US669076A - Railroad-ticket. - Google Patents

Description

No. 669,076. Patented Mar. 5, 190|. G. W. CRAIG.

RAILBOAD'TICKET.

(No Mudd.) (Application filed May 9, 1900.) 2 sheets- Shan I.

Patentedv Mar. 5, |90l.

G. W. IIRAIG.

RAILRUA-D TIGKET'.`

(Applicaticn led May 9, 1900.) ("0 Modem 2 Sheets-Shoet 2 A no6/v5 rs.

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GEORGE IVESTON CRAIG, OF PROX-TO CITY, UTAH.

RAILROAD-TICKET.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 669,076, dated March 5, 1901.

Application filed May 9,1900.

To @ZZ whom, t may oon/cern:

Beit known that I, GEORGE WESTON CRAIG, a citizen of the United States, and a resident of Provo City, in the county of Utah and State of Utah, have invented new and useful Improvements in Railroad-Tickets, of which the following is a full, clear, and exact description.

My invention relates to railroad-tickets of the class known as coupon-tickets, and has for its object to provide features of improvement and increased usefulness in a ticket of the kind described and shown in my application for Letters Patent, Serial No. 734,792, filed October 26, 1899. As in said former construction, the object of the invention is to provide a ticket-form which will be available, by appropriate punch-marks, for travel between various points and which will particularly enable the ticket-agent to give the passenger (with only one form of ticket) a choice of any of the routes available for the particular' journey intended.

The present improvement has for its object mainly to facilitate the selection and designation of the railroad-lines available by grouping the names of such lines in the order in which they are used, as will be fully described hereinafter, and particularly pointed out in the claims.

Reference is to be had to the accompanying drawings, forming a part of this specification, in which similar characters of reference indicate corresponding parts in all the figures.

Figure 1a is a plan of the left-hand portion of a ticket embodying my invention. Fig. lb is the right-hand continuation of Fig. la, and Fig. 2 is a broken sectional view of the folded ticket.

The ticket shown in the drawings is a threecoupon ticket-that is, one coupon will be good 'for passage from the starting-station to a junction-point, the second coupon from this junction-point to another junction-point, and the third to the final destination. The principles of construction described hereinafter may, however, be applied to any ticket having two or more coupons or sections.

The ticket shown comprises the following parts: a general-information section A, three passenger-coupons B C D,and an agents Stub E. The ticket is adapted to be folded Serial No. 16.042. (No model.)

along the lines a a, which separate the sections from each other, and, if desired, folding may be facilitated by scoring or perforating the ticket along said lines. Such means would also facilitate the successive tearing off of the ticket-sections.

The general information section A (see Fig. la) has a blank space for the insertion of any remarks or matter the company may desire to add, such as a description of the purchaser or his signature or other means of identilication. At the margin of this section appear the usual indications of the time-limit by year, (in space A,) month, (in space A2,) and day, (in space A3.) At the bottom is an Index to junction-points A4, having blank spaces, as at A5, to be filled in by writing or in any other manner by the agent issuing the ticket. When these blanks have been filled, as shown, the index will designate not only the terminal-stations of each coupon, but the line available for each of the coupons. Thus in the example shown the ticket isissuedr for passage From Provo City to Chicago, the first coupon entitling the holder to passage From Provo City to Ogden via the New York and San Francisco line, the second coupon reads From Ogden to Council Bluds via the Union Paciic,7 and the third entitles the passenger to transportation on the Chicago and Northwestern from Council Bluffs to Chicago. As all this appears on the index A4, which remains connected with the ticket until the end of the journey, the perpetration of fraud by changing the coupons is practically made impossible.

The passengercoupons B C D and the agents stub E are practically alike, differing from each other by details in the heading in the space at the top. Thus coupon B is Good only from junction-point via line number three and to final destination, While the Wording is appropriately changed for the other coupons and for the agents stub. Another difference between these coupons and the stub will be pointed out hereinafter; but I shall first describe those features in which they are alike. Each of the said parts has a list of lines which may be available with blank spaces F to receive indications in Writing, or preferably by punches, as to the particular lines selected by the passenger and IOO the order in which they are to be used. The list of lines is divided into as many groups as there are coupons-that is, three in the case shown-and in the first group F appears the line (or lines) on which the journey is or may be started. In the second group F2 is a list of lines No. 2-that is, of lines on which the passenger may continue his journey after leaving the line on which he began his journey, and the third group F3 contains a list of the lines which the passenger may use to the tinal destination. Further, in a section G, under the heading Class, are proper indications and blank spaces to specify the conditions to which the ticket is subject, also, if desired, a blank space for the reception of a baggage-punch mark. At the bottom (or at any other convenient place) is a series of spaces H for the punch-marks of the severalconductors. rPhe bodyofeachcoupon and of the stub comprises four sections or lists, (or, generically speaking, one in excess of the number ot' passage-coupons the ticket contains,) of which the first, I, contains alist of starting-stations and iirstjunction-points, preferably with one or more blanks, so that the name of a less important station may be written in such blank space. rIhe second section I contains a list of the various junction-stations at which a traveler coming from one of the starting-stations (in list I) may pass upon a connecting-line, together with further junction-points of such connectinglines. The third section I2 contains a list of the several junction-stations atwhich a passenger, having traveled over the first-mentioned connecting-line, may be transferred to another connecting-line to reach his final destination, which may be any one of the stations indicated in the list appearing in the section I2. Adjacent to each station-name in the Various lists is a space, preferably numbered, as shown, to receive a punch-mark.

While the matter contained in the spaces F F2 F3 G I I l2 I2 is the same for each of the coupons B C D and for the stub E, its arrangement is different in the coupon C and stub E (which are alike in this particular) from the coupons B and D, which again are alike, except as to the heading. Sections B and D have the arrangement of sections C and E reversed from left to right, and Vice versathat is, the central columns of station-names are the same, but what is the right-hand column in the sections B and D becomes the lefthand column in the sections C and E, and vice versa. Similarly, the spaces F F2 F2 G are at the left in sections B and D and at the right in sections C and E, alsoin sections B and D the numerals are at the left of station-names, and in sections C and E they are at the right of such names. The purpose of this arrangement is to bring those spaces of the several sections which are adapted to receive corresponding punch-marks into exact superposition When the ticket is folded as shown in Fig. 2, so that all of the four parts B, C, D` and E may receive their corresponding punchmarks J at the same time. v

The improved ticket is used as follows: Let us assume the passenger desires a ticket from Provo City to Chicago via the New York and San Francisco line to Ogden, the Union Pacific to Council Bluffs, and the Chicago and Northwestern. The ticket-agent punches the date at A A2 A3 in the usual manner and inserts in the spaces A5 of the index A4 the indications shown in Fig. la. The agent then folds the ticket along the lines a a, as indicated in Fig. 2, and then punches the four sections B C D E, as indicated in Figs. la and lb-that is, in the list F, headed Line No.1, the space F' opposite N. Y. da S. F, (New York and San Francisco;) in the list F2 of Lines No. 2, the space F opposite Un. Pac. g in the list F3 of Lines No. 3, the space opposite C. 85N. W. In the station-listI the station Provo City is punched. tion Ogden is punched both in the listI and in the list I. The station-name Council Blu tts is punched in the lists I and I2, and the iinal destination, Chicago, is punched in the last list I3. 'lhe nature of the ticket-for instance, First class limited --is also indicated by a punch-mark in one of the spaces of the section G, if necessary. The agent then tears off his stub E, which he keeps, as usual. The baggage-master will then punch the ticket, if required, and the section A may be folded over the others, so that the ticket will be more handy to carry. The conductors will put their respective punch-marks in the spaces H, and the coupons D, C, and B will be retained by the last conductor of each line, as customary.

It will be seen that the improved ticket will avoid the necessity for a multiplicity of forms and will enable any agent to issue tickets good over a large Variety of routes, while the manipulations in punching the ticket are so obvious that mistakes on the part of the issuing-agent are not likely to occur. As each of the sections by its punch-marks (or as for the section A by the index A4) gives full details as to the stations between which the ticket is good and what lines should be traveled over, the use of the ticket upon other lines connecting the same stations is made impossible and fraudulent alterations of the ticket are eectively prevented. By having the lines grouped in the lists F F2 F2 in the same order in which they are used in traveling the succession in which the lines are to be traveled over will be obvious without the use of numerical punches and a further security against fraud is obtained.

It will be obvious that the ticket might be somewhat simplified by the omission oi the lateral columns in the lists I and I', in which case the name of each junction-point would have to be punched only once. The addition of the lateral columns, however, is of moment The stafor the auditors convenience, and I therefore consider said lateral columns notonly a useful feature of my ticket, but necessary thereto.

It is to be understood that I do not limit myself to the exact arrangement of my improved ticket as shown and described, as such arrangement may be varied without departing from the spirit of my invention, and I consider myself entitled to all such'variations as come within the scope of my claims.

Having thus described my invention, I claim as new and desire to secure by Letters Patentl. A coupon-ticket comprising a plurality of sections each having a list of starting-lines arranged in a group by themselves and a separate list of lines available for the completion of the journey, so that by appropriate punch-marks for one line ot each list, the names of the lines over which the ticket is to be available, and their succession can be indicated.

2. A coupon-ticket comprising a plurality ot' sections having a list of lines arranged in successive groups each provided with a heading, the headings containing consecutive numbers, as Line No.1, LineNo. 2, cbc., the starting-lines only appearing under the heading Line No. l, and the second or connecting-lines only under the heading Line No. 2 so that by appropriate punch-marks for one of the lines of each group, the ticket will indicate the lines over which it is available, and at the same time the orderin which the said lines are to be used.

3. A coupon-ticket, comprising a plurality of sections each having` a list of stations arranged in successive groups, and a separate list of lines likewise arranged in successive groups that is, one group containing lines available for the start, and other groups containing lines available for the completion of the journey, so that by appropriate marks in both lists, the ticket can be made to read for a journey between any two points named in the station-list, over any one of the lines available between said points, and to indicate at the saine time the order in which the lines are to be used.

4. A coupon-ticket, comprising a plurality of sections each having a list of lines arranged in groups having appropriate indicating means, one group containing lines available as starting-lines, and the others lines available for the continuation ot' the journey, the groups following each other in the same order in which the lines are to be used, and a list of stations entirely independent from the list of lines, so that the elements of the two lists may be combined with each other in various manners by appropriate marks, the stationlist being likewise in a plurality of groups having appropriate indicating means one of which groups contains startingpoints, another junction-points, and yet another destination-points.

In testimony whereof I have signed my name to this specification in the presence of two subscribing witnesses.

GEORGE WESTON CRAIG.

Witnesses:

W. H. LEE, Jr., J. T. FARRER.

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