B A C K   T H E N

Mr. Fall’s Machine

Mr. Fall and his machine. Sanford, about 1900. Who Mr. Fall was, and what his machine was intended to do, are not known. Only an expert on perpetual motion machines could judge if this, perhaps, was one. Know-it-alls at the Patent Office summarily returned all patent applications for such devices.

In the early ‘90s, “Maine men” averaged three patents a week. (Between 1884 and 1895 American women received nearly 4,000 patents.) The inventions of Mainers F.E. and F.O. Stanley—dry photographic plates and a steam auto—are well known. The vain Hiram Maxim of Sangerville, inventor of the machine gun, a light bulb, and many other devices, claimed that Edison cribbed his best ideas. He also insisted that he would have invented the telescope if Galileo hadn’t done so first. Less well known was his brother Hudson, whose invention of smokeless gunpowder “irritated [Hiram] to the last degree.” Horace Woodman, of Saco, invented a card stripper widely used in textile mills. After a twelve-year legal battle he received a judgment of $100,000 from forty-six New England cotton manufacturers. Among the more novel inventions of Mainers was the machine devised by a Hampden man said to sharpen the caulks of horseshoes without having to remove the shoes from the horse.

Dr. J. W. Trussel, of Rockland, has invented a little appliance that will endear him to the farmers and all who have to milk cows. It is a simple affair by which the tail of the cow is strapped firmly, but in a manner calculated to avoid injuring the sensibilities of the animal, to her hind leg so she cannot switch the aforesaid tail into the eyes of the milker or deposit with it particles of undesirable foreign substances in the milk. —The [Bangor] Industrial Journal, Aug. 21, 1891.

Another device of appeal to farm wives, the result of a brainstorm of a Mr. York of Bailey’s Island, was fitted to the legs of chickens that were let loose to pick garden insects. When the aforesaid hens attempted to scratch, they were promptly upended. Dr. Bragdon, an Ellsworth dentist, invented a vibrator for painless tooth extraction; three wires came from a battery, two being held by the patient (one in each hand), the third attaching to the forceps. A woman who had one tooth removed reportedly found the experience so pleasurable that she had another ten out. The brother of a Dover-Foxcroft man invented a breakaway device that separated the thills from the calliage in the event of a runaway. Foolish man, he turned down an offer of $10,000 for the rights.

It is fitting that Mr. Fall hailed from the Sanford area, a community noted for mechanical ingenuity. Sanford Mills, established on the Mousam River by Englishman Thomas Goodall in 1867, became the nation’s first, and leading, manufacturer of imported mohair plush. In addition to making carriage robes, horse blankets, and fake furs, the mills produced linings and seat covers for the Pullman company. They perfected the means for producing plush bearing colorful designs not unlike the painting of flowers on Mr. Fall’s wall. By 1899, the plush mill and the separate Goodall Worsted mill occupied eight acres.

According to a reporter, “No intelligent description of the process of making plush is possible, unless one is standing by the side of the loom…,” so none will be attempted here. “The machinery…is, for the most part, the product of the skill and brains of overseers and workmen.”

The secret of the machines is kept within the four walls, and the only mohair combing machines in America are in the Sanford Mills; they are made in England. The looms for the mills are made in America, and the important parts are made within the mill. Two or three years of patient study have been put upon single points of the machinery. These are the secrets that are guarded.

Occasionally attempts are made to ferret out the essential principles of this manufacture. Men have no compunction about stealing ideas. The law does not touch a man who steals within bounds of a copyright or patent… The operatives are skilled and trusted men, with a few girls. In a quiet country town every face is known. This is an advantage that led to the determination of the location of these mills…

“Not long ago,” said Mr. Goodall [a son], “we gave a man sent to Sanford by another concern, a pretty warm welcome… He was ordered out. He didn’t go. They sent for usand we called on him. The man was still there. He said he would go as he expressed it ‘when he got d—n good and ready.’ He stood there, and near him was a vat of blue. In less than half a minute he was bourne struggling to the vat and dipped once, twice, three times to the crop. When he came out he was a picture. He left the mill and never returned… Once a workman poured a pot of gudgeon grease down the back of one man who refused to leave the mill when ordered.” The [Bangor] Industrial Journal, Oct. 3, 1884.

Text by William H. Bunting from A Days Work, Part 2, A Sampler of Historic Maine Photographs, 1860–1920, Part II. Published by Tilbury House Publishers, Gardiner, Maine. 800-582-1899