IMPROVEMENTS IN REVOLVING AND OTHER SHUTTERS, AND IN TEMPORARY PARTITIONS PARTICULARLY APPLICABLE FOR PREVENTING THE TRANSMISSION OF SOUND BETWEEN TWO PORTIONS OF A SCHOOL, CLASS ROOM, ROOM, CHAMBER, OR OTHER APARTMENT TEMPORARILY DIVIDED
Year: 1872

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by James Castle at the Office of
the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 29th June
1872.
I, JAMES CASTLE, of Manchester, in the County of Lancaster, do
hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN
REVOLVING AND OTHER SHUTTERS, AND IN TEMPORARY PARTITIONS PARTICULARLY
APPLICABLE FOR PREVENTING THE TRANSMISSION OF SOUND BETWEEN TWO PORTIONS
OF A SCHOOL, CLASS ROOM, ROOM, CHAMBER, OR OTHER APARTMENT TEMPORARILY
DIVIDED," to be as follows:-
My Invention consists in the construction and employment of
revolving and other shutters and temporary partitions, being particularly
applicable for dividing schools, class rooms, rooms, chambers, or other
apartments into two or several divisions or parts, in such manner that
when the shutter or shutters, partition or partitions is or are closed all
sound is as nearly as possible excluded or prevented from passing from
one part of the room or building to the other part which is divided from
it as much as if not more so in many cases than when there are separate

page_text: and distinct apartments, rooms, or chambers permanently divided, all as
hereafter described.
The Invention essentially consists in placing a sheet or sheets of a
material or materials which is or are a non-conductor of sound against
one side of or between a shutter or temporary partition with another a
shutter or partition which may be of a similar or of a different thickness
or section to that part of the shutter on the other side of the non-
conducting material, so that when the revolving or other shutter or
partition is made according to my Invention it appears to be and
resembles an ordinary revolving or other shutter or partition, but which
when in use, that is, when it is used to divide one part of a room from
another part or into several parts all sound is prevented from passing
between the parts divided.
Sometimes I make the shutters on one side only, or on both sides if
desired, with additional laths to overlap the other laths, and thus as it
were to break the joints, at the same time forming an additional
resistance against the passage of sound.
The materials I prefer to use as non-conductors of sound are hair felt
which is not of an inflammable nature or offensive in smell, materials
known as kamptulican, linoleum, boulinikon, cork carpet, corium, and
materials of a like nature, gutta percha, india-rubber, cork, baize, leather,
cloth, woollen and other non-conducting textile fabrics, in fact any material
of a like nature capable of resisting sound.
Sometimes I make shutters and partitions which are non-conductors
of sound of a combination of wood and metal, thus for example I make
the shutter of wood laths on one side and of metal sheets or laths on the
other side, with the non-conducting material between them, or I use wood
laths on both sides, with metal between, or vice versa, that is metal or
metal laths on both sides, and wood between, or felt or any other non-
conducting material between.
Although I have described this part of my Invention as particularly
applicable to shutters or temporary partitions for dividing one part of a
school, class room, room, chamber, or other apartment from another to
make separate and distinct schools, class rooms, rooms, chambers or other
apartments, still it must be clearly understood that I do not limit myself

page_text: to this, because shutters or partitions made in the manner before
described are according to my Invention applicable to all purposes where
revolving and other shutters or partitions are used.
Shutters constructed in the manner before-described may be driven in
and by any of the known modes or means which may be applicable to
the particular purposes to which the shutters or temporary partitions are
applied.