IM- PROVEMENTS IN BEDSTEADS, COTS, COUCHES, AND SOFAS
Year: 1878

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by the said Edward Lawson and Richard
George Hodgetts at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents on the 1st
November 1878.
EDWARD LAWSON; of Birmingham, in the County of Warwick, Manufacturer, and
RICHARD GEORGE HODGETTS, of Birmingham aforesaid, Manager of Works.
«IM-
PROVEMENTS IN BEDSTEADS, COTS, COUCHES, AND SOFAS."
Our improvements are applicable chiefly to metallic bedsteads, cots, couches, and
sofas, but are also applicable to bedsteads, cots, couches, and sofas made of non-
metallic materials.
We will describe our Invention in connection with a metallic bedstead.
In making a metallic bedstead having an elastic sacking of woven wire, or a
sacking of other elastic or flexible fabric, the sacking is ordinarily attached at its
shorter sides to rods or bars, which are kept at the distance apart necessary to give
the required tension to the sacking by the ends of the said rods or bars being fixed
to other rods or bars parallel to the longer sides of the sacking. The sacking and
its supporting bars thus form an independent structure, which may at pleasure be
attached to and detached from the framing of the bedstead.
By this, the ordinary method of construction, there are thus employed two
nearly parallel framings, namely, that of the sacking and that of the bedstead;
and our Invention has for its object to simplify the construction of the bedstead
where an elastic or flexible sacking is employed. We construct a bedstead according
to our Invention in the following manner :-
-We attach one end of the sacking to a
rod or bar, and the other end we connect to a roller of the same length as the rod
or bar described. The bar described is connected at its ends with two of the angle
blocks of the pillars of the bedstead, and the ends of the roller have bearings in
the angle blocks of the other two pillars of the bedstead. Between the pillars at
the head and those at the foot of the bedstead we fix horizontal rods. These rods
are parallel with the sides of the sacking, and constitute with the rod and roller
attached to the sacking the framing of the bedstead. One end of the roller is
provided with a ratchet wheel, in which a pawl engages. By means of a winch
Povice 2d1

page_text: the roller may be turned and the sacking tightened, the parts of the framing at the
same time being firmly bound together.
When it is desired to give great-tension-to-the-sacking a train of two or more
pinions or toothed wheels may be employed.
In light bedsteads, where ordinary non-metallic sacking is employed, a winch
-may-be-dispensed with, and the ratchet wheel may be concealed in the angle block
of one of the pillars, the upper or jointed end of the pawl being external to the angle
-block:
Besides the simplication in construction herein-before referred to bedsteads
constructed according to our Invention are readily put together and taken to
pieces, and are much lighter-than-bedsteads of the ordinary construction.
The methods of construction we have described in connection with a metallic
bedstead are applicable to bedsteads made of non-metallic materials, as well as to
cots, couches, and sofas, metallic and non-metallic.