Henry Albert Seymour gramophone patents

[2Bdecided]

Available for free download from Espacenet.

Click on "original document" on the left, then click on "download" at the top. Diagrams are on the last page.

GB19431 (1904)
"An Improved Recording Instrument in connection with Phonographs, Graphophones and similar Machines for Registering Sounds."
http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicat ... &KC=A&ND=4
- a modification to a phonograph recorder where the weight of the diaphragm etc is mostly born by a wheel riding on the cylinder's surface near the stylus, allowing the diaphragm to be of the correct weight and stiffness for optimal sound reproduction, rather than the higher stiffness required by the weight of the system.

GB19856 (1904)
"A Pneumatic Diaphragm for Recording and Reproducing Sound in connection with Phonographs, Graphophones, and similar Machines."
http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicat ... &KC=A&ND=4
- a sound box / reproducer / recorder where instead of having one diaphragm, two separate glass diaphragms are used, in parallel, separated by washers.

GB103904 (1917)
"An Adjustable Fibre Needle Holder for Gramophone Sound-boxes."
http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicat ... &KC=A&ND=5
- a neat little adapter to allow fibre needles to be used with sound boxes that only have a small circular hole for steel needles.

GB107262 (1917)
"Improvements in the Construction of Gramophones and Phonographs."
http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicat ... &KC=A&ND=5
- a way of mounting the tone arm which allows an external horn gramophone to be fitted with a lid.
(the patent office's copy is a really lousy scan, especially of page one)

Hope these are of interest. If anyone else is thinking of searching out old patents, this page is very useful...
http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpsubjec ... ching.html

Cheers,
David.

[Steve]

GB107262 (1917)

I'm at a complete loss to see what he was attempting to protect by this patent? The inverted tone-arm being supported by "something" that allows a horn to be connected to it? Hmmmm......sounds like the Victor / G & T back-bracket to me but only made of wood? Hardly revolutionary, is it?

As for the lid covering a horn gramophone....er....sorry Henry but Pathé got there a decade before you!

I've followed all the so-called developments made by Reverend Griffiths and Seymour etc and to date, not a single one of them appears to offer any significant development whatsoever. All 'their' ideas were someone elses and usually implemented a LONG time before they 'thought' of them.

[chunnybh]

You are right. Most of Seymour's so called original ideas existed before in some form or another.
The big boys at the time were producing mediocre mass produced machines. Why improve something that is selling well.
Seymour on the other hand was taking all the knowledge available at the time and implementing it in his machines. His little improvements to existing ideas is what made him special. Something picked up by Mr Ginn. As for having ideas patented, well I am surprised he was granted some of them, or was he. I've see several Seymour items with patent numbers but cannot find them listed anywhere.

[2Bdecided]

Any applications that were never published (e.g. provisional applications that were never turned into proper applications) don't seem to exist online. They're certainly not in Espacenet - see the last link I posted.

The UK IPO's manual search service costs £5 per patent, and is available by filling in "Form 23". This can be done online, with documents returned via email, from here...
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/p-apply-online-uk ... cklist.htm
I don't know how much luck you'd have with this, but I've been told they have records for everything submitted. The British Library page says "The only record of unpublished applications is the very brief announcement in the Official Journal, which is not online prior to 1998. We have copies on paper, but the announcements can only be retrieved easily by known number before 1915, or applicant name and date after 1916. The only information in them is the applicant's name and contact address (which is often a legal representative's rather than their own), and a very brief title for the invention. They were not published at all for much of World War II, due to a combination of paper shortages and heightened technical secrecy."

The patent number quoted in that Expert catalogue (18771/30) doesn't mean anything to me. The number was also stamped on the tone arms of Expert gramophones...
http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/e ... -282512319
...but Espacenet doesn't seem to recognise it in any form.

Who would have filed it? Ginn? Can't find anything from him. Phillips? Nothing so early from him. (couple from the 1950s though.) Wilson? Not this one. Expert gramophones? Nope.

It's fascinating but frustrating in equal measure. When you see how bad the OCR is, it makes you doubt that they have most of the inventors credited correctly.

Cheers,
David.