Inventor and Patents
Still was fascinated by machines, and whenever faced with a mechanical problem, his answer was always to devise a better approach. In the 1870s, he patented an improved butter churn. He made improvements to a mowing machine designed to harvest wheat and hay, but before a patent could be submitted, his idea was stolen by a visiting sales representative from the Wood Mowing Machine Co. In 1910, he patented a smokeless furnace burner but had “some difficulty producing a full-sized working model. Heartbroken after his wife, Mary Elvira's, death in May 1910, he did not have the will to pursue the matter further, and the invention was never successfully marketed.”
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