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| Most of the patents prior to 1836 were lost in the Dec. 1836 fire. Only about 2,000 of the almost 10,000 documents were recovered. Little is known about this patent. There are no patent drawings available. This patent is in the database for reference only.
“The above formidable title precedes a specification of ten pages, not easily epitomized, and not sufficiently interesting to the major part of our readers, to be given at length. The simple intention of the cognomen. wheel and rest,' is, that a wheel is to be made to turn in the vicinity of some other body which remains at rest; and it is in the space between these that the article to be beaten, dressed, ground, thrashed, cleaned, hulled, &c. &c. &c., is to be placed.
Some familiar exemplifications of this new principle are given; we are told that this principle is exemplified whenever a revolving body presents an external surface, nearly in contact with the surface of a body at rest; a grindstone, as commonly hung in a frame, and an artificial globe with a wooden horizon, offer familiar illustrations. The globe, with the poles in the horizon, moving from west to east, represents the WHEEL, and the east half of the horizon represents the REST, extending from pole to pole. Any or every point of this rest, may be selected as the working point of the machine. In like manner, if the grindstone be the wheel, half the frame becomes the rest, or rather three rests, one parallel to the axis, the two others at right angles to it, and parallel to each other.
This wheel and rest may form a flax dresser, or a thrashing machine, by having slats on its periphery to break and dress the flax, or to beat out the grain. It may grind by having its face covered with bur, or other stones, properly dressed. The face of the wheel may be covered with tin, or sheet-iron, or with nails, for hulling, grinding apples, &c. &c. The axis of the wheel may be horizontal, oblique, or perpendicular. Wheels performing either of these operations may be placed alone on a shaft, or the shaft may be made long enough to receive the whole of them together.
The patentee says, “what I claim as new, and as my own invention in the above described machine, with its various modifications, is, the direct application of the wheel and rest, without the intervention of costly and complicated machinery, for breaking and dressing flax, for thrashing grain, for grinding grain, plaster, paints, bark, dye-woods, and other hard substances; for grinding apples, cleaning clover seed, and hulling barley, and the like.” He afterwards goes on to tell the novelty of all these things, in the mode in which he performs them.
After this exposition, will it not be advisable for our millers, and other grinders, flax dressers, and performers of the multitudinous operations which have been effected by means of the “ wheel and rest,” from a period antecedent to the Noachian deluge, to pause and examine, lest they should interfere with newly acquired rights and claims?”
Journal of the Franklin Institute Vol. 5, Aug. 1829 pgs. 119-120
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