Opinion ID: 1475557
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: DeForest's Sketch Made on the Steamship Carmania in 1918.

Text: The circumstances under which this memorandum was made and came into evidence are somewhat unusual. Upon October 6, 1918, DeForest and his patent attorney, Samuel E. Darby, Jr., sailed from New York on the steamship Carmania, a ship of the Cunard Line, under British registry. DeForest testified that upon October 12, 1918, while at sea, he engaged in a conversation with Darby upon the subject of ways to record sound photographically. That to illustrate his views he produced from a book of poetry which he was carrying a piece of Carmania stationery, upon the first sheet of which was written a poem of his own composition, and that he thereupon wrote down, upon the clean side of this first sheet, three possible light sources to be used to record sound photographically, and drew upon the bottom of the paper a diagram showing how such should be used. DeForest wrote as follows: 3 methods of photographing sound waves on film for talking motion pictures and phonograph (a) use the `speaking flame' (highly actinic gas) (b) very short fine filament incandescent lamp  superimposed voice current on the d.c. lighting current  gas filled lamp (c) `glow tube' light  glass bulb filled with gas e.g. hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, or argon, or Hg. Electrodes of plat. Excite by high frequency currents, modulated by voice, exactly as in radio telephony 10-50-watt set probably ample. According to the testimony, this document was initialed by DeForest and by Darby upon this very occasion, the latter having written upon the paper the letters E&U. Darby testified that the initials E&U meant Explained and understood, and that the conceptions involved were then and there explained to him by DeForest. Darby testified: I gave the paper back to DeForest and had entirely forgotten about the matter until he mailed it to me in 1925 in response to my request to furnish what written data he could find bearing on the subject matter of this interference. DeForest testified that the paper in question had remained in the book of poems until prior to the trial of the interference when he had found it and mailed it to Darby. It is apparent, we believe, that if this paper be what it is represented by the appellants to be, that DeForest conceived the invention here involved upon October 12, 1918. The learned district judge, however, refused to give it credence, stating in part: (2) It is incredible that all the entries were on this paper in their present form before the filing of the De Forest 1919 application. It is impossible that De Forest in 1918 knew about a `glow light tube,' a `gas filled lamp,' the use of `helium' and `argon,' `platinum electrodes,' and `a fine slit,' all features of a glow lamp and shown in the sketch, yet in 1919 files an application, which he claims was for a glow lamp and omits all these features. (3) Assume the sketch is unaltered since 1918, it is no part of the De Forest patent in issue and cannot be read into the specification of that patent. If the application does not disclose the invention, as I hold in this opinion, then the patent cannot be aided or bolstered up in the slightest degree by the sketch. We will deal with each of these findings in turn. The record shows that immediately upon the return of DeForest to the United States, upon January 1, 1919, he proceeded to take steps tending to reduce his conception to actual practice. The witness Coyer, in charge of the glass department of the DeForest Radio & Telegraph Company at that time, testified that on or about January 7, 1919, under the instructions of DeForest, he proceeded to determine the luminosity of the ordinary atmosphere at various pressures from normal atmospheric to a fairly high degree of vacuum; that this end was accomplished by passing electric currents across the terminals of tubes. Coyer further testified that, still pursuing DeForest's instructions, he next proceeded to the study of the luminosity of various gases in Geisler tubes. Tubes filled with or containing amounts of vaporized alcohol, nitrogen, and hydrogen were tested for luminosity. This witness testified that DeForest stated to him that the purpose of these experiments in luminosity was to aid his attempts to record sound photographically. It is apparent that at this period, which was within a very short time after October 12, 1918, DeForest was already at work upon the testing of lamps filled with gas for luminosity and that these lamps were very closely related in their nature to glow lamps. The witness Garity testified that he was an assistant to DeForest, commencing his duties in the month of December, 1919; that to his knowledge DeForest experimented with various types of electrodes, including molybdenum, copper, and platinum; that in this period, from December, 1919, until the end of 1920, DeForest made use of two slits as an aperture whereby the light from the light source was to reach the film. The uncontradicted testimony of these witnesses serves to show quite apart from any testimony on the part of DeForest himself, that he was actually experimenting with lights in the nature of glow lights, with platinum electrodes and with slit apertures within a comparatively short time after the date of his alleged conception of the invention, the date of the Carmania memorandum of October 12, 1918. Such evidence seems to us plainly to support the conclusion reached by the tribunals of the Patent Office giving credence to the Carmania memorandum. In respect to the second finding of the District Court, namely, that the sketch cannot be read into the specifications of the DeForest patent, we also disagree. If any part of the memorandum be considered, both the sketch and the words accompanying it must be taken into consideration. The question then presented is whether or not the words upon the memorandum in conjunction with the sketch do actually show a conception of the invention at issue. The answer to this question is in the affirmative if one skilled in the art, from the information contained in the memorandum, would be aware of the nature of the invention. The words of the memorandum refer to a glow light. The sketch shows a method of placing it into an electric circuit with other apparatus diagrammatically illustrated as one of 3 methods of photographing sound waves on film for talking motion pictures as is stated in the memorandum. In our opinion the Carmania memorandum evidences the conception of the invention here in issue. If it be true, that one skilled in the art would operate the source of light disclosed in the DeForest patent as a glow light, then it follows inevitably that the memorandum evidences a conception of the invention later disclosed in the patent. Having conceived the invention, is it a fact that DeForest proceeded with due diligence to reduce that conception to practice? We believe that there is ample evidence to support the conclusions of the tribunals of the Patent Office that he did in fact exercise such diligence. There is evidence to indicate DeForest returned to the United States upon January 1, 1919, and this date the Board of Appeals held should be taken to be the date of his conception of the invention, since upon October 12, 1918, he was on the high seas upon a ship of British registry. Since it is the recognized practice in the United States Patent Office in cases of interference to allow a foreign inventor to claim as the date of his conception of an invention, the date upon which a letter sufficiently describing that invention is received in the United States, DeForest as a citizen of the United States certainly must be put in no worse position than a foreign inventor, and we therefore hold that he is entitled to claim January 1, 1919, the first day of his re-entry into this country, as the date of his conception of the invention in question. There is evidence that DeForest proceeded with great energy to attempt to develop his invention along the three lines set out upon the Carmania memorandum, at least throughout the first part of the year 1919. Kenneth, a glass blower, testified that within a comparatively few weeks in the first half of 1919 he made four or five hundred tubes of various sorts, many of which were used by DeForest and his assistants in their attempts to develop a suitable light source. While DeForest was in California, in February, March, and April of 1919, experiments to this end were carried on by his assistants in his absence. Logwood, a radio engineer in the employ of the DeForest Company during this period, testified that at the written request of DeForest tubes were made by Kenneth and were tried out by himself across the helix of a radio telephone transmitter; that one of such tubes when stimulated by a high frequency alternating current gave the effect, in the words of this witness, of a successful glow lamp, glowing a silvery blue and that as voice currents affected the power that supplied the aerial, such voice changes also changed the intensity of the glow, showing the variation of glow due to the voice vibration. DeForest for his part testified that one of his first acts upon returning to New York from California, in May, 1919, was to run through the tests which Logwood had made during his absence, using the vacuum tube connected across the output circuit of the radio telephone transmitter, myself speaking into the microphone and watching the fluctuations of light in accordance with the sound waves. He also testified that shortly after this he experimented with tubes filled with nitrogen and also with a small incandescent lamp possessing a very short and fine tungsten filament. He stated that in the summer of 1919, he made use of an Edison phonograph mechanism and a photographic dry plate to record sound vibrations, employing a short filament incandescent lamp for this work. He testified that he proceeded to work upon the development of all three of the light sources described by him in the Carmania memorandum. He testified also that he first used the separated electrode type of light for the actual recording of sound photographically in the fall of 1919. In conclusion, we state that the record of this cause indicates that upon September 2, 1919, DeForest and his attorneys were already at work beginning to draft specifications for appropriate application to the United States Patent Office for a patent for his invention. We have already referred in some particulars to the evidence adduced in the District Court referred to by the appellees as new evidence, including certain admissions by DeForest in the District Court specifically referred to upon the appellees' brief. Many of the differences between the new and the old testimony disappear upon consideration of the record as a whole. The nature and effect of the new testimony, including the admissions of DeForest, we think, have been misunderstood by the appellees. We think it would be fruitless to pursue this subject further, beyond saying that the reason for the different results reached by the decisions of the tribunals of the Patent Office and the District Court rests primarily in difference of approach to the theories of invention of the respective inventors as heretofore indicated in this opinion.