US763149A - Railway-ticket. - Google Patents

Description

No. 763,149. 'PATENTED JUNE 21,1904.

J. BUPFINGTON.

RAILWAY TICKET.

APPLICATION FILED MAR. 9. 1904.

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PATENT ()FFIcE. i

JOSEPH BUFFINGTON, OF PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA, ASSIGNOR TO ALICE S. BUFFINGTON, OF PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA.

RAILWAY-TICKET.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 763,149, dated June 21, 1904.

Application filed March 9, 1904.

T0 (bi/Z whom it may concern.-

Be it known that I, JOSEPH BUFFINGTON, of Pittsburg, in the county of Allegheny, State of Pennsylvania, have invented a new and useful Railway-Ticket, of which the following is a full, clear, and exact description, reference being had to the accompanying drawings, in which Figure 1 shows in plan view a bunch or pad of tickets embodying my invention. Fig. 2 is an edge view of the pad, and Fig. 3 shows the back of one of the pass-slip tickets.

The object of my invention is to provide means for insuring the honest and eflicient collection of the fares earned by street-railways for carrying each passenger.

Street-railways cannot avail themselves of the protection of the ticket system used by steam-railways, since passengers board the street-cars at every crossing, and it would be im practicable to establish ticket-offices at such points or to require the public to visit ticketoflices elsewhere and purchase tickets. The fares must therefore be collected on the cars, and the greater the travel the more fares the company may lose from the failure of the conductor to collect all the fares from a crowded car, through his honest failure to account for all the collected fares, or through his dishonesty in himself keeping such fares. The losses from these combined-sources have been estimated by street-railway managers at from five to twenty per cent. of the passengers carried.

Various means, such as registering bellpunches and trip-slips, requiring passengers to deposit the fares in the slot of a glass-sided box, requiring the conductor to ring a visible register at the end of the car, and an expensive system of espionage, have all been tried, but without enabling the company to collect efliciently its earned fares. The failure of such expedients has been due to the fact that they have made the collection wholly the work of the conductor, and the passenger, either from the small amount of his personal fare or the comparative shortness of his ride, takes Serial No. 197,221. (No model.)

no interest in seeing that the fare which he has paid is accounted for to the company.

The object of my invention is to place a check onthe failure of the conductor from any cause either to collect all the fares or to account for them and to secure the cooperation of the passenger in that result. This I do by using in a novel way some part of the earned but hitherto unaccounted-for proportion of the fares as a rebate to stimulate the interest of the passenger, and it is manifest that the margin over and above the rebate will afford a very substantial gain to the car company.

The tickets which I use are arranged in a bunch, by which I intend to include the pad shown'in the drawings, or a roll or a package inclosed in a suitable box or case, permitting only one ticket to be removed at once. The tickets of each bunch are numbered consecu-. tively, and a bunch containing, say, one hundred tickets numbered from 1 to 100 is handed to the conductor at the beginning of the trip. At the end of the trip the conductor returns the stub or case from which the tickets used have been detached. He is then credited with the tickets still on the stub and must pay for those unrcturned, and the number of the tickets unreturned must correspond with the indication on the car-register.

The construction and preferable arrangement of my tickets are shown in the accompanying drawings, which I will now describe, premising that my invention may be varied and applied to use in many other forms.

The tickets shown in the drawings are bunched in the form of a pad and are fixed together by adhesive material or otherwise along two of their edges a b 0, while the other edges (0 I) c are free and permit the tickets to be readily detached in order. The upper por-- tion 6 of the pad is the stub, which the conductor returns at the end of the trip, and the parts of the stub may be attached firmly by rivets, clips, or staples f. Between the stub part and the body of the ticket,which I call,

the ring-slip, is a perforated line 9. The ring-slips are to be given to the passengers as they pay their fare and for purposes of identification, and to prevent double use or counterfeiting the ring-slip is provided with a serial number and also with a consecutive number. The same numbers are preferably placed upon the stub. If the conductor rings up each fare on the register as he receives it and gives the passenger a ring-slip, the ringslip number will correspond with the number indicated by the register. The tickets constitute receipts for the fares and as such may serve to entitle the holder to a transfer, and no matter how many indifferent passengers may have failed to note the register-dial when they have received their tickets or ring-slips any passenger paying later and comparing the number on his ticket with the number on the dial can detect the failure of the conductor to ring up his number. A double check is also afforded by the number of unused tickets returned by the conductor at the end of the trip.

The cooperation of the passengers is secured by making it to their interest to receive and note the ring-slips, and my invention effects this by providing means by which each passenger may become entitled to a pass-slip or ticket entitling him to a ride. These passslips are issued in a certain proportion to the total number of fares paid, and for this purpose certain of the ring-slips in each bunch are marked with an appropriate designation indicating that the slip is good for another rideon the cars of the same railway system. This designation is placed on a part of the slip, preferably the back, which does not become visible to the conductor or passenger until the slip has been detached from the bunch. A suitable designation for the purpose is shown in Fig. 3,- the ring-slip ticket there shown bearing the words Pass-slip, good for a fare, printed on the back of the slip at the corner which is last exposed when the slip is detached from the pad. These marked slips,

which I call pass-slips, are arbitrarily and differently placed in each pad, and as the pass designation is concealed, as above stated, the location of the pass-slip cannot be known until the ticket is detached in the presence of the passenger. This constitutes a novel and essential feature of my invention.

If the pad shown in Figs. 1 and 2 contains one hundred ring-slips numbered in sequence from 1 to 100, a certain number of the tickets*say two of them, whose numbers may be 45 and 87 -are printed or marked on the back, as shown in Fig. 8, and constitute pass-slips. The edges of the tickets adjacent to this mark being firmly attached to the pad, as above explained, the designation cannot be seen without detaching the slips or breaking the pad. The other edges of the ticket are preferably free, as above explained, to enable the conductor to detach the tickets readily and hand them to the passengers as the fares are paid. The passengers who receive the pass-slips use them as tickets entitling them to another ride on the cars, and the interest which each passenger will have in observing whetherhis ring-slip is marked as a pass-slip will constitute a sufficient inducement to him to require the conductor to issue the ring-slip, and will thus insure the success of the invention.

The bunches of ring-slips as they are issued should be marked so as to indicate the date on which they are issued. A useful mode of effecting this is shown in Fig. 1, in which each slip has printed on its face a line of figures, the first three of which, 1, 2, 3, represent the tens and the remainder of which represent the units. There are spaces above and below this line for punch-marks representing the day and the month, respectively.

through the bunch are made in the line marked Day above the first numeral 2 and the numeral 7, and a punch-mark is lmade in the line marked Mo. below the numeral 2.

can thus be made on the day on whlch it is to The marking of each bunch be used.

Appropriate arrangements of words and figures other than those which I have shown and of providing for the-concealment of the pass designation until the ticket is issued may be varied in many ways, as by rolling the slips, inclosing them in a case, or otherwise, since What I claim is-- 1. A bunch of tickets separable from the bunch in definite order only, some of said tickets having a designation entitling to an 1 extra fare marked upon aportion of the ticket exposed only when the ticket is separated from the bunch.

2. A bunch of tickets consecutively numbered and removable in the order of the numbers, some of said tickets having a designation entitling to an extra fare marked upon a portion of the ticket exposed only when the ticket is separated from the bunch.

3. A bunch of separable tickets formed in a pad and consecutively numbered, some of said tickets having on the back a designation entitling to an extra fare, the tickets of said pad being attached along two edges thereof,

IIO

so that said designation is not exposed until the ticket is separated from the bunch.

4. A bunch of separable tickets formed in a pad and consecutively numbered, some of said tickets having on the back a designation entitling to an extra fare, the tickets of said pad being attached so that said designation is not exposed until the ticket is separated from the bunch, and a stub portion serially numbered corresponding to the ticket. IO

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand.

JOSEPH BUF FIN GTON Witnesses:

JAMES G. MARKs, J OHN P. WVARD.

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