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THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



Perlman Wins the Demountable Rim Suit. 



> H. Perlm.j 



THE tin;.! <Iecision of the courts in favor of Louis H. Perl- 

 man establishing the validity of his patents, and enjoining 

 the Standard Welding Co., is of great importance to the 

 automobile trade. The advantages of the demountable rim are 

 self-evident and well-known in the trade. The first public use 

 of this invention was in June, 1905, when Thery substituted a 

 new tire for a damaged one in 80 seconds, an unprecedented feat. 

 He used the invention of Gaston Vinet. patented in March of 

 that year. Szisz won 

 the Grand Prix in 



1906 in a Renault 

 car equipped witli 

 Vinet rims. About 



1907 the Standard 

 Welding Co. and 

 other concerns be- 

 gan making de- 

 mountable rims. 



Louis H. Perl- 

 man, of New York 

 City, applied for a 

 patent for a "re- 

 movable" rim on 

 May 21, 1906. This 

 application was con- 

 tinued and substi- 

 tuted by another 

 filed June 29, in 

 which the word "de- 

 tachable" was used. 

 Later ''demountable'' 

 was advised by a 

 patent examiner. 

 \'inet's patent of 1905 was cited by the U. S. Patent Office. 



Mr. Perlman conceived the need of some such invention away 

 back in 1900. Several times, while riding in a friend's machine, 

 he shared tire troubles with his host, and three years later the 

 idea of a demountable rim shaped itself in his brain. 



Mr. Perlman's first rim was completed by July 1, 1903. The 

 first real road test was on a Royal car in August, 1904, after the 

 preliminary rim had been improved by Mr. Perlman in some 

 particulars. To be brief, Mr. Perlman's solution of the de- 

 mountable rim problem lay in his invention of the separating 

 wedge, the bolt and the nut, and the use of the short-stem lug 

 and the air space between the rims. His idea was not to obtain 

 the greatest measure of contact between the tire and the wheel 

 rim which had been the aim of others. Although Mr. Perlman 

 believed he had a perfectly original invention when he entered 

 the Patent Office in May, 1906, it was not until February 4, 1913, 

 that his patent Xo. 1,052,270 was finally granted. For the better 

 part of five years he argued and argued in order to obtain claim 

 No. 10. It took him that time to convince the authorities that 

 he had a mechanical improvement of a patentable character. Then 

 followed more delay before claims Nos. 11, 12 and 13 were 

 allowed. His persistence was needful, because it was upon the 

 infringement of claims 8, 11, 12 and 13 that he filed his memor- 

 able suit against the Standard Welding Co. in October, 1913. 



Claim No. 8 covers the short-stem lug; and claims 11, 12 and 

 13 cover the means for locking a demountable rim to a wheel. 

 The importance of ^ese claims so far as the whole industry is 

 concerned is such that they are quoted here in full : 



8. The combination of a deTiountable rim having radially 

 disposed clincher flanges, a tire shoe having beads engaging said 

 flanges, a wedge-shaped clamping plate bearing against said 



beads and adapted when moved to force said beads against said 

 flanges, and means accessible from the inside of the rim for draw- 

 ing the clamping i)late radially toward the rim. 



11. The combination, with a wheel body, of a demountable 

 rim therefor, a locking element, having a tapering portion, that 

 is adapted to be moved radially and to thereby exert pressure 

 against the rim outwardly radially of the wheel body, and to act 

 as a wedge laterally, said locking element having an engagement 

 with the wheel body whereby it may be moved radially of the 

 wheel body. 



12. The combination with a wheel and its felly, of a de- 

 mountable rim therefor, a locking element having a tapering end 

 that is adapted to be moved radially and to thereby act as a 

 wedge laterally and exert pressure against said rim radially of 

 the wheel, said locking element having a threaded engagement 

 with the wheel structure whereby it may be moved radially of 

 the wheel. 



13. The combination, with a wheel body, of a demountable 

 rim therefor, and a locking element, having a tapering portion, 

 that is adapted to be moved to exert pressure against the rim 

 outwardly radially of the wheel body, and to act as a wedge lat- 

 erally, said locking element having an engagement with the wheel 

 body. 



L'pon appeal by the defendant, the Standard Welding Co., the 

 case was decided in Mr. Perlman's favor by Judge William H. 

 Hunt, pf the United States District Court for the Southern Dis- 

 trict of New York, on August 18, 1915. Later, on February 15 

 of the present year, the Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously 

 affirmed the decision of the District Court. On March 8, just 

 passed, an injunction was issued by the United States District 

 Court for the Southern District of New York by which the 

 Standard Welding Co., Cleveland, Ohio, is enjoined from the 

 further manufacture and sales of demountable rims. It has been 

 variously stated that the Standard Welding Co. has been pro- 

 ducing of late years anywhere between SO and 60 per cent of 

 the demountable rims supplied to car manufacturers. Its daily 

 production has been stated to be in the neighborhood of 12,000 

 rims. This gives some idea of the increased demand for this 

 feature of motoring convenience. The very words of the patent 

 claims and the decision of the courts make it clear that almost 

 every demountalile rim maker in the country is aft'ected by the 



Starting with the Perlman patent of 1906 and tracing the files 

 down to November, 1915, the official records show the issuance 

 of 52 so-called demountable rim patents — that is to say, for rims 

 specifically designated as demountable ; but, as a matter of fact, 

 one will lind nearer a thousand related rim patents. Curiously, 

 15 of the demountable rim patents appeared in 1913, the very 

 year that the Perlman patent came out ; and there were 13 others 

 of this class, so officially designated, in the succeeding year. In 

 1915 ten were issued. These facts help to give the reader some 

 idea of the inventive activity in this particular field and show how 

 firm a grip the demountable rim has taken upon both the manu- 

 facturer and the motoring populace. While many of these in- 

 ventions have been developed to a point, and a number of them 

 placed upon the market, still but few of them have survived the 

 test of service. According to one authority, the principal local- 

 wedge types of demountable rims that have received general 

 application are the "Stanweld," "Empire," "Fisk," "Firestone" 

 and "Michelin." Of course, there are others. 



The rim problem has engaged the attention of automobile en- 

 gineers and inventors ever since the machines gained popularity. 

 The files of the United States Patent Office show 746 patents of 

 all classes dealing with rims of one kind or another, and this leads 

 logically to the broad question of the history of rim manu- 

 facture. As has been said by one of the foremost rim makers 

 in this country : "There is no question that ease was the greatest 

 force back of the designing of a quick-detachable, demountable 



