--- In STMFC@..., "John Riddell" <jriddell@...> wrote:

Mechanical Engineer, William E. Fowler of Montreal applied for, and

was granted, two patents related to boxcars by the Patent Office of
the Canadian Department of Agriculture. Patent no. 122944 was granted
in 1909 and patent no. 148647 was granted in 1913. I have copies of
both patents.

John,

Oh they're CANADIAN patents. A search on the web site of the Canadian
Intellectual Property Office at:

http://patents1.ic.gc.ca/intro-e.html

Turns up the following list:

214286 INTEGRAL BRAKE BEAM
185977 RUNNING BOARD
167716 DUMP CAR
164188 BRAKE BEAM FULCRUM
160479 STAKE POCKET
159480 STAKE POCKET
157400 CAR SIDE
156071 CAR SIDE
154859 BRAKE BEAM
148647 BOX CAR
147712 BOX CAR
147711 CAR FLOOR
147710 CAR SIDE
147709 CAR SIDE
147708 CAR SIDE
147707 CAR SIDE TIGHTENER
128790 BRAKE MECHANISM
122944 BOX CAR
122366 BRAKE MECHANISM
122363 BRAKE MECHANISM
122362 BRAKE MECHANISM
122029 BRAKE BEAM
103630 RUNNING-BOARD FOR CAR ROOFS

It seems that Mr. William E. Fowler was a bit more prolific that we
thought. Incidentally, the links don't work outside of the web site,
so you'll need to go to the site and search on the numbers. To get the
list on the site, you need to search on the name, exactly as they have
it entered: FOWLER, WILLIAM E

Unfortunately, the actual text of the patents is not available, so we
still don't know what all they cover.

However, they didn't seem to go anywhere. The running-board was sold
to Miner. The brake beam patents were sold to Simplex, except the last
one (top of the list) which was sold to American Steel Foundries. This
last patent was issued to William E. Fowler, Jr. possibly his son.

All the rest were assigned to the Fowler Car Co. It would be nice to
see what they actually covered, and if there were any additional
patents issued in the U.S. I would suspect that by 1913, when the car
side patents were applied for, the basic steel framing was all prior
art, and the only thing left to patent were improvements in details.
It would be interesting to see what they were, never the less.

Dennis Storzek