William’s Patent Interference Project

At the link below, you’ll find PDFs of Patent Interference case No. 52,327. It is a patent court document that details a dispute over who should receive the patent for composite imagery in film. It serves as a very important historical document that describes the birth of composite imagery in the early 1900s. 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hLBhZWKxWqPzK1nbjtP4LeYoVfTDO2Qf?usp=sharing

At this link you will see three files: The raw scans of the case files received from the National Archives at Kansas city, a high resolution version of the document that has been restored for easier reading, and a lower resolution version of the restored file for faster downloading. Please note that all three files are extremely large and contain over 250 pages of scans. 

Additional documents:

Williams v. Handschiegl Court of Appeals Case

https://cite.case.law/ccpa/18/1176/

Article in “Transactions of the Society of Motion Pictures” about the new Handschiegl process

https://archive.org/details/transactionsofso25soci/page/128/mode/2up?view=theater

Article in “American Cinematographer” titled “New Photographic Process is Launched”

https://archive.org/details/amemato06asch/page/n217/mode/2up?view=theater

Obituary of Max Handschiegl in “Transactions of the Society of Motion Pictures”

https://archive.org/details/transactionsofso33soci/page/574/mode/2up?view=theater

Article in “The Film Daily” about Handschiegl’s patent

https://archive.org/details/filmdaily4344newy/page/610/mode/2up?view=theater