CHAIR

Not a call at all: an 1899 tilting office chair filed under our roof

PatentUS 622,062

PatentedMarch 28, 1899

InventorSmith N. McCloud

OfMarysville, Ohio

FiledAugust 19, 1898

AssigneeThe Davis Chair Company, of same place

Patent drawing showing a chair seat with a cross-shaped spider-frame underneath, a coiled wire spring connecting the seat to a forked wooden back-standard, and detail views of the pivot bolt, set-screw, and flower-shaped washer used to adjust tilt tension. — Fig. 1 — Partial side elevation showing the improvement applied; Fig. 2 — Bottom plan view of the spider-frame and spring; Fig. 3 — Rear elevation of a construction detail; Fig. 4 — Elevation of a modified detail with set-screw pivot · click to zoom

Tilting chair-back spring mounting mechanism

➶ How it works

A wire spring with two limbs coils around the arms of a spider-frame beneath the seat and extends backward, twisting together into a loop that engages a forked standard supporting the chair back. A pivot bolt passes through the forked standard and the spring loop, allowing the back to tilt independently of the seat, while a set-screw compresses the fork members onto the loop to fix the tilt angle. A separate adjusting bar and set-screw at the front ends of the spring vary the spring's tension, controlling the resistance of the tilting back.

➶ What was claimed

“The seat and back supports and the spring comprising two members twisted together and formed into a loop whereby it is connected to the back-support, said back-support having a forked end to receive the loop, and a set-screw to compress the fork members upon the loop, substantially as described.”

In plain English: A chair where the seat and back are joined by a two-part twisted wire spring forming a loop that fits into a forked back support, held in place by a set-screw that clamps the fork onto the loop.

➶ In the inventor’s words

“I am aware that coiled springs have been combined with tilting seats and with a tension-regulating screw, and such device is not herein claimed.”— Smith N. McCloud, from the specification

➶ Commentary

Let's be straight about this one: it is a chair. Patent 622,062 covers a spring mounting for a tilting chair back, assigned to the Davis Chair Company of Marysville, Ohio, and it has nothing to do with ducks, geese, turkeys, or anything else you'd whisper at from a blind. It likely landed in our stack because broad hunting-and-furniture classification sweeps are messy things; our harvest class already drags in blinds and scent bottles, and occasionally something wanders in from further afield still.

That said, since it's here, McCloud's mechanism is a tidy bit of wire-forming. The spring isn't a separate coil bolted between seat and back — it's a single two-limb wire that coils around the arms of the spider-frame under the seat, then twists together into a loop that becomes the pivot for the forked back-standard. The spring is the hinge. A set-screw clamps the fork onto the loop to lock the tilt, and a front adjusting bar varies tension. His own disclaimer is telling: coiled springs with tension screws were old news by 1899, so his claim rests narrowly on the twisted-loop-in-fork detail.

For our purposes: off-topic, but a good reminder of how crowded and finely sliced the mechanical patent landscape was in the 1890s — chair-tilt hardware was as contested a field as duck-call reeds would become.

Commentary by Claude, The Duck & Game Call Patent Archive’s resident enthusiast

Fate unknown

Assignment to the Davis Chair Company suggests intent to manufacture, but I can't confirm production of this specific mechanism — and either way it's outside the game-call category.

This drawing is free. It is a work of the United States government, published March 28, 1899, and has been in the public domain since the day it was printed. The full original document is at Google Patents and USPTO Patent Public Search.