File this under “The way things work.”
On the afternoon of Tuesday, January 29th, 1908, fire broke out in the boiler room of the Alfred Peats Co., manufacturer of exclusive wallpapers. Located in the Loop on Wabash Avenue, the fire quickly rose through several floors and spread to adjacent buildings. In this RPPC view taken while the fire still smoldered, you can see the shop front of Yawman & Erbe, who manufactured desks, file cabinets and other quality furniture for office and libraries. Chances are, if you’re over fifty, you once used one of their card catalogues. Plenty of them show up on eBay, though I knew very little about the company (headquartered in Rochester, NY) until this card tweaked my curiosity.
Armed with only “…N & ERBE MFG. CO” from the postcard, it’s surprising how easily I was able to piece together the story.
- Plugged the visible portion of the name on the sign into ancestry.com and was taken to a Chicago business directory which gave the company’s full name and address (pre-1909, however, which is when the city reformed its street numbering system)
- Searched for business history on Yawman & Erbe Mfg. Co. and found much about their home office and actual manufacturing site in Rochester, NY
- Used the company’s full name as a search tool at newspapers.com and found the front page coverage the day following the fire in the Chicago Inter-Ocean of Wednesday, January 29th
Yawman And Erbe Company History 1975 Mount and blade warband server. Rochester Colonial opens a new insulated glass manufacturing facility across Lyell Avenue. 1983-1985 Rochester Colonial purchases and renovates the 450,000 square foot Yawman & Erbe facility on Jay Street, immediately adjacent to Interstate 490. Yawman & Erbe Manufacturing Company, Inc. Is a New York Foreign Business Corporation filed On January 4, 1956. The company's filing status is listed as Active and its File Number is 98659. The Registered Agent on file for this company is Yawman & Erbe Manufacturing Company, Inc. And is located at 1099 Jay St., Rochester, NY 14611. Yawman And Erbe Mfg Co History Yawman And Erbe Desk Yawman and Erbe Manufacturing Company (plaintiff-appellee) brought this action for infringement by Cole Steel Equipment Company, Inc. (defendant-appellant) of Letters Patent 2,263,204 (referred to as 'the patent') issued to plaintiff.
Yet another Chicago disaster interests me for several reasons. First, it’s Chicago and for me that’s sufficient. Second, it involves a company whose products undoubtedly reached northwestern Iowa. Third, they made library equipment and, as Jorge Luis Borges observed “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” Fourth, aspiring architect Anson Tennant was eighteen or nineteen years old that year and on the cusp of moving to Chicago to attend the School of the Art Institute. It’s tempting to imagine Anson and his dad James Tennant in Chicago on business or making arrangements for school and actually witnessing the fire. They sometimes stayed in a hotel in that neighborhood. Somehow I feel a story coming on.
Philip Yawman and Gustav Erbe were both employees of Bausch & Lomb. In 1880, they left that firm to start their own business in Rochester New York. For the greater part of the life of the firm, Yawman & Erbe primarily were involved in the manufacture of office furniture and equipment. Yawman & Erbe Manufacturing Company, Inc. Yawman & Erbe Manufacturing Company, Inc. Filed as a Foreign Business Corporation in the State of New York on.
I love learning.
Incidentally, the Y&E loses from the fire amounted to $5,000. Their neighbors weren’t so lucky.
Yawman and Erbe Manufacturing Company (plaintiff-appellee) brought this action for infringement by Cole Steel Equipment Company, Inc. (defendant-appellant) of Letters Patent 2,263,204 (referred to as 'the patent') issued to plaintiff. From an interlocutory judgment and decree in plaintiff's favor declaring the patent valid in law and infringed by defendant, dismissing the defense of laches on the merits and referring the computation of damages between September 8, 1949 and November 18, 1958 to a Special Master, defendant appeals. On July 12, 1954 plaintiff's attorney wrote concerning 'resume infringement' which evoked a reply disclaiming infringement of 'any valid claim of the Clark patent' and asserting that the claims were invalid. The dispute by correspondence continued through 1954 and 1955 when suit was finally commenced on September 8, 1955. Defendant's answer was filed on December 20, 1955 but the note of issue for trial was not filed until June 19, 1957.
The trial took place in October 1958. On November 18, 1958 and before decision the patent expired. The patent in question purported to cover an invention and improvements in the method of furniture top construction. In essence the claims to invention embrace the placement of 'corner caps' and 'binding strips' around the curved margins of the top surface of desks, tables, and other similar articles of furniture. These caps and strips serve the mechanical function of better securing a protective linoleum top surface to the downwardly curving outer edges of a desk or table frame. In addition a decorative and more finished effect is obtained.
The lower part of the binding strip has a horizontal metal web or tongue which runs the length of the binding strip. This web is forced into a tight horizontal recess or narrow opening between two pieces of metal which are part of the desk or table frame.
The friction created by the snugness of the fit causes the binding strip to be held tightly to the frame. This method of frictional engagement of the binding strip to the frame does not appear to have been used in any of the prior patents in this area. If there be patentable novelty it must be found in this idea. Some of the representative prior patents set up by the defendant as anticipatory of the Clark patent are: Brainard No. 1,649,805 (1927), Soper No.
1,815,167 (1931), Hunter No. 1,822,032 (1931), Wege No.
Yawman And Erbe Mfg Co History
1,969,489 (1934), and Hunter No. 2,032,878 (1936). In the Brainard patent, the binding strip was welded to the frame; the Soper binding strip was affixed to the frame by a clamping strip; and in the Hunter patents the binding strips were either welded or bolted to the frames. Although the Wege patent teaches the method of inserting the binding strip into a groove, it is not held there by friction but rather by indentations punched into and through the flanges. It may be assumed that the prior patents did not anticipate the frictional engagement used in the Clark patent but this fact is not determinative unless this element satisfied the test of the statute (35 U.S.C.A. Reduced to its simplest terms 'frictional engagement' here is merely the holding together of two objects by means of forcing a projection on one object into a constricted opening on the other.
Yawman And Erbe History
Yawman And Erbe History Of America
- I have a Yawman & Erbe Mfg Co, 4 section stackable file cabinet set (small plaque i.d.s mfr). It is solid oak and is pre 1900. I rescued it from the trash at an old hydro electric plant.it was in rough shape so I had it repaired and refinished.
- Of composite Yawman-Erbe separable units” (ll. 11-12) Yawman & Erbe, a Rochester, New York, company, was founded in the 1890s by Philip H. Yawman and Gustav Erbe. It developed office systems for businesses, libraries, and other institutions that depended on successful methods for filing paper.
Pictures of Rochester and Monroe County, NY. Old pictures and postcards of landmarks and points of interest in Monroe County, NY. Monroe County GenWeb [homepage] Dicks Genealogy & History Corner [blog] Albums Airport and Aircraft [21]; Art [26]; Autos, Trucks, etc. [114]; Banks [43].
Although this idea may not be quite so generic as the 'wheel' nevertheless it is a common principle of mechanics known to every craftsman. It is not an invention sufficient to meet the patentable standards as defined by the Act or illustrated by the decisions. The Clark binding strip is made in one continuous piece and wraps around the four corner caps. In some of the prior patents the binding strips were made in four sections, the ends of each section abutting or dovetailing with the corner caps.
Yawman And Erbe Desk
Yawman And Erbe Company History
However, in Soper No. 1,815,167, Hunter No. 2,032,878 and Burrowes No.
Yawman And Erbe Mfg Co
1,235,432 (1917), one continuous strip was used, although in Burrowes it was merely an alternative feature. Thus all that the Clark patent does is to use the continuous strip in conjunction with the corner caps well known to the prior art.