prevented.