WHO'S THE INVENTOR?

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2751, 11 December 1871, Page 2

WHO'S THE INVENTOR?

To the Editor. Sm—The Times called attention a few day’s since to what it described as “ an ingenious modification of the American Indianrubber stamp,” which it alleged had “been invented by Mr T. H. Snowden, of this City.'’ The absurdity of the Tima’ statement needs no comment. Mr Snowden himself imist hare felt uncomfortable under the weight of the qnderserved eulogium thus bestowed upon him. Mr Snowden is not the inventor of either the stamp or the mechanism which contains it. Stamps of precisely similar kinds and mounted in a precisely similar manner, have been in use ft r years in business houses at home. Nor can Mr Snowden claim to be unacquainted with this fact. Mr Inglis, of George street, has long had this stamp in use ; and Mr Snowden, who axhed for permission to look at if, can only claim the merit of having produced a copy. In the contrivance of Air Snowden’s, and upon the ingenuity of which the Times exhausts the language of panegyric,

there is no one departure from, the mechanism of the original stain ■> which can be regarded as an improvement or which would entitle him to be distinguished-as the “inventor.” As there is some talk of this “ ingenious modification” Icing patented, I should like to be informed what new principle, or what now application of an eld principle, is here claimed by Mr Snowden to entitle him to the privilege of patent rights ? I am, &c., BALCTI. Dunedin, Dec. 11, 1871-