THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT AND DRIVEN WELLS.

THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT AND DRIVEN WELLS.

发现1861年纳尔逊·w·绿色上校of the principle of the driven well has been the means of conferring upon the human family one of the greatest boons of the present century. It has enabled millions of persons in this and other countries to enjoy the blessing of pure, fresh water obtained from sources that were sealed up within the earth and wholly inaccessible until he discovered the plan whereby the forces of nature are made to yield the earth’s supply of water at the demand of man. Few persons understand that in the driven well a great principle is involved; they have been led to regard a driven well as simply a tube driven into the ground until it reaches a pool or stream of water, when a suction pipe attached to a pump is inserted inside the tube and the water so discovered pumped up. This is the plan of the ordinary open dug well and also of the artesian or bored well, but not of the driven well. An Irishman once ordered his wife to go and get him a pitcher of beer, and when she asked him for money to buy it with, he responded: “ Any fool can get beer with money, but it requires genius to get beer without money.” So it is easy enough to obtain water from pools or streams in the earth when once they are located, but it requires the driven well to obtain water from their hidden sources where no pools or streams exist. It is well known that the earth is composed of various strata, consisting of rock and different kinds of soil; some of these are water-bearing, containing an abundance of water percolating through them from theirsourc.es in the high-lying lands to the sea. If an open well be sunk into the water-bearing stratum, the water will flow into it by force of gravity. Such a supply is soon exhausted, however. If a tube is driven down into this same stratum, and is air-tight throughout its entire length except for a short space at the bottom where perforations are made, and a pump is attached at the upper end of the tube, an air-tight connection is thus made with the water-bearing stratum. The operation of pumping then creates a vacuum in the tube, and the water in the underlying gravel rushes in to fill this vacuum, driven so to do by the pressure of the atmosphere upon the surface of the water in the earth. This pressure is equal to fifteen [rounds to the square inch, and as it is a constant factor, it follows that so long as the vacuum in the tube exists the water-bearing stratum of earth will continue to yield its supply of water. This was the new principle discovered by Colonel Green, and that has been of such inestimable value to the human family. How valuable it is can be estimated by the fact that there are upwards of a million of these wells in use in this country alone, while in European countries it is quite as well known. The advantages of the driven well can be illustrated by putting one down near an open or dug well, so as to reach the same source of supply, and then pumping from both of them. It will be found that the open well, receiving its supply simply by gravity pressure, or drippings from the water-bearing stratum, can be speedily emptied, wl»ie the driven well, aided by atmospheric pressure, is inexhaustible. The water so obtained has the advantage also of being thoroughly filtered as it rushes through the sand and gravel to fill the vacuum in the air-tight tube. As a matter of fact, the vacuum extends into the water-bearing stratum itself, which is thus, by the application of scientific means, made a continuation of the machinery devised by man to serve his purposes.

Although Colonel Green, who was a volunteer officer at the beginning of the war, conceived the idea of the driven well in 1861, and put down a driven well at Cortland, N. Y., for the purpose of supplying his regiment, which he was then recruiting, with water, it was not until May, 1887, that his rights to this discovery were fully accorded. In May the Supreme Court of the United States, in an elaborate decision covering every phase of the case, declared him to be not only the inventor of the driven well, but the discoverer of a new principle involving a previously unthoughtof application of natural forces, g.nd entitled to all the legal and pecuniary rights inuring to him under the patents granted him in 1868 and reissued in 1871. During all the intervening years- exceeding the seventeen years of the life of the patent-he has been engaged in litigation to sustain his legal rights. Nine protracted suits have been prosecuted in the United States Circuit Courts in different States, and this country and Europe have been persistently searched for evidence tending to show that his idea was not new. The testimony taken in these several cases, and printed as part of the record, would make a large library. In seven of the cases the decisions of the Circuit judges sustained the patents, and in two others, tried as one case, before three district judges, the decision was adverse. But all these cases were appealed to the Supreme Court, and in May last two of these, one originating in Connecticut and another in Ohio, were decided in favor of the (talent. The decision, in addition to disposing of these cases, refers to the adverse decision in the two cases heard together in Iowa, and shows wherein the majority of the judges of the lower court were in error. (Note-At this hearing, Judge Nelson dissented from the adverse decision of his two associates, and wrote an opinion sustaining the patent.) The decision of the Supreme Court, which sustains Judge Nelson’s dissenting opinion, is exceedingly broad, and holds that not only are the owners of driven wells liable to the patentee, but also every person using them. Adopting the language of Justice Blatehford, the court says: “Under this construction the defendant has infringed by using the pump in a driven well, constructed in a house hired by him, to obtain a supply of water for the use of his family, although he may not have paid for driving the well, or have procured it to be driven. Such use of the well was a use of the patented process.”