CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS IN WINDOW PRICE TICKETS, AND WHICH SAID IMPROVEMENTS. ARE ALSO APPLICALE TO THE ORNAMENTING. AND PRIZING THE WRAPPERS OR PAPER BOXES FOR HOLDING FANCY AND OTHER. GOODS; ALSO IN THE MODE OF ATTACHING OR SUSPENDING WINDOW TICKETS
Year: 1857

page_text: LETTERS PATENT to Henry Smith, General Die Sinker and Embosser, of
Little Hampton Street, Birmingham, in the County of Warwick, for, the
Invention of "CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS IN WINDOW PRICE TICKETS, AND WHICH
SAID IMPROVEMENTS. ARE ALSO APPLICALE TO THE ORNAMENTING. AND PRIZING
THE WRAPPERS OR PAPER BOXES FOR HOLDING FANCY AND OTHER. GOODS; ALSO
IN THE MODE OF ATTACHING OR SUSPENDING WINDOW TICKETS."
Sealed the 28th July 1857, and dated the 30th January 1857.
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by the said Henry Smith at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 30th
January 1857.
I, HENRY SMITH, General Die Sinker and Embosser, of Little Hampton
Street, Birmingham, in the County of Warwick, do hereby declare the nature
of my said Invention for "CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS IN WINDOW PRICE TICKETS,
AND WHICH SAID. IMPROVEMENTS ARE ALSO APPLICABLE TO THE ORNAMENTING AND
PRIZING THE WRAPPERS OR PAPER BOXES. FOR HOLDING FANCY AND OTHER GOODS;
ALSO IN THE MODE OF: ATTACHING OR. SUSPENDING WINDOW TICKETS," to be as
follows (that is to say) :-
My improvements relate to the description of tickets, used by drapers and
other fancy shopkeepers for notifying the prices of particular articles to which

page_text: such tickets may be attached, and the manner in which these tickets have
heretofore been made has been. by writing, stencilling, or printing by letter-
press the characters necessary for marking the prices or other significant notice
required on them, and the ornamentation that heretofore has been given to
such tickets has been drawn or painted on by hand, which, as a matter of
course, has added largely to their cost. And my improvements in indicating
the prices on such tickets consists in embossing them by the aid of dies and
suitable pressure; as for instance, the characters or figures indicating the price
may be sunk in a die, as also any suitable, border, ornament, or other notifica-
tion, and the die being placed in a suitable press, and inked, if desirable, with
a proper inking roller, the piece of paper of the desired shape and size for the
ticket has only to be laid on the die and pressed, when the groundwork of
such card or ticket will receive the colour placed on the die, and the impression
of the figures, border, or ornament sunk in the die will be represented in relief
on the ticket.
And my further improvement in such tickets consists (when they are
required to be highly-ornamented) in combining the arts of lithography and.
embossing, by which means a highly ornamental result will be obtained; and
these same improvements I propose to use for designating and prizing such
fancy articles-as are usually sold in wrappers or boxes, by applying the mode
herein-before described to the wrappers of such goods, or on the paper boxes
in which they may be placed, varying the shape and size of such tickets,
wrappers, &c., as may be desired.
And my further improvement consists in attaching metallic eyelet holes to
such tickets, as also a metallic loop or pin, in order that such tickets may be
readily applied to the articles to which they refer.
SPECIFICATION in pursuance of the conditions of the Letters Patent,
filed by the said Henry Smith in the Great Seal Patent Office on
the 29th July 1857.
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, HENRY 3
SMITH, General Die Sinker and Embosser, of Little Hampton Street,
Birmingham, in the County of Warwick, send greeting.
WHEREAS Her most Excellent Majesty Queen Victoria, by Her Letters
Patent, bearing date the Thirtieth day of January, in the year of our Lord
One thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven, in the twentieth year of Her reign, a
did, for Herself, Her heirs and successors, give and grant unto me; the
.

page_text: •
said Henry Smith, Her special license that I, the said Henry Smith, my
executors, administrators, and assigns, or such others as I, the said Henry
Smith, my executors, administrators, or assigns, should at any time agree
with, and no others, from time to time and at all times thereafter during the
term therein expressed, should and lawfully might make, use, exercise, and
vend, within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Channel
Islands, and Isle of Man, an Invention for "CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS IN WINDOW
PRICE TICKETS, AND. WHICH SAID IMPROVEMENTS ARE ALSO APPLICABLE TO THE
ORNAMENTING AND PRICING OF THE WRAPPERS OR PAPER BOXES FOR HOLDING FANCY
AND OTHER GOODS; ALSO IN THE MODE OF ATTACHING OR SUSPENDING WINDOW
TICKETS," upon the condition (amongst others), that I, the said Henry Smith,
by an instrument in writing under my hand and seal, should particularly
describe and ascertain the nature of the said Invention, and in what manner
the same was to be performed, and cause the same to be filed in the Great
Seal Patent Office within six calendar months next and immediately after the
date of the said Letters Patent.
NOW KNOW YE, that I, the said Henry Smith, do hereby declare the
nature of my said Invention, and in what manner the same is to be performed,
.to be particularly described and ascertained in and by the following statement
(that is to say):
The practice amongst fancy shopkeepers and others to mark or ticket their
goods exposed for sale with the prices at which they are to be sold, or other
notification, has become so general as to make their production a regular
branch of manufacture; and to produce such price cards or tickets, as well as
the means of holding them, striking, neat, and ornamental in their appearance,
as well as to economize the cost of their production, is the object and purport
Invention.
of
my
It has been the common practice heretofore to mark and ornament such
tickets by writing or painting the price or other matter on them, as well as the
design by which they are intended to be ornamented, by a pen or brush by
hand, which of course makes their production a tedious and slow process, and
to some extent such price or other tickets have been produced by having the
characters desired to be on them printed in letter-press, which, from its general
common appearance, has not been much adopted.
And my improvements on these processes consist either in lithographing or
otherwise printing an ornamental border or other emblazonment, and to
indicate the price by dies and pressure; whereby I am enabled to emboss or
exhibit such characters in relief, as also to colour the groundwork on which
such characters are placed with any desirable colour or colours; and in some

page_text: instances I not only emboss the characters indicating the price, but also the
design with which I propose to ornament such tickets or cards.
And as I do not purpose confining myself to the application of the process
of embossing window cards only, it may be necessary in some instances to so
arrange the dies for a certain class of tickets or wrappers, that dates or other
désirable characters may be changed when required; as, for instance, it is
a'common practice for shippers of fancy or other goods to keep counterparts
of the patterns they may have shipped for foreign parts; and in doing so, it is
their practice to attach a label or ticket to the corresponding pattern or sample
they keep, and to mark such sample with the name of the ship in which they
were sent, as also the day and year of her sailing; and for the production of
such or similar tickets my processes are particularly applicable, as will be
hereafter seen.
And the manner in which I propose to attach such tickets to such patterns
or wrappers is, either by providing them with metallic or other holes for passing
the cord through by which such packets are tied up; or, by attaching a piece
of suitably shaped metal provided with a metallic spring of sufficient strength
that it shall be capable of holding or retaining the cord or ticket that may be
placed between the metal and its spring; and this contrivance is also applicable
to the attaching of such cards or tickets to goods generally to which their
prices refer, or to which references may be made.
But, in order that I may be well understood as to the manner in which I
propose to produce these price tickets or cards named in the title of these, my
in part recited Letters Patent, as well as the means of attaching or suspending
them, will be best understood by referring to the Drawings hereunto annexed,
and to the letters and figures marked thereon (that is to say) :-
Figure 1 represents a sample window or other price ticket, with the
characters denoting the price 4D, as well as the rim, embossed, leaving the
groundwork coloured black, but which, of course, can be of any desired colour.
I do not pretend to do this by any new process, which is simply that of
sinking the rim and character 4º in metal or suitable hard wood, and taking a
corresponding impression from such die in soft metal or other suitable material,
and such dies being applied to a suitable press, it is evident that if the under
die is inked by an inking roller passing over its surface, and a piece of card-
paper, linen, or other suitable material is laid on it, and the counterpart or top
impression brought down tight on it, that that part of the card or material
standing over the sunken characters or rim, will be forced into such cavity,
while the groundwork will be coloured with the ink with which the face of the
die had been before coloured, and so on; by the application of a self-acting

page_text: inking roller, such price cards or other tickets may be. produced with great
rapidity, to be subsequently cut out as here represented, or in any other
desirable form.
Fig. 2 is to be produced in the same way as Figure 1,.the border being
embossed, but which might have been produced in plain or chromo-litho-
graphy, or by any other suitable process in this or other suitable design. Tho
oval blank part, marked A, is for adding to the price 10/% any pence, &c. that
may be desired to be added.
And, in addition to the price, other characters may be added by way of
drawing attention, notifying or describing the article to which such ticket
may be attached; as, for instance, the word "Net," or "This Rich Pattern,"
or "Newest Design," may be embossed on the same card; or the embossed
price, &c. may be raised up or impressed on a piece of suitably shaped paper
to form a wrapper for any particular article or box, as represented at Figure:3.
The blank marked B is, as the blank marked A, Figure 2, for adding any
additional pence or fractions that may be required.
Fig. 4 represents a card or ticket to mark or indicate the character of any
particular kind of goods usually put up into packages, requiring dating, number-
ing, &c., suitable for merchants to ticket or label particular kinds of goods,
being patterns or counterparts of patterns; as, for instance, this ticket is
intended to refer to a particular ship belonging to a company who have chosen
to designate their line of packets as "The Black Ball Line," and as it is not
unfrequently the case that some of their ships continue for years trading from
some particular port in England to another particular port abroad, so that my
principle of producing such tickets by embossing (as before described) is
particularly applicable, the date or time of sailing being altered by movable
characters fitted and adapted as represented by the dotted lines c, d, c, d.
In the production of the die for producing this, all the parts that are white
must be sunk in the die, while the circular rims, letters, figures, &c., would
form the face of the die, and would therefore be readily inked by the roller,.so
that in printing them, the white part would be shewn in relief, and the .part
colored black sunk in.
At the corners of this ticket I have represented eyelet holes for passing the
string through, for securing it to the particular packet to which it may be
desired to be attached.
In some instances, instead of applying such tickets permanently to goods or
packages, they are merely required to be attached by some portable and ready
means, and which means I have represented in various views at Fig. 5,
adopting the form of a hand, marked F, with the forefinger. significantly

page_text: pointing to the price embossed on the card, to which it is attached, of which
G and H are an edge and back view shewing a spring marked K, secured on
the back side by a rivet or otherwise, which forms a ready means of applying
such tickets to the holder, as here represented.
The part marked m, m, m, represents a wire hook attached, by soldering or
(otherwise, to the cuff of the hand, but which may be altered into a loop or eye,
.or a.straight sharp pin, either for sticking such ticket or other holder on to
any package, garment, or article that it may be desirable to direct attention to,
or to indicate its price, or for tying or hooking on. And in some instances it
may be attached first to the ticket, and next to the article to which the price
on the ticket refers, by. using a double spring, as represented at n, Figure 5;
or such spring may extend in one direction, so as to form a hook, as represented
in the.edge view at o, o; or the metal at the cuff may extend so as to be bent
cither into a loop or a hook, in like manner as represented at Fig. 6; P being a
front view of a design to imitate a bird on flight, with the piece of metal
extending from its tail marked q, for forming such hook and loop; R being a
back view of the same, shewing the spring, while S is an edge view, shewing
the part 9 bent down into a hook; or the part that extends marked q from the
.tail of the bird may be lengthened, so that it may be bent over to form the
spring, yet admitting of its being hung on a line or attached to a cord; a
holder of this description I have represented in an edge view at T, and in this
case it is advisable to form the whole of steel, gilded, silvered, or otherwise
ornamented. These forms of holders or indicators, with their spring attach-
ments, are particularly applicable for attaching, as matters of reference for
a variety of purposes; such as, for instance, to the leaf or leaves of a book,
to point to particular pages, paragraphs, or lines, and in that case they would
require to be made flat, as indicated at H, Fig. 5, without the pin marked m.
.
Having thus described the nature of my Invention, and the manner in
.which it may be carried into effect, I wish it understood that I do not claim
any novelty in the principle or manner of embossing; but what I do claim is,-
Firstly, the application of the process of embossing to the marking, pricing,
and ornamenting such like tickets and cards as herein represented, without
any regard to any particular ornamental design, or to the size or characters to
be so imprinted or embossed on them; by which means I am enabled to pro-
duce neat and elegant window and other tickets, &c. at considerably less cost
than can be produced by any other means when their general superior appear-
ance is considered.
Secondly, I claim the mode of holding or attaching such cards or tickets as
here represented, as well as the manner of pointing or directing attention to

page_text: the particular characters, subject matter, or other references to which they may
be attached.
In witness whereof, I, the said Henry Smith, have hereunto set my hand
and seal, this Twenty-eighth day of July, One thousand eight hundred
and fifty-seven.
HENRY SMITH. (L.S.)
Witness,
G. A. HARRIS,
Clerk to J. S. Cockings, Patent Agent,
26, Ann St., Birmingham.