This action was brought to recover damages for the alleged infringement of letters patent granted July 24, 1888, to George Cumming, for an “improved portable forge,” and by him assigned to the plaintiff in error. On the trial in the court below, and at the close of all the evidence, the counsel for the defendant requested the court to direct a verdict for the defendant, on the ground of noninfringement. The motion was granted, and the jury was so instructed. Judgment for the defendant followed.

If the judgment was right, the ground of the court’s action is unimportant.

In the specification contained in the patent sued on, it is stated that:

It will be seen that, according to the patentee’s own declaration, the invention claimed consists: First in the form and arrangement of the several parts of the forge and the method of securing them together; and, second, in a certain improvement in the form and arrangement of the shell, toothed gearing, spindles, etc., of the blower producing the blast for the furnace, as is more fully set forth in the specification.

The case shows that portable knock-down forges, the constituent dements of which are a hearth-pan, a wind-pipe, a blower, and supporting-legs, each separable from the other and capable of being joined together by various clamping devices, were old long before the patent to Cumming of 1888. There had also been previously patented to Cumming a hand blower, which is also a fan blower, in which patent he described that invention as relating to certain improvements in hand blowers, and stated that:

And in which patent he claimed:

The blower of Cumming' of 1884 was, of course, as much a part of the state of the art as any other device patented or used prior to the issuance of the patent in suit.

In the specification contained in the patent in suit, the patentee expressly states that the main features of the blower there claimed are not new, but are “ in some respects similar” to the blower patented to him in 1884, but further declares that “there are important modifications in the manner of construction which render the blower more especially adapted for the purposes of this portable forge.”

Except in respect to such differences as may exist between the blower of the patent in suit and that patented to Cumming in 1884, the only new idea embodied in the patent in suit is the making of the wind-pipe of the plaintiff’s forge serve the double purpose of conveying the blast and supporting certain other parts of which the forge is composed. No previous forge, so far as appears, ever made the wind-pipe perform that double function. That idea was therefore new, and it was useful, too; for it reduced the number of parts of a very useful device, thereby rendering easier and more rapid its separation for transportation, and the reassembling of its various parts for use. Upon that ground the plaintiff in error’s patent is sustainable, but it is the only thing new about it, with the exception of the modification in the blower therein specifically described.

We are unable to see any merit in the contention of his counsel that the real invention consists in dividing the forge “along certain well-defined lines,” which consists only of the separation of the hearth-pan, blower, wind-pipe, and supporting-legs one from the other, which may be done easily and quickly, and as easily and quickly reassembled. The various parts of the older portable knock-down forges were similarly separated and reassembled. The circumstance that this may be done more readily and quickly with the Cumming forge did not involve the inventive faculty at all. It may, and probably did, make that forge more useful, and therefore more desirable than the others. But there was nothing new about that feature of it.

It must be remembered that the patent sued on is in no sense a pioneer one, but a mere improvement on prior portable forges. In, *398 such cases the patentee is limited to the precise devices and combinations shown .and claimed in his patent. Boyd v. Janesville Hay Tool Co., 158 U. S. 260 , 15 Sup. Ct. 837, 39 L. Ed. 973 ; Brown v. Huntington Piano Co., 134 Fed. 735 , 67 C. C. A. 639 ; Rich v. Baldwin, Tuthill & Bolton, 133 Fed. 920 , 66 C. C. A. 464 ; Julius King Optical Co. v. Bilhoefer, 127 Fed. 127 , 62 C. C. A. 241 ; Tabor Bas-Relief Photograph Co. v. Marceau (C. C.) 87 Fed. 871 ; Ransome v. Hyatt, 69 Fed. 148 , 16 C. C. A. 185 ; Ney v. Ney Mfg. Co., 69 Fed. 405 , 16 C. C. A. 293 ; Overweight Counterbalance Elevator Co. v. Improved Order of Red Men’s Hall Ass’n, 94 Fed. 155 , 36 C. C. A. 125 .

In the case last cited, where, as in the case at bar, the trial court directed a verdict for the defendant, and in which case the contention of the plaintiff in error was mainly directed to the alleged error of the court in not submitting the question of equivalency of certain elements to the jury, in view of the testimony of certain experts, this court said:

In the same case we further said:

In respect to the blower of the pátent in suit, the main features of it were not new, as the patentee himself stated in his specification. Clearly, the claim to it can only be held to cover the differences between it and the blower of the Gumming patent of 1884. These *399 differences consist of the removable cover in front of the fan casing to admit the fans, a boss in the middle of that cover to receive the fan spindle, a set of bearings on the rear side of the fan casing for one end of the speed gear spindles, a cap on the rear of the casing and secured thereto to form the space for the speed-gears. In th°-blower of the defendant in error these novel features of the blower of the plaintiff in error do not appear. The defendant’s fan casing has not a removable cover in its front, but is composed of two similar parts divisible in the middle; one part being no more the cover than the other.' The defendant’s blower has no boss in the middle of its front to receive the forward end of the fan spindle; the forward end of that spindle has no bearing in the front of the fan casing at all; the back of the shell of the defendant’s fan casing does not contain a set of bearings for one end of the gear spindle. On the contrary, in the defendant’s blower one end of the gear spindles is mounted in bearings, in a completely separate casing. In the defendant’s blower there is no back cap or cover, which, together wdth the back of the fan casing, forms the space for the gears, but the gears are carried and inclosed in an entirely separate casing which is not formed in part of the fan casing, nor does it inclose in connection with the casing any space for any purpose. And as the wind-pipe of the defendant in error’s forge does not perform the double function of the plaintiff in error’s wind-pipe, no infringement of his patent can be justly affirmed upon the record; for the simple reason that the defendant’s forge does not contain the only new elements upon which alone the plaintiff in error’s patent is sustainable.

The judgment of the court below is affirmed.