December 19, 1803. The machine shown in the Firchau patent comprises two discs which are rotated in opposite directions. On each disc is a finger which projects into a drum, into which the candy is put. The pins pass each other twice during each revolution of the disc and move in concentric circles, but do not have the relative in-and-out motion or figure 8 movement of the Dickinson machine. With only two hooks there could be no lapping of the candy, because there was no third pin to re-engage the candy while it was held between the other two pins. The movement of the two pins in concentric circles might stretch it somewhat and stir it, but it would not pull it in the sense of the art. The Firchau device never, so far as appears in the record, made candy experimentally or otherwise. Indeed, no candy was commercially pulled by machine before or after the issuing of the Firchau patent in 1893 until the introduction of the Dickinson principle, nine or ten years later.
Counsel for the respondent in seeking to narrow the construction of the broad claim of Dickinson rely on the circumstance that one of Dickinson's claims in the Patent Office was canceled on a reference to Firchau. The canceled claim of Dickinson was:
"In a candy-pulling machine in combination a series of pins or pulling members, and automatically acting means for causing said members to feed the candy to each other and pull the same."
The Examiner evidently considered that the word "series" might be held to cover a device with only two pins, as shown in the Firchau patent; though, having in mind the essential elements of the Dickinson patent, it could hardly have borne such a construction. However that may be, as neither Firchau nor anyone else has shown, with two pins only, the in-and-out movement in pulling candy, which is the fundamental element of the
