Thanks very much Bruce. That's an excellent pictorial essay.
When looking at pictures 1 and 5 and enlarging it so I can read that patent date it looks like March 26, 1873 or 1875. In any case, I find no such patent date in The Parker Story listing of all known patent dates. This might indicate that whoever did this work patented it. Of course, I may be wrong about the date I read.
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