Finger-hold for penholders.

Application filed January 19,1904. Serial No. 189,683. 'No model.)

To all irlum it may concern: ’ having a comparatively thin body and incasT>.i Jr IrniYWn flint 1 B. CiOLDSMITTI,. « *»- —” ·, a citizen of the United States residing in tlie } which nevertheless presents, tlie^ews^ry city and State of New York, have imented a ...-,-- --5 new and useful Improvement in Finger-Holds of the writer, for Penholders of which the following is a ; increasing t.m ........-- ,-..-1 + 1

101 liniioiueis, 01 it ° . <.j_eeve bv means of tiny air-cells distributed ^SPSe object of mv invention is to provide a : through its mass. These air-cells may be finger-hold for penholders which shall be .regularly or, ,0 easw of construction and which will yet pre- ; form of minute spherical or pol.xhedial air sent an elastic and yielding mass to the finger- ; holes, which as actually mw e by me a 1«. not tips of the writer, so that the penholder may : over a fiftieth ot an inch m diametei, they be semirelv wrasped with little effort, an in- I may be more or ess regularly distributed m creased decree of elasticitv and smoothness be : the form of cylindrical or prismatic apertm es given to the writing, and writer’s cramp be · running longitudinally or circumtcientialh avoided. ..,.:

It has heretofore been proposed witna view , of attaining the objects at which I aim to con- : struct finger-holds for penholders of cork; ; but these have been found unsatisfactory by ' reason of their comparatively unyielding character. It has also been proposed to build ; the finger-hold of soft rubber. Now a finger- ! hold of a solid cylinder of soft rubber without any core of rigid material on the inside is impracticable, since it wabbles in writing. It has therefore been proposed to build penholders xvith a solid core or ferrule, which ! supports and prevents the wabbling of the , modified form of finger-hold, pen. and to surround this core or ferrule with ’ ·— · »l«n«r ...m line a soft-rubber sleeve in the form of a tube. Since, however, the body of the surrounding soft-rubber sleeve could have no great thickness in a radial direction and since soft rub35 ber at best is not very elastic, such softrubi >er finger-holds have been found not to present the req purposes desired by me. . .

projiosed to make the finger-hold of a ing· am-igid and unyielding ferrule or core amount of elasticity and yield to the fingers • This I have accomplished by of which the following is a ; increasing the elasticity of

These air-cells may be

3° anil writer’s cramp be ^; running longitudinally or circumferentially part way or entirely through the body of the finger-hold. A finger-hold tuns constructed has far greater elasticity than one built of solid soft rubber, since in my form the walls of soft rubber between the air-cells are comparatively thin and can be bent and stretched with the application of the minimum force, i and this remains, too, in a measure even ί after the rubber has grown somewhat .stiff with age.

In the drawings, Figure 1 shows a crosssection of a penholder and my finger-hold.

Fig. 2 shows a longitudinal cross-section of a ' Fig. Sisasec·. tion of Fig. 2 along the line 3 3. Fig. 4 is a I longitudinal section of another modified form ¹ of finger-hold. Fig. 5 is a section of Fig. 4 along the line 5 5. .

AVhile my finger-hold may be applied to penholders of various constructions, I have oius nave neen iouhu uui to shown, to fix ideas, a holdei in the foi m 0 a luisite elasticitv to serve the ! stem A, having a tenon A , over which is

Finally, it has been i slipped the metal core or ferrule B, having

- , _soft-I fastened in the outer end thereof the usual pen 40 wbl^h^th’i^i^inga^ind Aided Imlk of hholder-clipB'. The multicellular soft-rubber ⁴ the rnbbiTr sheath and the pen- i sleeve D is shown as surrounding and embracing the metal core or terrule B. Manifestly, however, the material of the sleeve could be extended to cover the entire penholder.

The sleeve D in Fig. 1 is constructed of soft rubber having a very large number of tiny air-cells in the form of spheres or polyhedra irregularly distributed through its mass. As 1 have before remarked, the diameter of each air between the rubber sheath and the penholder: but this construction has the disadvantage that the fingers of the user displace the air from the very point at xvhich the fingers rest, thus practically permitting the fingers to come into contact with the rigid material of the penholder with nothing but a thin sheath of rubber between them.

Now I have· found that l ean construct a , x ·>γχγ- --........-- .- ,11 » u _flr finger-hold comprising a sleeve of soft rubber i ot these little air-cells is piefeiablj less thai.

768,985 one-fiftieth of an inch. Even though. then, i the radial thickness, of the-cylindricai wall of i the sleeve is not over an eighth or in «extreme ' cases a quarter of an inch there will t-e quite 5 a number of little air-pockets along any one of its radii.

In the form of sleeve shown on a large scale in Eigs. 2 and 3 the air-cells are in the form of prisms or cylinders +, which may io run either part way along or entirely through the finger-hold. These prismatic airecells are somewhat regularly distributed, a&o their number is in practice even larger than I have indicated. .

In the form of sleeve shown in Fig. 4 the air-cells are again prismatic rather than polyhedral in form; but instead of running longitudinally along the sleeve they run circumferentially around it at the same and at dif20 fering radial distances from the axis of the sleeve.

While I have referred to the material of the sleeve as “soft rubber,’' it is to be understood that I include by this term not merely pure soft rubber, hut also that form of soft rnbb which pure soft rubber is mixed with terating or other compounds for the sa greater cheapness or for imparting otlr sirable characteristics to the soft rubber