The Bentons: How an American Father and Son Changed the Printing Industry

8 An Overview of Linn Boyd Benton’s Patented Inventions

93 Linn Boyd Benton’s famous punch engraving machine was by no means his only invention. On June 30, 1932, the day before he retired from ATF, he reported that he had received 20 patents in his life, 18 of which related to “the art of type making.” The other two were from 1875 and 1876.1 How did a man with a very informal and disjointed education produce so many patents? Theo Rehak suggested it was because Linn Boyd Benton was a mechanical genius: “He was one of those people who could see with his hands.”2 Benton’s first patent may have been for a float for a steam boiler “feed regulator.” While researching the Bentons in 1984 at Columbia University Libraries, I found a hand-written note on stationery from the North-Western Type Foundry, Office of Benton, Gove & Co., Milwaukee, dated November 7, 1877, that read: Messrs. Benton, Gove & Co. Gents— We have for over two years been using one of Benton’s Patent Floats in our Steam Boiler Feed Regulator. It has never given us a moment’s trouble. It does not seem to be affected by heat or cold and is apparently as good today as when purchased. Don’t see why it should not last a man’s life time. Very Truly, (indecipherable)3 Photographic evidence exists for another Benton patent outside the type field, for a device that knit tubular socks from wool (see Chapter 11).4 Benton’s first type-related patent, U.S. Patent No. 254,792 of March 14, 1882, described a multiple mold for casting printers’ leads and slugs (spacing material).5 chapter 8 An Overview of Linn Boyd Benton’s Patented Inventions 94 the bentons Type historian Dr. James Eckman wrote in 1964 that Benton “claimed that his machine, with one man operating it, could cast more spacing material in a ten-hour day than ten men working the same period could turn out with other methods.”6 Benton’s second type-related patent, as we have seen, was granted on December 18, 1883, for self-spacing types set on pre-determined unit widths; his third was the 1883 British patent for the same types. His fourth type-related patent was for an attachment for the molds used in typecasting machines, to prevent, as he explained, “what are technically called by the type founders ‘swell bodies’”7 — variations too minute to be detected by the naked eye but troublesome to the type founder. The application for this patent was filed on May 18, 1884, and U.S. Patent No. 326,009 was granted to Benton and Isaac Baas Jr. more than a year later, on September 8, 1885. Benton’s next three patents were for the third version of his punch-cutting machine, invented to facilitate the production of his self-spacing types in Milwaukee. The original application was dated February 29, 1884, but the first U.S. and British patents were not issued until more than a year and a half later. A five-page hand-written document among the Benton family papers (apparently in patent attorney Elias H. Bottum ’s handwriting) explained the reason for the delay: After repeated rejection and amendments, the above application was allowed with 24 claims on May 16, 1885. Applications for the same invention were filed in England, Germany, France and Canada on October 6, 1885, and it was carefully arranged beforehand to have the U.S. Patent issued on the same date in order to prevent the publication of the U.S. Patent from invalidating the foreign patents or the foreign patents from The original 1877 note Benton’s mold for casting printer’s leads 95 an overview of linn boyd benton’s patented inventions limiting the term of the U.S. Patent in accordance with the usual practice in obtaining U.S. and foreign patents for the same invention.8 U.S. Patent No. 327,855 was issued on October 6, 1885. A few days later a clerical error in the documents was discovered, which in effect left out one of the agreedupon amendments to the patent. The usual method of handling this type of error was then followed: Patent No. 327,855 was cancelled, the error was corrected, and a new patent was issued, U.S. Patent No. 332,990, on December 22, 1885. But British Patent No. 11,894 had also been issued on October 6...