MTFCA Forum

I am trying to identify an accessory starter that shows it was patented on Sept. 15, 1915. There is no name on the starter. How do I search for this patent? None of the searches I have made have produced any useful results.

Thanks
Dennis

Show us some photos. We can probably help to identify it.

1915-09-15 was a Wednesday not a Tuesday. There are exceptions to the specific day patent applications were accepted, but this day was not one of them. If you search that day.....no patents were patented on that day in the US.


Results of Search in US Patents Collection db for:
ISD/19150915: 0 patents.

No patents have matched your query

isd/9/15/1915[/b]


If you are searching the patent office http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm click "advanced" at the top center.
In the Query box put in "isd/9/15/1915" (isd stands for issue date)
Select years to include entire database.
Click "search"

You must have alternatiff downloaded on your computer to view patents. http://www.alternatiff.com

These are some pictures of the accessory starter setup. The starter motor mounts to the frame rail and the engine pan. The manual crank handle can be removed when not being used. The patent date (Sept 15, 1915) can be seen on the housing in front of the radiator.

Hope these help.
Thanks

As Lyndon tried, I too gave it the old college try and also came up blank.

I have some serious doubts for a number of other reasons specifically Vincent Bendix was right in the middle of flooding the patent office with everything related to a 'bendix spring' return or a centrifugal release gear starting within the prior year and at the time patents had to be totally secret in development up to and including priority date (filing date) and no one even knew what part was patented until actual issue date and then only knew if they subscribed to a clip service who read the Gazette of issued patents from cover to cover each issue before clipping.

For what it is worth, it apparently took most of Vincent Bendix patent applications years to issue which is a signal that they were passed back and forth to the patent examiner, rejection or clarification request one after the other, with perhaps Bendix also dragging his feet. This was common in the era as once 'filed' you were free to commercialize the idea under pending federal protection...yet the actual patent life meter did not start running until the actual issue date.

Your example has a cast in Patented date yet no maker mark. Your photo also shows 'other patents pending'.

Lyndon already commented that no issue date lines up with the date quoted and even searching for that week yields no results related to such a mechanism.

I think you perhaps have a red herring, a deliberate red herring, perhaps put forth by Vincent Bendix himself as common practice was to place 'patent pending' on a device from the day the patent was filed even if disclosing manufacturer name. No way for competition to check the accuracy, they had to wait often years to find what the heck might actually be patented, yet fully at law be liable for royalties due backwards when the patent finally did issue and they got caught following making a reverse engineering derivative of what they 'saw'. So that part could be true..Vincent Bendix had more than a couple of applications at the patent office at the time. The date? Possibly a bit gray as to legality, yet at the same time would have a wannabe copycat forced to pay a lawyer good money to chase a Gazette posting that never existed in the first place.

It was a time people litigated for different reasons than today. Folks like Vincent Bendix felt they were the Prince of the technology with all rights and privileges of dollars to follow. As a small aside, Bendix went on to spend years, even decades, chasing folks he thought infringed on his 'ideas' that became his patents...he usually won threatening deep pockets litigation...and since he had extreme lengths of time usually between filed and issued dates for his own patents...the actual bill due for loss in a suit would be worth more than the book value of the company found infringing. Vincent built a whole corporation by consolidating company's who he would litigate against for lost rights, present the bill for catch up fees, and agree to take over the stock of the company as payment in full. Genius, eh? Some might say Capitalism gone amok but that all was the frame of mind at the time.

That's one nifty accessory starter !!!

Thanks for the information. I was disappointed that the date did not produce any results. Is there a way to search by text such as "auxiliary starter" in lieu of looking at each patent during that time frame? Or alternatively, searching for patent recipient such as "Bendix"?

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

You can try maybe google patents. I think that their free form search is less restrictive than the USPTO engine. You also get a lot of junk but that’s what scroll is for

I’m not sure as I don’t use it much but I “think” if you put a phrase in quote marks it will ignore all the individual words of the string. Worth a try, you can’t break it.

Also keep in mind one of the tricks of the time was to have something minuscule be the actual patent claim #1, and all of the other features associated were fluff...yet your competition had to take a copycat beware view, as no one knew the exact details until issue date. All you had to do was convince the examiner what you did was novel and unique. In later years the patent office started to look askance at what I call “assembly patents” (the Japanese were famous in the 80’s for taking a patent issue by someone else and then adding something novel to an issue and refiling in their own name. You were blocked from expanding your own designs...unless, you gave them license to your part in exchange for free license to theirs)

Your starter unit was made by A.B.C. Starter Co. in Detroit. It should include a belt driven generator, but if you do not have it, that would be easy to fabricate. I hope these scans will help.

"Click" on the pictures and they will enlarge and are easier to read.
In 1917 this starter and generator system with an Exide battery was $85 installed.