Last week we looked at Ives’s modern paper safe. Today we present Moodie’s 19th-century toilet-paper safe:
“Toilet-Paper Safe,” Elhanan L. Moodie, US patent number: 416340, Filing date: Aug 31, 1889. It begins:
“Be it known that I, Elhanan L. Moodie, of the city and State of New York, have invented aii Improvement in Toilet-Paper Safes, 5 of which [this] is a specification.”
Here is part of Moodie’s explanation of how it works:
I make use of one or more reciprocating delivery-plates F, that are within openings in the plate 3, and these reciprocating delivery-plates are raised or lowered, as well as moved forward and back, and I remark that these plates F may be acted upon by any suitable mechanism for giving to them the requisite movement; but I prefer the device shown, and I remark that the upper surfaces of these reciprocating delivery-plates are roughened or covered with india-rubber or other suitable material, so as to apply to the lower sheet in the package of toilet-paper the force necessary to project the same laterally through the mouth 4; and it is to be understood that the reciprocating delivery-plates are raised, so that their surf aces press against the under surface of the lower sheet in the pile before such delivery-plates are moved toward the mouth 4, and thereafter such delivery-plates are lowered and returned back to their former position and are raised so as to press upon the sheet of paper, and in this manner one sheet after another is carried out through the mouth, the detaining needle or needles D acting to hold the second sheet from being moved with the first sheet, because such needle passes through the first sheet and into the second sheet, and as the first sheet is carried off laterally the paper is torn against the detaining-needle.