{"id":7904,"date":"2021-03-13T20:32:18","date_gmt":"2021-03-14T01:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=7904"},"modified":"2021-03-13T20:35:02","modified_gmt":"2021-03-14T01:35:02","slug":"episode-281-massey-ferguson-demolition-patent-record-found-under-water-looked-like-block-of-wood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=7904","title":{"rendered":"EPISODE 281 MASSEY FERGUSON DEMOLITION : PATENT RECORD FOUND UNDER WATER…LOOKED LIKE BLOCK OF WOOD"},"content":{"rendered":"
EPISODE 281   MASSEY FERGUSON DEMOLITION:   PATENT RECORD FOUND UNDER WATER\u2026LOOKED  LIKE A BLOCK OF STONE<\/p>\n

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alan  skeoch<\/div>\n
March 2021<\/div>\n

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Often things are not what they seem.   A friend pointed  that out to me once in a short<\/div>\n
comment.  \u201cI don\u2019t like him, I think I should get to know him better,\u201d  that comment stuck  <\/div>\n
in my brain.  Too easy to form snap judgments.  Get to know him better.  Get to know it better.<\/div>\n
That simple idea Cannot be dislodged.   Of course my friend  applied it to human relations but the<\/div>\n
comment is  bigger than that.  Often things are not what they seem to be.  Look closer.<\/div>\n

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As  the Massey Ferguson plant was tumbling around me I came upon a very unusual thing in<\/div>\n
the basement of a building about to be pushed down.  The basement had flooded but there<\/div>\n
were stepping stones here and there as the water was only two or three inches deep.  So<\/div>\n
exploration was possible.   Getting wet feet was to be avoided since most of my days<\/div>\n
were spent teaching history at Parkdale Collegiate.  Sloshing around in school was not something<\/div>\n
I wished to do.<\/div>\n

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Those stepping stones allowed me to hop scotch my way through this doomed cellar <\/div>\n
to a distant stairway exit. I  was glad those stones were there.  Lots of them.<\/div>\n
Big blocks of wood or stone.  Spongy!  Must be wood.<\/div>\n

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What the hell are these things.  Mushy.  So I stopped and pulled one of the blocks<\/div>\n
out of the black water.   Lo and behold\u2026.it was a book.  A book so large that it<\/div>\n
was thought to be a construction block\u2026perhaps stone at first\u2026then wood\u2026and<\/div>\n
finally paper.<\/div>\n

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In the darkness  I was unsure about the soggy thing.  Was  it important or some convoluted<\/div>\n
legal tome of no interest at sll.    So I carried the sodden mass up the stairwell to the daylight.<\/div>\n
Flipped it open.  Looked at the heading.   I was holding  The Canadian Patent Record volume<\/div>\n
dated January 31, 1909.   The Patent Record! Incredible.  The blocks in the sodden  basement<\/div>\n
were these records.   <\/div>\n

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How did this happened.  it seemed to me that Patent records were important documents.  Yet<\/div>\n
in the haste to vacate these books had been discarded and used as stepping stones<\/div>\n
by others who had explored this basement before me.  Time was critical. The excavators<\/div>\n
with their huge mouths were chewing at the building already.   My rescue was limited to<\/div>\n
this one book.<\/div>\n

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What to do with it was never resolved.   I still have the book.  Is it important to an<\/div>\n
archivist?   The last page number is 1,625.   Huge .  And there is an index.   Wonder if<\/div>\n
I can find any  Massey patents?   <\/div>\n

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In a random search\u2026i.e. opening the book in a totally random fashion I notice patents<\/div>\n
for railway track \u2018fish plates\u2019 and wooden handles for paint brushes.   Patents for<\/div>\n
railway spikes and a farm implement to remove Twitch grass  from hay fields.<\/div>\n

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THIS book is big\u2026.1,615 pages of patented inventions\u2026perhaps  more than<\/div>\n
5,000  inventions many of which pertained to the improvement of agricultural<\/div>\n
machines.   All neatly indesied by subject and also by  inventor.<\/div>\n

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PATENTED  DISC PLOW<\/div>\n

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Again my random search proved interesting.  Here was  a patent for a Disc Plow.  I happened to purchase<\/div>\n
an ancient disc  plow at a farm sale a few years  ago and it rests comfortably beside a wild apple tree where<\/div>\n
once my grandfather\u2019s barn once stood.   Patent Number 118,406 by John Lavery,  WAUBRA, Victoria, Australia,<\/div>\n
on May  18, 1909.  Filed April 17th, 1909.  followed by a description of the disc plow.<\/div>\n

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TWO FURROW RIDING DISC PLOW RESTING BENEATH A WILD APPLE TREE ON OUR FARM.  <\/div>\n

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Water was seeping into the buildings\u2026never very deep but deep enough<\/div>\n
to destroy any paper records left behind and strewn about.  It was only pure chance<\/div>\n
that I stepped  on the Patent Record book in the darkness.  The daylight picture<\/div>\n
above was taken in another building.<\/div>\n

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 Eventually the scene around the Massey plant looked<\/div>\n
like Berlin in 1945 after a bombing raid.<\/div>\n

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SUGGESTION CORNER:  WHAT SHOLD  I DO WITH THIS ARTIFACT?<\/div>\n

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IF I put the book back in our cellar where it is at least dry then it will just disappear.  Is it important enough for<\/div>\n
an archivist?    There are so many patents  described that it would take a month or more for some brave soul<\/div>\n
to put the book in digital form.  Just think of a book with 1,615 pages illustrating as many as 3 or 4 patients per<\/div>\n
page.   4 x 1,615 = 6,700 patents, likely more.<\/div>\n

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Maybe i am the only person that gives  a sweet damn about the book.  And  all I did was randomly turn<\/div>\n
a few of the 1,615 pages.   Likely doomed.<\/div>\n

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END EPISODE 281     CANADIAN PATENT RECORD BOOK<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EPISODE 281   MASSEY FERGUSON DEMOLITION:   PATENT RECORD FOUND UNDER WATER\u2026LOOKED  LIKE A BLOCK OF STONE alan  skeoch March 2021 Often things are not what they seem.   A friend pointed  that out to me once in a short comment.  \u201cI don\u2019t like him, I think I should get to know him better,\u201d  that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}