Note: since writing this, I have uploaded all of the illustrations into a Flickr album, for greater convenience of viewing. The sequence of images relevant to this post begins here. You can have them open in another tab or window and swap easily from reading the blog to looking at zoomable versions of the drawings. I have also, as in Part 4, begun to set out patent titles with more descriptive detail than in the official version, which sometimes says nothing more than "Stove." Added detail -- stove type or even name -- is within square brackets.
1843: 1 Improvement, 2 Designs
No. 3330Thomas, John E.
Albany
Cooking Stove
November 6, 1843
Witnesses: Topper, Calvin & Hamilton, W.A.
This seems to have been the usual sort of compliment stove inventors paid to an unusually successful stove, i.e. rampant copying, in this case apparently of P.P. Stewart's stove. Thomas called his the "Non-Radiating Summer and Winter Air-tight Cooking Stove," wrapping his oven and firebox in "a diving flue on each side and combining therewith non-radiating substance on the outside, around the oven; part of the flue being ribbed to extend its radiating surface." "[T]he sides are ribbed so as to look like a row of columns." The base plate of the stove was lined with Plaster of Paris, a nonconducting material; the sides had "a movable covering of the same material, that can be taken off," like Stewart's, except that his were made of polished tin.
This was Thomas's only stove "improvement" patent, and it showed. His design was very complicated and had a lot of dead space within the stove body. I have seen no evidence that it was ever made -- Thomas was a moulder, not a stove maker; the one of his witnesses who appears in the 1844 city directory was a physician. Contrast this with the more prolific and successful patentees below -- their witnesses were usually professional patent agents or fellow stove makers.
D5
Ripley, Ezra
Troy
Stove-Column
August 12, 1843
Witnesses: Geer, Erastus & Hadley, A.K.
JOHNSON [Elias], GEER [Gilbert], & COX [David B.]
This was the very first use of the new Design Patent system by a stove designer. It was for Ripley's intricately decorated and expertly made columnar flue for a heating stove, made to look like a rather mythical dolphin (it had scales), and cast in one piece, possibly using Ripley's own earlier invention patent for this process.
For Ezra Ripley's many patents, see the blog post about him and his partner Nicholas Swart Vedder, Troy's most active and influential stove designers for most of the next four decades. It would take too much space to copy the entries for Ripley's many patents here. But at least including them here alongside those of his neighbors, clients, and rivals enables us to see how large his contribution was. I'd suggest that you should open that post in a separate tab or window, so that you can flip from one to the other if you wish to compare and integrate Ripley's work with that of his neighbors. Or look for them in the Flickr album, starting here.
No. 3655
Wager, James
Troy
Cooking Stove
July 9, 1844
Witnesses: Jones, Thomas F. & [?]
No. 3830
Lyon, James H.
Schenectady
Cooking Stove
November 18, 1844
Witnesses: Sinn, A. & Fuller, James
Delivering "more perfect control over the heat applied to the oven during the process of baking" by having a movable firebox. "The invention & improvement herein contemplated" -- not practical. Another mere paper patent.
No. 3861
Potter, William L.
Clifton Park
Cooking Stove
December 19, 1844
Witnesses: Maher, Edward & Hemingway, Daniel
A square stove with a small upper oven behind the firebox and a larger lower oven the whole depth of the stove, plus a complicated and unconventional flue system taking up a lot of room within the stove body. Sounds like a real stove, i.e. it probably was made, at least in prototype form, but not one which made any impact on subsequent stove design. A dead-end.
D22
Whitney, Amaziah
Albany
[Step] Stove [with Elevated Oven]
July 19, 1844
Witnesses: Ellison, Andrew Jr. & Outivin [?], John
The oven runs from front to back, as in the original Granger patent.
D25
Ripley, Ezra
Troy
[Parlor] Stove-Plate
November 26, 1844
Witnesses: Cox, Abram & Gale, Ansel H.
Assigned to JOHNSON, GEER, & COX [Troy]
A parlor stove. Very floral [including "a bunch of melons & grapes"] -- "to be used in the manufacture of air tight or other box stoves." "It is impossible to describe accurately in language the ornamental carvings on the surface of the plates but the same is represented as accurately as possible in the side plate of the Engraving or drawing hereto annexed and by the pattern or model herewith transmitted."
No. 3910
Davy, John T.
Troy
Domestic Oven / [Summer] Baker
Witnesses: Thompson, A.A. & Wells, I.F
"A new and useful Improvement in Summer-Bakers." This was a small sheet-iron stove designed to satisfy a clearly felt need of consumers -- an appliance they could use in the summer without overheating their kitchen. Other designers reached the same objective in different ways -- insulating the stove, or adding a "summer attachment" with its own smaller firebox, but venting through the same chimney, which was Davy's own later method.
No. 3939
Davy, John T.
Troy
Cooking Stove
March 12, 1845
Witnesses: Francis, Joseph & Greenough, J.J.
A 4-boiler square cook, with two more boiler holes or a gridiron broiler in the front hearth, which also had its own "fire chamber," i.e. this was what other inventors called a "Summer Attachment." There was an L-shaped oven extending under the firebox, as in the Buck stove, with downdraft flues, but Davy avoided the Buck patent by using a variation of the "sheet flue" form first used by Charles Postley in 1815 (2297X) and then revived by P.P. Stewart. Davy seemed to be inspired by, and competing with, Stewart rather than Buck. His flue promised a "brisk draft ... forming the stove so as to produce the greatest economy of space and use of fuel" and "an equal dispersion of heat all around the oven." "The front of the stove, above the hearth..., is corrugated ... for the purpose of radiating heat in roasting before it..." The patent included six clear drawings, with plans and sections, perhaps showing the influence of Greenough, a professional draftsman and patent agent. Davy was a stove maker from 1840 to 1861, mostly as a partner in the Washington Foundry.
Atwood's design was actually made and sold, though his system for guaranteeing a stove's air-tightness was not widely adopted -- other, simpler ways were found instead. His 1846 sales brochure shows this stove dressed in Gothic style rather than the functional corrugated cast iron of the patent drawing. It was, he said, "not only beautiful in the extreme, but the most perfect example of the kind ever offered in market."
Most of the participants in this patent were leading members of the stove-making community. Johnson and Cox had entered the business in 1834, in Johnson's case, and 1841 for Cox. Johnson owned and ran the Mechanic Street foundry in partnership with Gilbert Geer until 1841, which was when David Cox joined the firm. Geer left the partnership in 1845, and went into partnership with Erastus, amongst others, instead. Of the other witnesses, Samuel Pierce was an influential and successful stove designer himself (see below). The others are not currently identifiable (either from lists of patentees, or of Troy and Albany stove makers and their partners, or available Albany and Troy directories).
No. 4159
Low, Francis S. & Leake, John S.
Albany
Cooking Stove
August 20, 1845
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Thayer, Benjamin H.
A standard square, flat (i.e. not large-oven) four-boiler stove. All of the claimed difference was in the flues, as usual. Low and Leake were in partnership running a stove business in 1845-1848, Low having entered the trade in 1830 and running a foundry for seven years, while Leake was a former clerk with the New York State Bank. William Ellison was a civil engineer (and patent agent).
No. 4197
Clute, Peter J.
Schenectady
Cooking Stove
September 19, 1845
Witnesses: Rowe, Peter & Fonda, D. Edgar
Clute was a Schenectady foundryman and stove maker. This patent had "a series of dumb flues [including in the doors] ... for the purpose of heating the oven more regularly throughout its sides and ends and effectually." It does not seem to have influenced future stove design in any way, so can be classed with other apparent bright ideas that turned out to be dead ends.
No. 4260
Chollar, John B., Jones, Ebenezer, and Low, Peter
Troy
[Improved Empire] Cooking Stove
Samuel Pierce, b. 1812, was the son of another Samuel Pierce, the only tinsmith in Greenfield, MA, who introduced cooking stoves to their rural community at the head of navigation on the Connecticut River, and brother of John J., proprietor of the town's Franklin Furnace, who took out a patent on an “Open Cooking Stove” (probably a modified Franklin) as early as 1822 (the lost Patent 3473X). In 1833 he moved to New York City and opened a stove store on Lower Broadway. By 1835 he was already describing himself as a patent range manufacturer, a description he shared with none of his competitors, and in 1838 he did indeed patent a prizewinning brick-set, anthracite-fuelled cooking range which other New York firms made for him, and also sold manufacturing rights outside the city. In 1843 he decided to devote himself to stove invention full time, leaving the New York City business in the care of an older brother who would continue to sell what he invented, and moved to Peekskill, where there were foundries and pattern-makers to work with and “a pleasant place of residence of my family”. In 1845 he moved to Troy, just eighty miles west of Greenfield, where he still had a farm, and stayed there for the next couple of decades, producing twenty-four original patents for heating and cooking stoves and ranges in a thirty-three year inventing career.
Pierce's was one of the most consequential, long-lived, and profitable of stove patents. It was reissued first in April 1847, by which time he had moved to Troy, as Cooking Stove [Reissue 91], witnessed by J.J. Greenough and J.W. Thayer. The patent was assigned to Johnson & Cox outright for a capital sum, and Pierce also became their superintendent of stove manufacturing, a salaried position, as well as a loyal defender of the patent in which they were all interested. By this time the stove embodying his innovations, the "American Air-Tight," had become one of their most important, market-leading products, a "most remarkable stove" enjoying "an unparalleled success," one marked also by "the great number of infringements ... made upon each part."
Low & Leake's partnership only lasted for about three years, 1845-1848, but Low carried on at the Hudson River Foundry (with other partners?) for at least a decade.
D31
Ransom, Samuel H.
Albany
[Step] Stove
July 10, 1845
Witnesses: McElwain, Samuel & Ott, Oran
This was a technically very ordinary four-boiler step stove with an attractive decorative scheme. The doors on the firebox each contained a vase of flowers; the oven doors were "in the style of Louis XIV." Samuel Ransom was the nephew of Joel Rathbone and, with his cousin John F., had taken over the management of his enterprise in 1840 when Joel retired, a very rich man after a working life of just eighteen years. He devoted the rest of his life to gardening, art collecting, travels in Europe, community service, and investing his capital in other local businesses, including his nephews'. Ransom remained in business until 1882, and his company outlived him, under his sons' control. Of his witnesses, Ott was a local Commissioner of Deeds; McElwain was not in the directory, and probably a patent agent.
D32
Ripley, Ezra
Troy
[Parlor] Stove Ornaments
July 14, 1845
Witnesses: Atwood, Anson & Adancourt, F.
Assigned to JAGGER, TREADWELL, & PERRY [Troy]
A square (not columnar) parlor heater, rococo (?) in style.
D33
Atwood, Anson
Troy
[Box] Stove
July 14, 1845
Witnesses: Mann, J.D. & Starbuck, N.
Assigned to STARBUCK, Benjamin
A Gothicized six-plate or box stove. "The surface of the plate between and within said arches D is ornamented with small fanciful carvings as represented in the drawing, and not susceptible of verbal description." They appear to be grape vines. The drawing is dated 13 Sept. 1844. Compare the style of this stove with his Air-Tight, No. 3975 above.
Nathaniel Starbuck ran the Mechanic Street Furnace in Troy, one of the city's oldest, between 1821 and at least 1846, when they ran into financial difficulties. The firm was resurrected as Starbuck Bros. by 1854.
D37
Low, Addison
Albany
[Premium Cook] Stove
October 7, 1845
Witnesses: Low, William H. & Weld, J. Ruggles
Assigned to RATHBONE & Co.
The side plates (with the oven door) and front (with the firebox doors) of a Premium, i.e. four-boiler (step) cook stove with "a double border of leaves, buds &c including a composition of fruits flowers &c as grapes melons, pears, nuts &c" and a flower vase with "bundles of reed inclosed between leaves & tied with crop fillets".
John F. Rathbone's partners at the time in the company his uncle Joel had helped him establish alongside Samuel Ransom's when their partnership ended in 1844 were Benjamin Thomas and Addison Low, with whom he remained in business until 1850. A ledger with their accounts for the partnership's first fourteen months survives, providing a unique insight into the operations of a major Albany foundry quite close (a decade or so) to the local industry's beginnings.
D41
Ripley, Ezra
Troy
[Parlor] Stove Side & Top
October 16, 1845
Witnesses: Sheldon, C.D. & Geer, Erastus
Assigned to JOHNSON, GEER, & COX
Parlor stove. The description uses the standard "impossible to describe" language, but there is no reference to a model, i.e. people are getting used to Design Patent rules, and difference from an Improvement. "The carvings on the surface are designed to represent the front of a Gothic Cottage, with two large Gothic windows ... surrounded by Gothic mouldings interspersed with rosettes & beads..."
D5
Ripley, Ezra
Troy
Stove-Column
August 12, 1843
Witnesses: Geer, Erastus & Hadley, A.K.
JOHNSON [Elias], GEER [Gilbert], & COX [David B.]
This was the very first use of the new Design Patent system by a stove designer. It was for Ripley's intricately decorated and expertly made columnar flue for a heating stove, made to look like a rather mythical dolphin (it had scales), and cast in one piece, possibly using Ripley's own earlier invention patent for this process.
For Ezra Ripley's many patents, see the blog post about him and his partner Nicholas Swart Vedder, Troy's most active and influential stove designers for most of the next four decades. It would take too much space to copy the entries for Ripley's many patents here. But at least including them here alongside those of his neighbors, clients, and rivals enables us to see how large his contribution was. I'd suggest that you should open that post in a separate tab or window, so that you can flip from one to the other if you wish to compare and integrate Ripley's work with that of his neighbors. Or look for them in the Flickr album, starting here.
D8
Blanchard, Alonzo L.
Albany
Heating Stove
26 August 1843
Witnesses: Greenough, J.J. & Goddard, P.M. [?]
The illustration is a poor, small, dark image of Blanchard's statue of George Washington on a plinth. It was "for ornamental purposes such as Radiators for Stoves &c." of the sort Blanchard had recently patented. The description of the statue is detailed and precise.
Blanchard, Alonzo L.
Albany
Heating Stove
26 August 1843
Witnesses: Greenough, J.J. & Goddard, P.M. [?]
The illustration is a poor, small, dark image of Blanchard's statue of George Washington on a plinth. It was "for ornamental purposes such as Radiators for Stoves &c." of the sort Blanchard had recently patented. The description of the statue is detailed and precise.
February 12, 1844
Witnesses: Elliott, William P. & Johnson, Albert E.
A stove with a peculiar form -- long and narrow. Pettes made the usual sort of claims inventors made on behalf of their cook stoves -- fuel economy and a large, controllable oven. Probably a "paper patent" like John Thomas's, for a stove destined not to be made, sold, used, or even to have its useful features incorporated by other stove makers.
No. 3628
Hermance, John C.
Schenectady
Cooking Stove
June 13, 1844
Witnesses: Jones, Thomas P. & Bishop, William
Unlike Thomas's and Pettes's, Hermance's stove was a merchantable product -- a rival of Buck's, Stewart's, and other large-oven stoves. Its patent was a full, detailed, very professional piece of work -- understandable as Hermance's agent was Thomas P. Jones himself, former editor of the Journal of the Franklin Institute and director of the U.S. Patent Office. There is even enough detail in the drawings to enable one to understand how its constituent plates fitted together.
Hermance's stove had two ovens A and B rather than a single large one, and also a detachable roasting or baking reflector oven sitting on the hearth. It had four boiler holes, with the covers made as concentric cast rings so that they could easily be adapted to utensils of different diameters. The center plate between the two front boiler holes was also removable, so that with all three taken out there would be room for a griddle straight over the fire. These were not new features, but Hermance was building other makers' good ideas into his stove to suit growing customer expectations. His explanatory text sounds like the work of an ingenious, practical manufacturer, learning from experience -- e.g. "To prevent the warping or cracking of the oven-plates and of the boiler-hole covers, I form angular grooves in them, making the depression on one side equal to the projection on the other. These grooves and projections ... have been found effectual in producing the desired end."
Witnesses: Elliott, William P. & Johnson, Albert E.
A stove with a peculiar form -- long and narrow. Pettes made the usual sort of claims inventors made on behalf of their cook stoves -- fuel economy and a large, controllable oven. Probably a "paper patent" like John Thomas's, for a stove destined not to be made, sold, used, or even to have its useful features incorporated by other stove makers.
No. 3628
Hermance, John C.
Schenectady
Cooking Stove
June 13, 1844
Witnesses: Jones, Thomas P. & Bishop, William
Unlike Thomas's and Pettes's, Hermance's stove was a merchantable product -- a rival of Buck's, Stewart's, and other large-oven stoves. Its patent was a full, detailed, very professional piece of work -- understandable as Hermance's agent was Thomas P. Jones himself, former editor of the Journal of the Franklin Institute and director of the U.S. Patent Office. There is even enough detail in the drawings to enable one to understand how its constituent plates fitted together.
Hermance's stove had two ovens A and B rather than a single large one, and also a detachable roasting or baking reflector oven sitting on the hearth. It had four boiler holes, with the covers made as concentric cast rings so that they could easily be adapted to utensils of different diameters. The center plate between the two front boiler holes was also removable, so that with all three taken out there would be room for a griddle straight over the fire. These were not new features, but Hermance was building other makers' good ideas into his stove to suit growing customer expectations. His explanatory text sounds like the work of an ingenious, practical manufacturer, learning from experience -- e.g. "To prevent the warping or cracking of the oven-plates and of the boiler-hole covers, I form angular grooves in them, making the depression on one side equal to the projection on the other. These grooves and projections ... have been found effectual in producing the desired end."
Hermance's key design feature was the hot air chamber he placed between his ovens and the way it vented into the flues. He was pursuing the same objectives as other inventors, but in his own distinctive way, improving on but also trying to evade the obstacle presented by the Buck patent. His strategy seems to have worked -- four years later, he boasted of "hundreds [of testimonials] in our possession" from "Thousands of delighted purchasers." He had moved to Albany himself, where he sold his "Despatch" stoves wholesale and retail, and had licensed their production and sale to other makers in the lower Hudson and Mohawk Valley towns and also in Philadelphia, then emerging as the industry's second most important center after the Capital District. [See this separate post about Hermance and his "Despatch" stoves.]
Wager, James
Troy
Cooking Stove
July 9, 1844
Witnesses: Jones, Thomas F. & [?]
James Wager was an experienced stove maker (see this blog post about him), and his response to the challenge of competing in the large-oven stove market was to place his firebox in the REAR of stove, next to the back flue: "the air within that flue is rarefied immediately on lighting of the fire, and a perfect draft through all the flues is thereby rendered certain." Though he did not spell it out, what he claimed to have done was to marry the advantages of the direct-draft stove, which always drew well, with that of the large-oven stove with a downdraft flue system, which sometimes didn't. This unconventional design feature did not catch on, however well it may have worked: consumers were used to stoves with the firebox and cooking hearth on the front of the stove, and no other makers joined Wager in attempting to persuade them to accept something different. This was Wager's one and only attempt at an invention patent -- after this he concentrated his energies, much more effectively, on design patents.
No. 3656
Chollar, John B. & Parmelee, Homer
Troy, West
Railway Stove
July 11, 1844
Witnesses: Hart, Jonathan & Marshall, I.H.
Chollar, John B. & Parmelee, Homer
Troy, West
Railway Stove
July 11, 1844
Witnesses: Hart, Jonathan & Marshall, I.H.
An improvement on the BUCKLIN & similar stoves
September 20, 1844
Witnesses: Elliott, William P. & Johnson, A.E.
Firebox in the middle of the stove, immensely complex double flue system -- "by which arrangement the heat is made to circulate twice around the oven instead of once, thereby causing cooking operation of the oven to be performed with much less fuel than heretofore consumed and more equably." The illustration is only worth including as an example of the sort of scheme people who knew nothing about stoves and stove making sometimes came up with and thought worth the investment of a patent.
Witnesses: Elliott, William P. & Johnson, A.E.
Firebox in the middle of the stove, immensely complex double flue system -- "by which arrangement the heat is made to circulate twice around the oven instead of once, thereby causing cooking operation of the oven to be performed with much less fuel than heretofore consumed and more equably." The illustration is only worth including as an example of the sort of scheme people who knew nothing about stoves and stove making sometimes came up with and thought worth the investment of a patent.
No. 3830
Lyon, James H.
Schenectady
Cooking Stove
November 18, 1844
Witnesses: Sinn, A. & Fuller, James
Delivering "more perfect control over the heat applied to the oven during the process of baking" by having a movable firebox. "The invention & improvement herein contemplated" -- not practical. Another mere paper patent.
No. 3861
Potter, William L.
Clifton Park
Cooking Stove
December 19, 1844
Witnesses: Maher, Edward & Hemingway, Daniel
A square stove with a small upper oven behind the firebox and a larger lower oven the whole depth of the stove, plus a complicated and unconventional flue system taking up a lot of room within the stove body. Sounds like a real stove, i.e. it probably was made, at least in prototype form, but not one which made any impact on subsequent stove design. A dead-end.
D22
Whitney, Amaziah
Albany
[Step] Stove [with Elevated Oven]
July 19, 1844
Witnesses: Ellison, Andrew Jr. & Outivin [?], John
The oven runs from front to back, as in the original Granger patent.
D25
Ripley, Ezra
Troy
[Parlor] Stove-Plate
November 26, 1844
Witnesses: Cox, Abram & Gale, Ansel H.
Assigned to JOHNSON, GEER, & COX [Troy]
A parlor stove. Very floral [including "a bunch of melons & grapes"] -- "to be used in the manufacture of air tight or other box stoves." "It is impossible to describe accurately in language the ornamental carvings on the surface of the plates but the same is represented as accurately as possible in the side plate of the Engraving or drawing hereto annexed and by the pattern or model herewith transmitted."
1845: 11 Improvements, 7 Designs
No. 3876
Stanley, Henry
Poultney, VT
Coal Stove
January 4, 1845
Witnesses: Jones, Thomas P. & Brundage, Edwin L.
Henry Stanley's heating stove, columnar in form, was sold as "Stanley's Coal-Burner." Its key distinction was the arrangement of air-warming flues between the firebox and the plates forming its decorative shell, to maximize its efficiency without any plates being overheated, distorted, and/or discoloured. Though he was still living and working in Poultney (65 miles NNE from Troy), I'm including this here because Stanley soon moved to Troy, and his stove's subsequent patent history was registered there by Charles Eddy and Jacob Shavor, stove makers of Troy, to whom it had been assigned by Stanley's son John. The patent's validity was extended for seven years before it expired in 1859, then reissued several times: RE 944, 10 Apr. 1860, witnessed by A.C. Corse and Thomas Woolcocks; RE 958, 8 May 1860, witnessed by Marcus P. Norton and Henry Stanley himself [by then resident in Albany]; and RE 1,078 on 13 November 1860, witnessed by Norton and Corse. Complex questions about who actually owned this patent and whether Eddy and Shavor's use of it violated the other owner's rights was fought out repeatedly in the courts until 1874, as discussed in this blog post: "Henry's Stanley's Rotary Stove and U.S. Patent Law," which contains illustrations.
Stanley, Henry
Poultney, VT
Coal Stove
January 4, 1845
Witnesses: Jones, Thomas P. & Brundage, Edwin L.
Henry Stanley's heating stove, columnar in form, was sold as "Stanley's Coal-Burner." Its key distinction was the arrangement of air-warming flues between the firebox and the plates forming its decorative shell, to maximize its efficiency without any plates being overheated, distorted, and/or discoloured. Though he was still living and working in Poultney (65 miles NNE from Troy), I'm including this here because Stanley soon moved to Troy, and his stove's subsequent patent history was registered there by Charles Eddy and Jacob Shavor, stove makers of Troy, to whom it had been assigned by Stanley's son John. The patent's validity was extended for seven years before it expired in 1859, then reissued several times: RE 944, 10 Apr. 1860, witnessed by A.C. Corse and Thomas Woolcocks; RE 958, 8 May 1860, witnessed by Marcus P. Norton and Henry Stanley himself [by then resident in Albany]; and RE 1,078 on 13 November 1860, witnessed by Norton and Corse. Complex questions about who actually owned this patent and whether Eddy and Shavor's use of it violated the other owner's rights was fought out repeatedly in the courts until 1874, as discussed in this blog post: "Henry's Stanley's Rotary Stove and U.S. Patent Law," which contains illustrations.
No. 3910
Davy, John T.
Troy
Domestic Oven / [Summer] Baker
Witnesses: Thompson, A.A. & Wells, I.F
"A new and useful Improvement in Summer-Bakers." This was a small sheet-iron stove designed to satisfy a clearly felt need of consumers -- an appliance they could use in the summer without overheating their kitchen. Other designers reached the same objective in different ways -- insulating the stove, or adding a "summer attachment" with its own smaller firebox, but venting through the same chimney, which was Davy's own later method.
No. 3939
Davy, John T.
Troy
Cooking Stove
March 12, 1845
Witnesses: Francis, Joseph & Greenough, J.J.
A 4-boiler square cook, with two more boiler holes or a gridiron broiler in the front hearth, which also had its own "fire chamber," i.e. this was what other inventors called a "Summer Attachment." There was an L-shaped oven extending under the firebox, as in the Buck stove, with downdraft flues, but Davy avoided the Buck patent by using a variation of the "sheet flue" form first used by Charles Postley in 1815 (2297X) and then revived by P.P. Stewart. Davy seemed to be inspired by, and competing with, Stewart rather than Buck. His flue promised a "brisk draft ... forming the stove so as to produce the greatest economy of space and use of fuel" and "an equal dispersion of heat all around the oven." "The front of the stove, above the hearth..., is corrugated ... for the purpose of radiating heat in roasting before it..." The patent included six clear drawings, with plans and sections, perhaps showing the influence of Greenough, a professional draftsman and patent agent. Davy was a stove maker from 1840 to 1861, mostly as a partner in the Washington Foundry.
No. 3975
Atwood, Anson
Troy
Air-Tight [Box] Stove
March 26, 1845
Witnesses: Greenough, J.J. & Donn, T.C.
A box stove with corrugated sides. Atwood's claim was to have solved problems that many designers were working on at the time -- making stoves air-tight, so that they would burn more efficiently and controllably. "[T]he manner of constructing the joints at the corners of my stove, and in forming an air chamber in the stove that communicates with the external air below, and discharges into the stove pipe thus supplying a current of air through the chimney when the stove is closed air tight, and preventing the condensing of the smoke, gas, &c." thereby prevented the destruction of the pipe and chimney.
Atwood, Anson
Troy
Air-Tight [Box] Stove
March 26, 1845
Witnesses: Greenough, J.J. & Donn, T.C.
A box stove with corrugated sides. Atwood's claim was to have solved problems that many designers were working on at the time -- making stoves air-tight, so that they would burn more efficiently and controllably. "[T]he manner of constructing the joints at the corners of my stove, and in forming an air chamber in the stove that communicates with the external air below, and discharges into the stove pipe thus supplying a current of air through the chimney when the stove is closed air tight, and preventing the condensing of the smoke, gas, &c." thereby prevented the destruction of the pipe and chimney.
Atwood's design was actually made and sold, though his system for guaranteeing a stove's air-tightness was not widely adopted -- other, simpler ways were found instead. His 1846 sales brochure shows this stove dressed in Gothic style rather than the functional corrugated cast iron of the patent drawing. It was, he said, "not only beautiful in the extreme, but the most perfect example of the kind ever offered in market."
No. 4119
Johnson, Elias & Cox, David B.
Troy
[Cook] Stove
July 22, 1845 [Reissue 138, 19 June 1849]
Witnesses: Sheldon, C.D. & Geer, Erastus [Reissue witnesses: Samuel Pierce & James Shields]
Johnson, Elias & Cox, David B.
Troy
[Cook] Stove
July 22, 1845 [Reissue 138, 19 June 1849]
Witnesses: Sheldon, C.D. & Geer, Erastus [Reissue witnesses: Samuel Pierce & James Shields]
On reissue, the patent was assigned to Rensselaer D. Granger, stove inventor and manufacturer-dealer himself.
A cooking stove with two fireboxes "distributing the heat over the surface of the oven in the most advantageous manner.... It is found in ordinary stoves that the ovens bake unequal those parts nearest the doors being less heated than the center and in stoves where two fires are used the draft has been unequal or the heat from one or other of the fires has been lost to the oven; by our arrangement both of these evils are avoided."
A cooking stove with two fireboxes "distributing the heat over the surface of the oven in the most advantageous manner.... It is found in ordinary stoves that the ovens bake unequal those parts nearest the doors being less heated than the center and in stoves where two fires are used the draft has been unequal or the heat from one or other of the fires has been lost to the oven; by our arrangement both of these evils are avoided."
On reissue, the claim was clarified: "One of the chief difficulties in cooking-stoves has been the diffusion of heat so as to obtain an equal temperature in the oven, the parts nearest the doors being always less heated than the middle; and in stoves with two fire-places (one in the hearth) it has been found there is difficulty in carrying the products of combustion of both around the oven or ovens." The reissued patent spelled out more clearly the role of the unusually designed flues beneath the oven in achieving the objectives of uniform heat distribution and maximum efficiency/minimum waste, and that the second firebox and two boiler-holes in the front hearth were a "'summer arrangement'".
No. 4159
Low, Francis S. & Leake, John S.
Albany
Cooking Stove
August 20, 1845
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Thayer, Benjamin H.
A standard square, flat (i.e. not large-oven) four-boiler stove. All of the claimed difference was in the flues, as usual. Low and Leake were in partnership running a stove business in 1845-1848, Low having entered the trade in 1830 and running a foundry for seven years, while Leake was a former clerk with the New York State Bank. William Ellison was a civil engineer (and patent agent).
No. 4197
Clute, Peter J.
Schenectady
Cooking Stove
September 19, 1845
Witnesses: Rowe, Peter & Fonda, D. Edgar
Clute was a Schenectady foundryman and stove maker. This patent had "a series of dumb flues [including in the doors] ... for the purpose of heating the oven more regularly throughout its sides and ends and effectually." It does not seem to have influenced future stove design in any way, so can be classed with other apparent bright ideas that turned out to be dead ends.
No. 4260
Chollar, John B., Jones, Ebenezer, and Low, Peter
Troy
[Improved Empire] Cooking Stove
November 8, 1845
Witnesses: Sanders, A.K. & Greene, C.O.
A four-boiler square stove called the "IMPROVED EMPIRE." Its distinctive features were the construction details of the hearth plate and the oven and stove bottom forming flues "with cemented air-tight joints" between three plates "less liable to break than when the bottom is made in one piece." Note the way in which almost the entire top of the stove could be opened up -- both pairs of boiler holes could be turned into a large oval by removing the loose ) ( centre pieces between them, and the I-shaped plate could also be taken out, perhaps for cleaning the flues, perhaps to take a single large cauldron. These were non-patented ways of making the stove more flexible in the ways it could be used.
Witnesses: Sanders, A.K. & Greene, C.O.
A four-boiler square stove called the "IMPROVED EMPIRE." Its distinctive features were the construction details of the hearth plate and the oven and stove bottom forming flues "with cemented air-tight joints" between three plates "less liable to break than when the bottom is made in one piece." Note the way in which almost the entire top of the stove could be opened up -- both pairs of boiler holes could be turned into a large oval by removing the loose ) ( centre pieces between them, and the I-shaped plate could also be taken out, perhaps for cleaning the flues, perhaps to take a single large cauldron. These were non-patented ways of making the stove more flexible in the ways it could be used.
Chollar already had one stove patent to his name (see previous section); Low had been running a stove foundry since 1830. Chauncey O. Greene was a foundryman himself, eventually a partner in Sheldon & Greene.
Chollar, Jones, and Low were being very cheeky in calling their stove the "Improved Empire" -- the "Empire" was Atwood, Cole, and Crane (also of Troy's) market-leading stove, manufactured under Anson Atwood's 1842 patent 2607. But trespassing on another manufacturer's established stove name was a less clear violation of intellectual property rights than infringing their patent.
No. 4284
Robinson, Eli C.
Troy
Cooking Stove
No. 4284
Robinson, Eli C.
Troy
Cooking Stove
November 26, 1845
Witnesses: Woodbury, P.T. & Whiting, Daniel
Has a detachable 2-hole "appliance" (or summer arrangement) with its own firebox to go on the front of the stove. Otherwise, just a different flue design.
No. 4299
Pierce, Samuel
Peekskill
Cooking Stove
December 6, 1845
Witnesses: Brundage, Edwin L. & Humphries, Guy C.
A 4-boiler square stove with a distinctive curved plate (not mentioned in the description) at the back of the firebox. "In the ovens of cooking stoves it is a general source of complaint that the heat is too great at the top and too little at the bottom. To obviate the latter of these difficulties I allow the plates on each side of the stove to descend to the depth of 3 or 4 inches below the lower plate ...; and at the lower part of this space I insert a plate ... so as to inclose an air space of 2 or 3 inches between it and the bottom plate ...; the air contained in which constitutes a non conducting medium which prevents the heat from being carried off from the lower oven plate." "To prevent the overheating of the top of the oven and obtain other advantages, I substitute for the ordinary metallic top plate of the oven an open frame of cast iron ... in which I place panels ... of soapstone, or of fire clay. These not only moderate the heat at the top of the oven, but, as less is absorbed by them than by a metallic plate they increase it at the bottom. They have also the beneficial effect upon the articles that are being baked which is produced by the ordinary brick oven, namely that, the aqueous vapor that is disengaged, is absorbed by them and carried off, and the bread or other articles that are cooked do not become sodden as in ovens wholly of iron." There were also draft openings in the firebox doors so that "the air shall be highly heated before it is brought into contact with the fuel, by which means a very considerable saving is effected." The doors were "fitted, as nearly as possible, air tight" and included a sliding latticed register and a corrugated air-heating plate. There was a dividing plate to direct the draft to one pair of holes or the other, but he admitted that "[t]his is not a new feature," i.e. it formed no part of his claim. There was a standard 3-flue design, but note that his bottom flues E did not extend all the way to the front of the stove, thereby evading the Buck patent.
Witnesses: Woodbury, P.T. & Whiting, Daniel
Has a detachable 2-hole "appliance" (or summer arrangement) with its own firebox to go on the front of the stove. Otherwise, just a different flue design.
No. 4299
Pierce, Samuel
Peekskill
Cooking Stove
December 6, 1845
Witnesses: Brundage, Edwin L. & Humphries, Guy C.
A 4-boiler square stove with a distinctive curved plate (not mentioned in the description) at the back of the firebox. "In the ovens of cooking stoves it is a general source of complaint that the heat is too great at the top and too little at the bottom. To obviate the latter of these difficulties I allow the plates on each side of the stove to descend to the depth of 3 or 4 inches below the lower plate ...; and at the lower part of this space I insert a plate ... so as to inclose an air space of 2 or 3 inches between it and the bottom plate ...; the air contained in which constitutes a non conducting medium which prevents the heat from being carried off from the lower oven plate." "To prevent the overheating of the top of the oven and obtain other advantages, I substitute for the ordinary metallic top plate of the oven an open frame of cast iron ... in which I place panels ... of soapstone, or of fire clay. These not only moderate the heat at the top of the oven, but, as less is absorbed by them than by a metallic plate they increase it at the bottom. They have also the beneficial effect upon the articles that are being baked which is produced by the ordinary brick oven, namely that, the aqueous vapor that is disengaged, is absorbed by them and carried off, and the bread or other articles that are cooked do not become sodden as in ovens wholly of iron." There were also draft openings in the firebox doors so that "the air shall be highly heated before it is brought into contact with the fuel, by which means a very considerable saving is effected." The doors were "fitted, as nearly as possible, air tight" and included a sliding latticed register and a corrugated air-heating plate. There was a dividing plate to direct the draft to one pair of holes or the other, but he admitted that "[t]his is not a new feature," i.e. it formed no part of his claim. There was a standard 3-flue design, but note that his bottom flues E did not extend all the way to the front of the stove, thereby evading the Buck patent.
Samuel Pierce, b. 1812, was the son of another Samuel Pierce, the only tinsmith in Greenfield, MA, who introduced cooking stoves to their rural community at the head of navigation on the Connecticut River, and brother of John J., proprietor of the town's Franklin Furnace, who took out a patent on an “Open Cooking Stove” (probably a modified Franklin) as early as 1822 (the lost Patent 3473X). In 1833 he moved to New York City and opened a stove store on Lower Broadway. By 1835 he was already describing himself as a patent range manufacturer, a description he shared with none of his competitors, and in 1838 he did indeed patent a prizewinning brick-set, anthracite-fuelled cooking range which other New York firms made for him, and also sold manufacturing rights outside the city. In 1843 he decided to devote himself to stove invention full time, leaving the New York City business in the care of an older brother who would continue to sell what he invented, and moved to Peekskill, where there were foundries and pattern-makers to work with and “a pleasant place of residence of my family”. In 1845 he moved to Troy, just eighty miles west of Greenfield, where he still had a farm, and stayed there for the next couple of decades, producing twenty-four original patents for heating and cooking stoves and ranges in a thirty-three year inventing career.
[Francis M. Thompson, History of Greenfield Shire Town of Franklin County Massachusetts (Greenfield: Author, 1904), Vols. I, p. 311 and II, p. 843; Brewer, From Fireplace to Cookstove, pp. 79, 84-5; [Richard Edwards, ed., New York's Great Industries. Exchange and Commercial Review, including also Historical and Descriptive Sketch of the City, Its Leading Merchants and Manufacturers (New York: Historical Publishing Co., 1884), p. 102; Subscribers' List, Journal of the American Institute 1:2 (Nov. 1835): 56; “Mode of Constructing Flues &c. for Ranges,” Patent 613; "List of Premiums Awarded by the Managers of the Ninth Annual Fair of the American Institute, held at Niblo's Gardens, October, 1836," Journal of the American Institute 2:2 (Nov. 1836): 85-95 at p. 87; Proceedings of the Second Annual Fair of the Ohio Mechanics' Institute: Held during the Third Week in June, in the City of Cincinnati (Cincinnati: R.P. Brooks, 1839), p. 12; Pierce testimony in Report of a Trial, pp. 20, 24 (quote).]
Pierce's was one of the most consequential, long-lived, and profitable of stove patents. It was reissued first in April 1847, by which time he had moved to Troy, as Cooking Stove [Reissue 91], witnessed by J.J. Greenough and J.W. Thayer. The patent was assigned to Johnson & Cox outright for a capital sum, and Pierce also became their superintendent of stove manufacturing, a salaried position, as well as a loyal defender of the patent in which they were all interested. By this time the stove embodying his innovations, the "American Air-Tight," had become one of their most important, market-leading products, a "most remarkable stove" enjoying "an unparalleled success," one marked also by "the great number of infringements ... made upon each part."
[William White, counsel for the plaintiffs, in Report of a Trial, for Violation of the Patent Right of the 'American Air-Tight Cooking Stove (1848), pp. 9-12, full citation in Part 2. The stove weighed 300 lbs including hollow ware and cost $14 -- the equivalent of c. $7,000 in 2019 terms.]
This first reissue gave him the opportunity to clarify the claims he had made in his "defective" original patent, probably in preparation for defending it against the worst of these infringers, Low & Hicks of Albany, who had sold thousands of their very imitative but cruder and cheaper "American Hot Air" against it in the same flooded market:
One of the most serious objections to baking in cooking-stoves arises from confining the vapor or gases evolved from the articles under treatment in the oven, which, from the closed nature of the ovens and the material (iron) of which they are composed, do not permit their escape, and thus impart a disagreeable flavor to articles baked therein. To avoid this serious objection numerous devices have been invented to permit the escape of the noxious gases, which devices not only add to the cost and complexity of the stove, but at the same time waste much of the heat. Another objection arises from the difficulty of heating the different parts of the oven equally... but all these plans [defenses against uneven baking -- "flues & interposed air-chambers"] are more or less complex and liable to derangement, and but partially effect the one purpose of equalizing the heat.
Pierce's lining for the oven top -- now stipulated as firebrick -- and pre-heating air chamber in firebox were the sure remedies for all of these problems.
There was a further reissue in July 1847, Cooking Stove [Reissue 99], witnessed by Charles M. Keller and J.M. Thayer, again assigned to Johnson & Cox; an extension in 1859, to prevent the patent from lapsing; another in December 1861, Cooking Stove [Reissue 1,240], witnessed Frank Scott and Marcus P. Norton, initially assigned to Johnson & Cox and then back Pierce himself, i.e. he repurchased his own intellectual property from them, and finally Reissue 1,241 that same day, with the same witness and assignment details.
This time the patent highlighted an entirely different feature of his design "known among stove dealers as the 'curve-plate'" which had enabled him to extend the oven under the fire grate. His objects were (1) self-cleaning of the ashes, i.e. they would flow rather than stick, (2) "prevent[ing] the burning out of the fire-grate" through damage by operator negligence in the usual design, (3) easier dumping of the fire, and (4) more even heating of the extended oven -- "a larger and better oven for baking purposes is constructed which is convenient, useful, and economical in the use of any cooking stove." By 1861 Pierce was emphasizing something he had not even bothered to describe in 1845, because it turned out that it was so useful in practice that other stove makers had been willing to pay him for the permission to adopt it themselves as a standard feature. Seven years later his patent threatened finally to expire so he petitioned Congress for a further extension. After reviewing its history, the Senate Committee rejected his appeal. The curved plate was “simple and inexpensive, and requiring little or no experiment for its original completion.” But in 1868, twenty-three years after Pierce had developed it almost incidentally, it was still “used by stove manufacturers generally throughout the country,” and had brought both Pierce and before 1861 his assignees large profits, which Congress concluded had provided quite enough reward for his original good idea.
[In Report of a Trial, Johnson & Cox's attorney William White emphasized the importance of the curved plate, which was the part of Pierce's stove that Low & Hicks had copied precisely, so it is clear that its value had been noticed very quickly -- it was just the wording of the patent that did not change significantly until 1861. U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Patents and the Patent Office, "Report (To accompany bill H.R. No. 783)," 10 June 1868, 40th Congress, 2d. Session, Rep. Comm. No. 118, in U.S. Congress, Reports of Committees of the Senate of the United States for the Second Session Fortieth Congress, 1867-'68 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1868), p. 101, reviews the patent's entire history.]
December 31, 1845
Witnesses: Elliot, William P. & Johnson, A.E.H.
Myers's claim was the manner of heating the upper part of oven with air, the design of the flues, and the facility to divide the firebox in two, and run on just half of it -- another way of dealing with the need to be able to do necessary cooking, especially in summer, without wasting fuel and overheating the kitchen. I have never seen this innovation included in stove on the market.
D27
Low, Addison
Albany
[Columnar Parlor] Stove
February 12, 1845
Witnesses: Ott, Oran & Hastings, F.H.
Assigned to LOW, Francis S. & LEAKE, Francis S.
An ornamental, columnar parlor stove whose crowning glory was "an American Eagle, surmounting the shield of the United States." This was a very patriotic stove design, brought onto the market in the middle of the Oregon Crisis and in the run-up to the Mexican War.
Witnesses: Elliot, William P. & Johnson, A.E.H.
Myers's claim was the manner of heating the upper part of oven with air, the design of the flues, and the facility to divide the firebox in two, and run on just half of it -- another way of dealing with the need to be able to do necessary cooking, especially in summer, without wasting fuel and overheating the kitchen. I have never seen this innovation included in stove on the market.
D27
Low, Addison
Albany
[Columnar Parlor] Stove
February 12, 1845
Witnesses: Ott, Oran & Hastings, F.H.
Assigned to LOW, Francis S. & LEAKE, Francis S.
An ornamental, columnar parlor stove whose crowning glory was "an American Eagle, surmounting the shield of the United States." This was a very patriotic stove design, brought onto the market in the middle of the Oregon Crisis and in the run-up to the Mexican War.
 |
| All that is missing in the Metropolitan Museum's example of a Low & Leake stove is the decorative piece filling the gap between the columns. |
Low & Leake's partnership only lasted for about three years, 1845-1848, but Low carried on at the Hudson River Foundry (with other partners?) for at least a decade.
D31
Ransom, Samuel H.
Albany
[Step] Stove
July 10, 1845
Witnesses: McElwain, Samuel & Ott, Oran
This was a technically very ordinary four-boiler step stove with an attractive decorative scheme. The doors on the firebox each contained a vase of flowers; the oven doors were "in the style of Louis XIV." Samuel Ransom was the nephew of Joel Rathbone and, with his cousin John F., had taken over the management of his enterprise in 1840 when Joel retired, a very rich man after a working life of just eighteen years. He devoted the rest of his life to gardening, art collecting, travels in Europe, community service, and investing his capital in other local businesses, including his nephews'. Ransom remained in business until 1882, and his company outlived him, under his sons' control. Of his witnesses, Ott was a local Commissioner of Deeds; McElwain was not in the directory, and probably a patent agent.
D32
Ripley, Ezra
Troy
[Parlor] Stove Ornaments
July 14, 1845
Witnesses: Atwood, Anson & Adancourt, F.
Assigned to JAGGER, TREADWELL, & PERRY [Troy]
A square (not columnar) parlor heater, rococo (?) in style.
D33
Atwood, Anson
Troy
[Box] Stove
July 14, 1845
Witnesses: Mann, J.D. & Starbuck, N.
Assigned to STARBUCK, Benjamin
A Gothicized six-plate or box stove. "The surface of the plate between and within said arches D is ornamented with small fanciful carvings as represented in the drawing, and not susceptible of verbal description." They appear to be grape vines. The drawing is dated 13 Sept. 1844. Compare the style of this stove with his Air-Tight, No. 3975 above.
Nathaniel Starbuck ran the Mechanic Street Furnace in Troy, one of the city's oldest, between 1821 and at least 1846, when they ran into financial difficulties. The firm was resurrected as Starbuck Bros. by 1854.
D37
Low, Addison
Albany
[Premium Cook] Stove
October 7, 1845
Witnesses: Low, William H. & Weld, J. Ruggles
Assigned to RATHBONE & Co.
The side plates (with the oven door) and front (with the firebox doors) of a Premium, i.e. four-boiler (step) cook stove with "a double border of leaves, buds &c including a composition of fruits flowers &c as grapes melons, pears, nuts &c" and a flower vase with "bundles of reed inclosed between leaves & tied with crop fillets".
John F. Rathbone's partners at the time in the company his uncle Joel had helped him establish alongside Samuel Ransom's when their partnership ended in 1844 were Benjamin Thomas and Addison Low, with whom he remained in business until 1850. A ledger with their accounts for the partnership's first fourteen months survives, providing a unique insight into the operations of a major Albany foundry quite close (a decade or so) to the local industry's beginnings.
D41
Ripley, Ezra
Troy
[Parlor] Stove Side & Top
October 16, 1845
Witnesses: Sheldon, C.D. & Geer, Erastus
Assigned to JOHNSON, GEER, & COX
Parlor stove. The description uses the standard "impossible to describe" language, but there is no reference to a model, i.e. people are getting used to Design Patent rules, and difference from an Improvement. "The carvings on the surface are designed to represent the front of a Gothic Cottage, with two large Gothic windows ... surrounded by Gothic mouldings interspersed with rosettes & beads..."
D43
Ripley, Ezra
Troy
[Parlor] Stove
November 12, 1845
Witnesses: Adancourt, C.L. & Adancourt, F.
Assigned to LOW, CHOLLER (), & JONES
Parlor heater.
Ripley, Ezra
Troy
[Parlor] Stove
November 12, 1845
Witnesses: Adancourt, C.L. & Adancourt, F.
Assigned to LOW, CHOLLER (), & JONES
Parlor heater.
1846: 11 Improvements, 22 Designs
No. 4358
DeWolf, B.F.
Troy (Lansingburgh)
January 15, 1846
Witnesses: Niting, Daniel W. & Livingston, Harrison
A four-boiler square cook stove. Distinguishing features: "the provisions for heating the oven, and in the means thereby obtained for producing a greater degree of warmth to the apartment in which the stove is placed. And also for broiling, or presenting to the immediate action of the fire such articles as are suited to that operation and the mode pointed out for effecting it."
No. 4377
Eddy, George W.
Waterford
February 10, 1846
Witnesses: Eddy, R.H. & Bailey, George H.
A "new and useful Improvement in Oven-Doors or in the Application of Heat to Ovens for Baking or other Purposes" -- hollow doors with smoke flues within them, which was actually neither new nor useful enough to become a standard feature.
No. 4390
Granger, Rensselaer D.
Albany
February 20, 1846
Witnesses: Greenough, J.J. & Browne, A.P.
A four-boiler flat, square cook stove, with a large cylindrical elevated oven. It had a peculiar corrugated oven bottom, and unusual flues which wrapped around the firebox, and were tubular behind the oven "to increase the radiation in the hinder part of the oven and to equalize more nearly the heat in the back and front thereof. The top of the diving flue ... is defended by a grating ... as usual to prevent coals and cinders from falling therein." The corrugation was "to retain the heated air for a longer time beneath the oven, and increase the radiation of heat." Granger lined his ovens and oven doors with plaster of Paris or pulverized soapstone and had "jackets" for the outer surfaces of his stove made from the same materials. His firebox was lined with fireclay (held on metal ribs, which were part of his patent) rather than the more usual (and easier) removable firebricks. The elevated oven had a removable insulated outer lining for summer use. The "movable ovens" to be placed on the stove top were similarly insulated. Granger was a practical stove maker and seller, but none of these innovations turned into standard features of the evolving cook stove.
No. 4394
Granger, Rensselaer D.
Albany
March 7, 1846
Witnesses: Little, Amos B. & Robbins, Z.C.
Another four-boiler square cook, with another peculiar flue system (the downdraft flue was in front of the firebox rather than at the rear of the stove). A double-oven stove, a bit like Hathaway's and Hermance's; detailed description of damper positions for heating one or other.
No. 4543
Clute, John Bt.
Schenectady
May 28, 1846
Witnesses: Holton, William M. & Myers, Samuel
A four-boiler horseblock stove, made to burn anthracite, with an elevated oven between the front and rear pairs of boiler holes, and peculiar flues. The drawings are full of rather fanciful depictions of the way the flue gases were supposed to flow.
No. 4567
Granger, Rensselaer D.
Albany
June 13, 1846
Witnesses: Bancroft, R.S.G. & Shepard, S.O.
Similar -- a slightly more conventional horseblock stove, with four boiler-holes and an elevated oven (an oval drum) between the rear pair of holes. This was supposed to be a parlor cooking stove, i.e. of limited capacity and at least equally intended for cooking as for heating. But, unlike the more successful parlor cooks, it was plain and functional rather than at all decorative or acceptable as a piece of furniture.
No. 4585
Cobb, William
Albany
June 16, 1846
Witnesses: Ott, Owen & Cantine, William R.
A four-boiler square cook, with a double oven and Pierce's curved plate behind the firebox. Detailed operating instructions (which damper for which oven) were provided -- the dampers were mechanically linked, so that if one was open, the other was shut, which was Cobb's real innovation here. Otherwise, this looks as if he was stealing ideas from Hermance (whose stoves he manufactured) and Pierce. Cobb ran a "Furnace" or foundry between c. 1838 and 1850.
No. 4592
Shaw, William
Albany
June 27, 1846
Witnesses: Ott, Oran & Ellison, William S.
"Improvements in what is known as the 'Old Philadelphia Oval, or Ten-Plate' Stove..." Had three boiler holes, one right above the firebox, two behind, bulging out either side of the body of the stove in the style of the old James "saddlebags" stoves. The advantages Shaw claimed for his stove were that the flues "prevent ... the loss of heat occasioned by radiation into the apartment" and heated the bottom and back of the oven. Why did he invest so much effort in improving a style of stove that was so outdated? The only interesting feature of the patent was the construction of this modernized antique -- it was made of a handful of one-piece castings, simplifying manufacture by having fewer and stronger plates. Shaw is listed as a pattern maker in the 1845-46 Albany directory.
No. 4785
Conde, Adam C.
Schenectady
October 3, 1846
Witnesses: Jones, Thomas P. & Brundage, Edwin L.
A double-oven stove, with six boilers (two over the low-down firebox in the front). Its special feature was the "heating of air for the warming of apartments" -- fresh air was warmed in a flue space at the back of firebox, then passed between the upper and lower ovens before exiting into pipes to warm upstairs rooms. A " practical trial ... [demonstrates] that the heat is more equally distributed around the ovens than when they are heated in the ordinary way by passing the direct draft from the fire between the two ovens." So, he claimed, purchasers would get both a better baking stove and a means of heating more of their house than just their kitchen from the same appliance.
Conde was one of Schenectady's stove makers, and manufactured Hermance's stove for him. This seems to be an "improvement" on the Hermance stove, with the addition of a sort of poor man's furnace. American inventors were quite keen on this sort of dual-purpose appliance; consumers rather less so, probably because what they ended up with was something that was not as good at either task as a standard cooking stove or range. The only features that became really popular were those that modified the stove to produce large quantities of hot water efficiently.
No. 4804
Treadwell, William B.
Albany
October 7, 1846
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Hazen, Charles H.
A very good, professional cross-sectional drawing, including "a vertical longitudinal section; and ... a bird's-eye view, the top plate being supposed to be removed." Treadwell's stove was of the kind having one oven [L-shaped] with the fire box suspended therein at the front; a flue the full breadth of the stove descending between the front of the fire box and the front plate of the stove; passing beneath the oven; ascending between the back plate of the oven and that of the stove, and passing into a horizontal flue above the oven; the smoke pipe being located between the front and rear boiler holes, and communicating with the last mentioned flue. The object of my invention is to throw the heated current from the fire box directly upon the rear boilers, and before its heat has been reduced by passing around the oven."
So Treadwell was attempting to produce a large-oven stove that did not violate the Buck patent. However, his reconfiguring of it -- using the Postley "sheet flue" like P.P. Stewart and some others, but having the hot gases descending at the front of the oven and, most peculiarly and inconveniently, the smoke pipe in the middle of the stove top -- like almost all other attempts, did not catch on. Treadwell was a partner in the firm of Treadwell, Jagger, and Perry running the Eagle Air Furnace, Albany's oldest. He was an experienced stove dealer, but this attempt at a thoroughly innovative product did not catch on.
No. 4811
Rogers, Charles H. & Hancox, Samuel H.
Troy
October 10, 1846
Witnesses: Hunt, Stephen J. & Whiting, Daniel
For burning wood. It had "provisions for guarding against explosions, and prejudicial condensation of steam arising from combustion within them" using a complex system of flues and baffles. The danger he wished to guard against does not seem to have been sufficiently serious to persuade other makers of air-tight parlor stoves to take similar precautions, or consumers to pay for them; or perhaps Anson Atwood's much simpler solution in his "Empire" parlor stoves just made Rogers and Hancox's more complex alternative uncompetitive and unnecessary?
As we can see, none of 1846's stove "improvement" patents, even those from established members of the stove trade, seems to have resulted in either marketable products or design features that were included in evolving stove types. When we turn to 1846's design patents, however, it's a very different story: most of these were produced on commission and assigned to (bought by) stove makers, so they were assured a life in cast iron rather than just on paper.
D 49
Rathbone, John F.
Albany
July 10, 1846
Witnesses: Kennedy, James C. & Miles, Charles C.
A box stove with a wide hearth plate, decorated with "fruits, flowers, foliage, &c." The drawings show the overall appearance and the side and end plates. The drawings are very professionally executed, by William S. Ellison, who seems to have become the go-to draftsman for much of the Albany trade. Note that the drawings are deliberately incomplete -- they only show enough of the pattern to enable the whole (including symmetrical repeats) to be visualized.
D 50
Rathbone, John F.
Albany
July 10, 1846
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Hazen, Charles H.
Decorated cast-iron parts of an oval sheet-iron heating stove
D 51
Rathbone, John F.
Albany
July 10, 1846
Witnesses: Kennedy, James C. & Miles, Charles C.
Another box stove with decorated top, sides, and hearth plate.
D 53
Thomas, John E.
Albany
July 10, 1846
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Hazen, Charles H.
Assigned to RATHBONE, J.F.
A four-hole square or flat cook, with the hearth, unusually, on the side rather than at the front. Did this perhaps include some of Thomas's functional "improvements" from his patent 3330 of 1843?
D 54
Rathbone, John F.
Albany
July 10, 1846
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Hazen, Charles H.
Another Premium or step stove, with decorated plates.
D 55
Morrison, John
Troy
July 10, 1846
The USPTO database holds the documents for a different patent in D55's record. This is a pity -- John Morrison was a leading Troy stove maker, 1836-1848, and senior partner in the Green Island Foundry.
D 57
Gravline, Louis
Albany
July 10, 1846
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Hazen, Charles H.
Assigned to POTTS, Jesse C.
A premium (step) cook stove, with the upper pair of boiler holes bulged out a bit beyond the side of the stove and furnished with raised rims above the top plate. These were quite old design features enabling the oven to be a bit larger without having to be made wider too. Ellison probably made these drawings as well as witnessing them. Jesse C. Potts had been in the stove business since at least 1834, and from 1837 to 1847 was in partnership with Levi Hoffman running the Albany City Furnace.
D 58
Shaw, William
Albany
July 10, 1846
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Vose, Samuel D. Jr
Assigned to WILDER, J.N., BLEEKER, W.E., & VOSE, S.D.
Another premium (step) cook stove, also with bulged-out boiler holes. The stove covers have lid-lifters, then quite a new feature. The image is too muddy to be worth reproducing here. Vose and the Bleecker brothers entered the stove business in 1845. Vose would go on to be one of the most influential and productive designers in his own right rather than simply a customer for another man's work.
D 62
Vose, Samuel D.
Albany
July 25, 1846
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Hazen, Charles H.
Vose's first of many Design Patents. This one, like e.g. John F. Rathbone's, was for a fancily decorated box stove. I find it interesting that so much creative effort should have been put into the oldest and most basic heating stove type.
D 63
Vose, Samuel D.
Albany
July 25, 1846
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Hazen, Charles H.
A columnar stove, with a very elaborate decoration -- "The ornaments consist of scrolls, foliage &c. not easily described in words, but fully represented in the drawings. The upper portion is in the style of Louis XIV and all the figures are placed upon a bare ground." This is very similar to surviving stoves from Ransom & Rathbone, in partnership 1840-1844.
D 66
Blanchard, Alonzo L.
Albany
July 25, 1846
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Evertsen, Albert
A highly decorated heating stove.
FRONT LOWER PLATE: "a female figure holding a wreath in the left hand and extending the right arm toward the sea. Two vessels are seen upon the water, which is bounded in the background by distant hills. The figure reclines upon rocks & has foliage behind it. The panel is bordered with heavy scroll-work & foliage. The rear is the same, except that the filling of the panel is omitted."
FRONT LOWER PLATE: "a female figure holding a wreath in the left hand and extending the right arm toward the sea. Two vessels are seen upon the water, which is bounded in the background by distant hills. The figure reclines upon rocks & has foliage behind it. The panel is bordered with heavy scroll-work & foliage. The rear is the same, except that the filling of the panel is omitted."
THE ENDS: "A bouquet of flowers and foliage with a rose in the center fills the middle, the border being composed of foliage and scrolls, with a single scallop shell in the center at the bottom."
FRONT & REAR UPPER: "a figure composed of foliage and scrolls, with a winged boy (naked) seated thereon and playing upon a flute."
The Albany Institute has the female figure.
D 67
Vose, Samuel D.
Albany
July 25, 1846
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Hazen, Charles H.
An ornamental Franklin stove, in Louis XIV style -- "and although not easily describable in words, is fully represented in the drawings," which are unfortunately missing. But this may be it, from his 1853 Illustrated Book of Stoves; or perhaps this one instead.
D 73
Ripley, Ezra
Troy
July 25, 1846
Witnesses: Browne, A.P. & Greenough, J.J.
A 'Gothic' pattern parlor stove. The drawing says it's a product of the Keller and Greenough patent agency, and the description is a similarly detailed, professional job of work. "[T]he upper part of the side ... is formed of quatre foil in circular recesses as shown in the drawing at (a). On each side near each corner are three compartments (b) of trelliswork in imitation of three windows one above the other, and in the centre between them is a large door shaped compartment (c) divided into two vertically by scrollwork (d) flanked by gothic pendules (e); on each side the ground work between the bars is all formed in diamondwork all of which will more clearly appear by the drawing accompanying this description in fig. 2. The top of the design is oblong having a square compartment (f) in the centre with indented corners at each end of which is another compartment (g) ornamented with line and leafwork; and on each side are compartments (h) formed of leaf ornament these compartments project beyond the line of the stove as shown in the drawing, the corners are filled with a honeysuckle pattern and the space between them is occupied with a quatre foil (i) in a die."
D 74
Ripley, Ezra
Troy
July 25, 1846
Witnesses: Browne, A.P. & Dysert, William
A Gothic design for the front, back, and side plates of a parlor stove. "This design is intended to be cast in metal in bold relief and is composed of gothic ornaments having a bold foliated cornice (a) below which the side is divided into three compartments (b, c, b) by perpendicular pendules (d) which terminate in points above the bottom and under which there is a projecting plain moulding (e). The centre compartment (c) is deeply recessed and the ground work is diamond or cross barred. The end is similar in its combination of raised and scroll work &c to the centre compartment as is fully delineated in fig. 1."
D 79
Vose, Samuel D.
Albany
August 18, 1846
Witnesses: Wilson, Henry L. & Fellman, Jno. C. Jr
A superb drawing of a step stove with decorated side plates, engraved by William S. Ellison. Note the profiles of cross-sections of some of the plates.
D 81
Vose, Samuel D.
Albany
August 18, 1846
Witnesses: Filtiman [?], John C. & Wilson, Henry L.
As above. This is the same stove in a slightly different dress.
D 82
Vose, Samuel D.
Albany
August 18, 1846
Witnesses: Wilson, Henry L. & Hazen, Charles H.
A parlor cook stove -- basically just a box stove with an enlarged top plate large enough to to take four boiler holes. There is no oven shown, though an elevated oven might have been attached, as in Amaziah Whitney's D22 of 1844, above. See the example in his 1853 Illustrated Book of Stoves.
D 84
Gibbs, Samuel W.
Albany
October 3, 1846
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Hazen, Charles H.
Assigned to QUACKENBOSS, Augustus
A standard four-boiler square cooking stove with a thoroughly Gothic decorative scheme. Gibbs had a long career as a stove designer ahead of him. He ended up as a manufacturer and wholesaler in his own right from 1867-1873. Quackenboss and (changing) partners ran the Montgomery Street foundry from 1840 until 1855.
D 87
Ripley, Ezra
Troy
October 3, 1846
Witnesses: Boughton, A.M. & Cox, Joseph
Assigned to JOHNSON & COX
A geometrical "design...of a bold, fancy figure."
D 93
Hanley, Samuel
Troy
October 10, 1846
Witnesses: Henry, Thomas [?] & Martin, H.V.W.
Assigned to DUNHAM, SAGE & Co.
A four-boiler square cook with an additional two boilers above the hearth, i.e. a "Summer Arrangement," assuming that the very muddy reproduction of the drawing actually belongs with this patent rather than D99, below -- they seem to be identical. "My invention consists in the ornamental embellishments of the stove plate, being a pattern of foliated tracery consisting of wreaths around the door and other parts of the stove usually plain, and an intricat (sic) foliated ornament on the door of the stove composed of leaves and branches as shown in the drawing and casting of the same being filed in the Patent Office." Even though the Design Patent system was now in in its fourth year, Hanley still did not appreciate that there was no requirement to send the actual plates as well as the drawing and description in order to register for a patent. He was not alone in doing this, so that the Patent Office became cluttered up with unwanted cast iron. A.T. Dunham & Co. were in business from 1846 to 1854.
D 97
Wager, James
Troy
October 10, 1846
Witnesses: Greenough, J.J. & Browne, A.P.
A parlor stove. There is a fine drawing of the front plate; drawings of the side plate were submitted but are not included in the online copy. Wager's description was very detailed: "a Gothic pattern having clustered columns or pilasters projecting boldly at the corners; within these on the side there is a recess in imitation of a Gothic double headed window, within which is diamond shaped tracery centred with foliated ornaments, around the border are square dies with fleur de lis. The bases of the columns are embossed and around their centre they are bound by an oak leaf and acorn bands. The moulding on top is surmounted by the top plate in outline a truncated pyramid of irregular shape and ornamented with foliage. Over each of the Columns at the corners there is a low cover also similarly embellished. This stove is surmounted by an elevated fluted water urn ... this gradually tapers towards the top, the base covering the most elevated portion of the stove, and its summit terminated in a scroll and leaf ornament."
D 99
Low, Peter
Troy
October 10, 1846
Witnesses: Clum, A.W. & Low, John
The New England Airtight Cooking Stove -- a square, four-boiler cook stove with an additional two boiler holes in the "Summer Arrangement" on the front hearth. Peter Low had entered the foundry business in Troy in 1830, and remained active, with changing partners, until 1855. I do not know if or how he was related to Francis and Addison Low, Albany foundrymen 1830-1855.
1847: 4 Improvements, 21 Designs
No. 4996
Davy, John T.
Troy
March 6, 1847
Witnesses: Stone, G. & Thompson, A.A.
The drawing is headed "Heating Stove." This is an anthracite stove with one descending flue, the hot gases then rising up through four columns. There is a refueling hatch at the top of the firebox.
No. 5248
Pierce, Samuel
Troy
August 21, 1847
Witnesses: Greenough, J.J. & Thayer, J.M.
A huge 6 boiler-hole range, with the front / center pair of holes capable of being transformed into one large hole. The novel feature was "heating the oven or ovens by means of currents of air which are heated in passing through chambers surrounding the fire place, and which after passing through the oven or ovens are discharged into the closed ash pan to supply the combustion in the fire chamber." They would "heat the ovens by circulation therein, but at the same time carry out the vapors or gases evolved from the articles under treatment." The front doors of the firebox are described as the "roasting doors," i.e. they could be opened for roasting, broiling etc. on the hearth. Pierce was an experienced New York range-maker; this patent looks to his past involvement with these appliances, not his future which would be more concerned with stoves. See this blog post on the evolution of the range, and Pierce's contributions to it.
No. 5260
Bosworth, Nathaniel Jr
Troy
August 28, 1847
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Hazen, Charles H.
A four-boiler stove, with a large L-shaped oven and a two-hole summer arrangement "adapted to light cooking or summer use," with an independent firebox in hearth. This was another attempt to get around the Buck patent, so it had a single "sheet flue" behind and beneath the oven, ascending through two corner flues at the front of stove leaving the firebox door capable of being opened as usual to enable roasting and broiling. The problem with this arrangement was that it left the stove pipe at the front of the stove. This arrangement did not catch on! Bosworth was in partnership with Gilbert Geer at the Mechanic Street foundry, but only for this single year.
No. 5324
Davy, John T.
Troy
October 9, 1847
Witnesses:Talbot, William & Jones, P.L.
Similar to his previous patent, i.e. a square cook with an extra firebox and two holes in the front hearth (a "summer arrangement"). The drawings are good and clear -- they show a rather complicated (Buck patent-avoiding) flue system running all around the oven, with an additional flue to insulate the top of the oven from the bottom of the firebox and regulate the draft from the secondary firebox in the summer arrangement. There was also a ventilator for the oven -- a sliding damper. This looks like an eminently functional stove, just a bit more complicated and therefore, probably, expensive to make than the standard "revertible three-flue" stove covered by Buck's patent which was becoming the industry standard.
D 105
Whitney, Amaziah
Albany
January 5, 1847
Witnesses: Bancroft, R.L.G. & Ransom, Alban
Assigned to RANSOME, S.H.
Cast iron parts of oval sheet-iron heater -- includes two profiles through plates. Very similar to Rathbone's D 50 of 1946.
D 106
Ransom, Samuel H.
Albany
January 5, 1847
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Thayer, B.H.
An ornamental parlor stove, with two columns, in a highly decorated rococo style "in the style of Louis XIV and although not easily described in words, ... fully represented in the drawings." Very similar to Vose's D 63 of the previous year, and easy to mistake for it.
D 111
Ripley, Ezra
Troy
February 27, 1847
Witnesses: Stewart, Samuel & Harvey, Samuel
Assigned to: JOHNSON & COX
A parlor stove "of bold configuration" with "an ornamental bracket of an entire fancy device" and "bold fancy scroll, leaf and diamond work."
D 112
Simmons, Peter J.
Troy
March 20, 1847
Witnesses: Demarest, T. & Strong, H.W.
Assigned to: RATHBONE, John F.
A nice gothic airtight parlor stove, with an urn.
D 113
Rathbone, John F.
Albany
March 20, 1847
Witnesses: Kennedy, James C. & Hazen, Charles H.
A step-stove with lattice designs on the door, and claw feet.
D 119
Geer, Gilbert
Troy
May 1, 1847
Witnesses: Sheldon, Cyrus D. & Smith, Elijah
The gothic front plate of a parlor stove, carved in "bold relief."
D 123
Low, Peter
Troy
May 22, 1847
Witnesses: Wood, J.B. & Briggs, James
A small woodcut of another four-hole square cook stove with two boiler holes in the hearth plate "Summer Arrangement." Unusually, this pattern had a name attached. It was for the American Hot Air Cooking Stove made by Low & Hicks of Albany, at the center of the big patent suit involving violation of Samuel Pierce's patent 4299 of 1845 cited above.
D 126
Smith, Elihu
Troy
June 12, 1847
Witnesses: Warren, Moses & Miller, Norman
"Elihu Smith's Design for the Trojan Parlor Stove." "The nature of my invention consists in the design and outer finish upon the feet bottoms, ends, front, back, top, and perpendicular flues, connected with the base a horizontal flue." The ornamentation consisted of "leaves and vines ... an upright Ogee, with leaves, inside of which is a turned bead," etc. A wonderful drawing. Smith seems to have re-used the decorated columns from a columnar stove, but to have hidden them away at the back. It would have needed to be free-standing in the middle of a room for them to be fully appreciated.
D 129
Wager, James
Troy
June 26, 1847
Witnesses: Martin, H.V.W. & Larned, John F.
A four-hole stove with the front holes in a complex pattern (to permit a single large boiler, sometimes called a "dairy top"?) extending over the front. The front and side plates are decorated with scenes and figures, but the reproduction is not good enough to make them out, and the description does not help (though it does go into detail about the moldings bordering the plates).
D 130
Vose, Samuel D.
Albany
June 26, 1847
Witnesses: Bleecker, W.E. & Fellman, Jno. C. Jr.
An enormously elaborate parlor stove, with high relief carving all over in the "style of Louis XIV."
D 131
Ripley, Ezra
Troy
July 3, 1847
Witnesses: Henry, Charles & Farling, Wm. H. Jr.
Assigned to: JOHNSON & COX
The original drawing of this gothic stove is in the Rensselaer County Historical Society's collection (hereafter RCHS). Its crowning glory was "an ornamental vase piled up with leaves, flowers and buds."
D 132
Ripley, Ezra
Troy
July 3, 1847
Witnesses: Henry, Charles & Farling, Wm. H. Jr.
Assigned to: JOHNSON & COX
Ditto. A "Gothic niche with diamond back ground and a fancy dome."
D 133
Burgess, John
Troy
July 3, 1847
Witnesses: Sheldon, Cyrus D. & Geer, Erastus
Assigned to: GEER, Gilbert
The Gothic arches, a door and two windows, forming the front for an air-tight parlor stove "to be cut in bold relief." A very full description.
D 141
Ransom, Samuel H.
Albany
August 7, 1847
Witnesses: Brown, James & Clark, H.
A step-stove with bulged-out upper cooking holes.
D 142
Rathbone, John F.
Albany
August 7, 1847
Witnesses: Kennedy, James C. & Hazen, Charles H.
A square, flat cook stove, with a gothic windows design. The description is, most unusually, printed.
D 151
Ripley, Ezra
Troy
September 11, 1847
Witnesses: Ingalls, H.B. & Fuller, J.E.
Assigned to: JOHNSON & COX
Plates for a parlor stove.
D 155
Gordon, J.G.
Schaghticoke
October 2, 1847
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Grossbeck, Stephen
An ordinary four-hole Square Cook with two holes in the hearth plate (not shown in the drawing) -- another proclaimed "air tight". Notice that this does not have the Buck-style large oven in the form of a reversed L extending under the firebox. There seems to have been a small lower oven instead.
D 156
Green, Jeremiah D.
Troy
October 2, 1847
Witnesses: Demarest, J. & Faulkner, Jonas
Assigned to: VIALL & WARREN [Mechanicville]
A good if muddy illustration of an elaborate parlor stove. "To save unnecessary labor in drawing, but half of the several plates, vase and leg are delineated, the remaining patterns being similar to and symmetrical with those represented. But one quarter of the top is shown for the same reason."
D 157
Rathbone, John F.
Albany
October 23, 1847
Witnesses: Kennedy, James C. & De Witt, Richard Varick
An air-tight square parlor stove -- "the side and back not shewn, being similar and symmetrical with the side and front as represented, except that the back has the usual opening and flange for the applying and fitting the pipe or smoke flue to the stove." Notice the circular air control in the front hearth -- a common feature.
D 158
Gibbs, Samuel W.
Albany
October 23, 1847
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Bancroft, R.L.G.
Assigned to: POTTS, J.C.
Another Air-Tight Parlor Stove -- the type which had rapidly displaced columnar stoves from favor.
D 160
Gibbs, Samuel W.
Albany
November 27, 1847
Witnesses: Ellison, William S. & Paddock, William S.
Assigned to: QUACKENBOSS, A.
Another. A different form of draft control damper.
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