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HISTOKY OF DENTAL SUEGEEY 281

appliances, ini?trnmcnts, etc., for manipTilating vulcanite, both in this country
and abroad, especially on vulcanizers and articulators.
Letters patent were granted to John A. Cummings on June 7, 1864, for an
"improvement in artificial gums and palates," and on account of a defect
were re-issued January 10, 1865, to the Dental Vulcanite Company, and
later on account of a defect were re-issued March 21, 1865, to said company.
The Goodyear Company by assignment became the legal owners and issued to
dentists, for various sums, "licenses and agreements" to use its process only
in their own business, the license not to be assigned, sold, transferred or other-
wise disposed of, and the licensee not to encourage infringements, and if he
found anyone infringing lie was to report it to the company and they were to
bring suit against the infringer. These licenses were generally given for one
year, and were signed by the licensee, the agent, and Josiah Bacon, treasurer,
who, on account of liis arbitrary methods and meanness in dealing with the
dental profession, was shot and killed in San Francisco. The contest as to
the validity of the patent between the Goodyear Company and the whole dental
profession of the United States was long and bitter. Finally S. S. White took
up the cause for the profession and spent much time and money, and in the
end won the case and wiped out tlie aljoniination.

CENTRAL ( AVITY OK AIR CIIAJIKER PLATES.

The "Dental News Letter" for October, 1848, contains the following report
to the Pennsylvania Association of Dental Surgeons: "The committee ap-
pointed by you to examine into the merits of 'Gilbert's patent cavity plate,
beg leave to report, that with reference to the priority of invention of this plate,
your committee do not pretend definitely to report, in-as-much as numbers
claim the originality from ten to fifteen years back; still there does not seem
to be any evidence of it, except their own assertions. However, some have con-
structed a plate with a number of chambers, and consider it to have been done
for the same purpose as the single chamber claimed by Gilljert, and that the in-
vention of one is etjuivalent to the invention of the other, and that substitu-
ting one chamber for any number does not entitle the modification to the credit
of originality. Now in-as-much as Mr. Gilbert was the first (as far as your
committee are aware), to make the 'cavity plate' public, he is entitled to the
credit of the invention so far as it subserves the public good, for we make no
doubt that those who have been capable of confining it to the secrets of their
own closets for fifteen years would do so that much longer. In a great num-
ber of cases it has been markedly successful, and in cases, too, where springs