I received these photos from my contact at the archives. This is the original patent for 267,367 issued to John Pratt on November 14, 1882, folded and bound up in the national archives. No one has probably seen these pages in over 100 years.

Over several days the archivist will carefully place each document within a special chamber to remoisturize the paper. Then each page will be laid flat so that it can be scanned into a computer.

Contained folded and inside a wrapper, there are letters with from the inventor, diagrams, and other useful information for understanding the development of the machine.

This may take a couple of days per page as you have to leave it in the moisturizing chamber for the better part of a day, and there can be over 100 pages to scan!

Stay tuned!

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