An Eighteen-Signature Device
The Standard Oil Company found itself coming up to the time limit prescribed by the court for its dissolution, and a careful estimate showed that it would have between 200,000 and 300,000 stock certificates to sign in making the transfers required. It was a physical impossibility to get the work done in the time allowed, but a genius came forward in the nick of time with an invention that made possible eighteen signatures at one time. It is a device operated by electricity, and so constructed that when the operator moves a fountain pen seventeen other fountain pens move with the one he is operating, and each signature is identical with all the others. When Mr. Chittenden was register of the treasury, during the Civil War, a condition arose that made it necessary for him to sit continuously for forty-eight hours to sign Government bonds in order to meet an emergency with English bankers. When he was through his arm became paralyzed, and it was practically useless ever after. Such a device as this modern invention would have saved him.