AN IMPROVED CONTROLLER APPARATUS FOR DOMESTIC USES OR OTHER PURPOSES
Year: 1874

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Ernest Grisar at the Office of
the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 16th April
1874.
I, ERNEST GRISAR, of Anvers (Belgium), do hereby declare the nature
of the said Invention for "AN IMPROVED CONTROLLER APPARATUS FOR DOMESTIC
USES OR OTHER PURPOSES," to be as follows:-
:--
This Invention relates to tell-tale apparatus, which I call a "domestic.
controller," for the purpose of indicating the time at which the keys.
of doors, windows, chests, or other receptacles have been hung up and
taken down. The use of this apparatus renders it impossible for a
servant or attendant to unlock a door for egress during the night,
or to open a locked receptacle without such act, and the hour at which
it is performed being made known. For this purpose I make certain
additions to and modifications of a clock or timepiece, which I will
now describe.
the 1:1
twan to four boles croond oxuall

page_text: holes with sliding pins having button heads within the dial. On the
tubular arbor of the hour hand I fit a sliding sleeve, on which is a
grooved pulley, and from which projects an arm or pointer. This sleeve
is fitted with a feather on the arbor, so that it revolves with it but can
slide to and fro upon it, and the pointer is set so as to correspond with
the position of the hour hand. On the lower part of the timepiece I
fix a hook for the reception of the keys that are to be hung up; and I
provide a vertical lever, the lower end of which can be made to oscillate
to and fro within the hook, and the upper end of which engages in the
groove of the before-mentioned pulley, so that as the lever is made to
oscillate the pulley with its sleeve and pointer is made to slide longi-
tudinally on the arbor of the hour hand. A spring keeps the lower end
of the lever close against the lip of the hook, so that in order to put a
key on the hook or to take a key off it this end of the lever must be
pushed back from the lip, and by this movement the pointer is pushed
forward. In such forward movement the pointer bearing against the
button head of one of the pins causes it to protrude through the dial,
and the position of the pin so protruded indicates the hour or half hour
at which the protrusion was effected, and therefore gives information
of the time at which a key is put on or taken off the hook. The glass
door covering the dial of the timepiece being kept under lock and key
is opened, it may be daily, for the purpose of pushing back by hand all
such pins as may have been protruded, and being then locked the pins
cannot be tampered with, but the protrusion of one or more will operate
as tell-tales as above described. When twelve pins are used the pro-
trusion of one indicates that the hook had been opened at or near the
particular hour corresponding with the pin, and the protrusion of two
adjacent pins indicates that the hook had been opened at or near the
intermediate half hour, the pointer being of such breadth as to bear
partly on two of the button heads of the pins when it is almost midway
between the hours corresponding thereto. And in like manner when
twenty-four pins are employed the protrusion of one indicates the hour
or half hour, and the protrusion of two adjacent pins indicates the
intermediate quarter of an hour.