AN IMPROVED MODE OF INLAYING OR COMBINING DIFFERENT METALS OR OTHER HARD SUBSTANCES, APPLICABLE TO VARIOUS USEFUL PURPOSES
Year: 1819

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, SIR
WILLIAM CONGREVE, of Cecil Street, Strand, in the County of Middlesex,
Baronet, send greeting.
WHEREAS His most Excellent Majesty King George the Third did, by
His Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland called England, bearing date at Westminster, the First
day of November, in the sixtieth year of His reign, give and grant unto
me, the said Sir William Congreve, my exors, admors, and assigns, His
especial licence, full power, sole privilege and authority, that I, the said Sir
William Congreve, my exors, admors, and assigns, during the term of years
therein mentioned, should and lawfully might make, use, exercise, and vend,
within England, Wales, and the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and also in
all Your Majesty's Colonies and Plantations abroad, my Invention of "AN
IMPROVED MODE OF INLAYING OR COMBINING DIFFERENT METALS OR OTHER HARD
SUBSTANCES, APPLICABLE TO VARIOUS USEFUL PURPOSES;" in which said Letters
Patent there is contained a proviso that if I, the said Sir William Congreve,
shall not particularly describe and ascertain the nature of my said Invention,
and in what manner the same is to be performed, by an instrument in writing
under iny hand and seal, and cause the same to be inrolled in His Majesty's
High Court of Chancery within six calendar months next and immediately
after the date of the said Letters Patent, that then the said Letters Patent,
and all liberties and advantages whatsoever thereby granted, shall utterly

page_text: cease, determine, and become void, as in and by the same, relation being
thereunto had, will more fully and at large appear.
NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, I, the said
Sir William Congreve, do hereby declare that the nature of my said Inven-
tion, and the manner in which the same is to be performed, are particularly
described and ascertained in the following description thereof (that is to
say):
The metallic plate or surface, or any other plate or surface made of any
other material, such as variety of stones or of porcelain, or the like, capable of
withstanding the heat of melted metal, being pierced into any filagree work or
pattern intended, a metal softer than itself when two metals are used, or
any metal where the plate is formed of corresponding material, is then fluxed
and run at the back of the principal plate, so as to form a second plate,
penetrating and filling all the filagree or interstices of the pattern cut through
the principal plate, which may be very completely effected by making the cast
in a similar way to that in which sterotype plates are produced, so that after
the front is cleaned off and polished the most beautiful enlaying, adaptation, or
conbination of the two substances is made. Thus gold or silver may be enlayed
in iron, or steel, or lead, tin, or type metal; and many other metals and alloys
may be enlayed in gold, silver, or brass, or any other metal or substance
requiring a higher temperature to flux it than that required to flux the sub-
stance to be enlayed, and in this way it is evident that a combination of more
than two metals or substances may be effected on any given surface. Now
the uses to which this mode of enlaying, or adaptation, or combination may be
applied are various. Thus it may be used to form a vast variety of ornamental
works for furniture, or other such purposes not necessary to be specified, in
which the combination is supposed to remain permanent; or it may be made
so that the two or more plates or substances may be separated after having
been thus accurately, and, as it may be termed, mathematically adapted,
by making the filagree work so that it will deliver the second plate after
cooling it, which case it may be applied to obtain a gauge of actual idendities
of form, which might be of great importance in determining the genuineness of
bard money. It might also, when made to separate, be applied to printing in
two or more colours by forming a compound plate capable of separating after
being engraved upon, to receive different colours on the different parts, and
then uniting those parts so as to print all these different combinations of colour at
once on the paper or other material intended to receive them. And as in this
way it appears to be capable of producing a more refind, delicate, and compli-
ented combination of colour in a coloured print than by any other known mode,

page_text: so it appears that it may be successfully applied to produce a new description
of work which could only be imitated in the way in which it was produced,
and which, therefore, would tend to throw very great difficulties in the way of
the forgery of bank notes or other documents which it is desirable to protect,
all which may, by various mechanical means, be so arranged as to produce its
effects with so much case and rapidity as to render it fully competent in actual
practice to the various important uses thus founded upon this mode of enlaying
or adapting or combining the various substances as above, or by any other
means of softening one of the substances.
In witness whereof, I, the said Sir William Congreve, have hereunto
set my hand and seal, this Twenty-ninth day of April, in the year of
our Lord One thousand eight hundred and twenty.
Inrolled the Twenty-ninth day of April, in the year of our Lord One
thousand eight hundred and twenty.