Sargent & Foster

Ephraim Loriston Pratt (1817-1869) assigned his apple parer patent of October 4, 1853 to James Sargent (1824-1910) and Dan Packard Foster (1815-1893) (Pratt, 1853). Sargent & Foster of Shelburne Falls Massachusetts sold their parer based on Pratt's design as Sargent & Foster's Patent Automatic Apple Parer. The parer sold well and was the subject of the first circuit court cases involving a patent for an apple parer (Risch and Viney, 2022). Sargent and Foster successfully protected their intellectual property and helped to usher in the mass manufacturing of apple parers using interchangeble cast iron parts.

Sargent & Foster's Automatic Apple Parer uses a worm gear to drive the mechanism that rotates the blade. The paring arm is under spring tension to follow the apple's profile. Once the apple is pared the paring arm is no longer in gear and snaps back to starting position under spring tension. Pratt's patented innovation for this machine was a knife or paring head that could "vibrate" and accomodate itself to irregularities in the surface of the fruit. Visit the video section of our website to see the parer in action.

To learn more about the first three court cases involving a patent for an apple parer invention, click on the image below.

Advertisement for Sargent & Foster's Patent Automatic Apple Parer (Ohio Cultivator, 1855).

References

The Ohio Cultivator: A Semi-Monthly Journal, Devoted to the Improvement of Agriculture and Horticulture, and the Promotion of Domestic Industry, September and October, 1855, Vol. 11, pp. 271 & 320. Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

Pratt, E. L., inventor, Machine for Paring Apples, 1853 Oct. 4. US10078.

Risch, M. and Viney M, The Way Lawyers Worked, 90 U. Cin. L. Rev. (2022). Accessed 9 April 2022, https://schoarship.law.uc.edu/uclr/vol90/iss3/3