"I had no intention, neither had I any desire, to place any obstacle in the way of the extension of McCormick's patent, but the course he has taken, before your Board and before Congress, has compelled me to act in self defense, by which I have given your Honorable Board much trouble, which I would have gladly avoided."
Mr. McCormick also said to the Board: "If my claim be made out as so far appears from the evidence presented, it will be observed (as I think) that nothing will be left of Mr. Hussey's claim to which he is entitled, and all the improvements he has added since his patent have, I believe, been taken from mine." Reference is no doubt had to the effect that Hussey, in some of his machines, used only a single drive wheel and balanced his machine thereon. He confessed that he never received profits from his first patent until after twelve years of study, and never should have realized anything from the invention but for later improvements, and he continues as follows: "If then it shall appear that I am the original inventor of all the leading and important principles of the invention, is it wrong that I should ask for reciprocal benefits for myself, who alone have brought them into being? Mr. Hussey's prior patent stood in Mr. McCormick's way, but its inventor raised no voice against the extension of McCormick's rights unless his prior rights became endangered. The honors due Mr. Hussey were not lessened by the Commissioner of Patents when treating of a competitive claimant to have invented the reaper.
Not McCormick's Inventions
Mr. McCormick took out a third patent in 1847 covering inventions shown by the statement of Leander and others to have been the invention of the father or some one else. An application was made for the extension of this patent. It then became necessary that the applicant show that he had not reaped the benefits he believed himself entitled to through his monopoly for the term of the patent.
Neither Brilliant nor Extraordinary
The value of the second patent that of 1845, may be gathered from the words of the Commissioner of Patents: "The invention of 1845, considered in itself, and examined in presence of the reaping machine as then in successful operation, both in Europe and America, can scarcely be regarded as brilliant or in any degree extraordinary."
The Commissioner further said:
An Efficient Machine
"It was a conviction of the inefficiency of the machine that led the applicant to make his invention of 1847, which, by a modification of pre-existing elements, provided an advantageous location for the raker's seat. Upon this his fame as an inventor rests, and to this is his reaper indebted for the triumphs it has achieved. This seat had been previously known in at least nine patented reapers; but it had not been well placed, and an appropriate location for it was, up to 1847, an acknowledged desideratum. Whatever, however, may have been the value or the success of the reaper as improved in 1847, such value or success can exert no influence in determining the issue under discussion."
The Commissioner further said, referring to the 1847 patent: