A catalog description of an antique music box made by Jacot's & Sons,
NYC, includes a reference to a "Safety Check, Patented Sept. 22,
1886."  What, exactly, is this device/feature and how does it function?

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Request for Question Clarification by omnivorous-ga on 07 Jun 2003 07:26 PDT

Buckram:

The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office has an excellent database online
but prior to 1975 it's searchable only by patent number.  Since
Jacot's is in the U.S., it's probably a U.S. patent.

In that era the U.S. Patent Office was issuing about 2,000 patents per
month.  In May, 1886 they'd hit 341,000; by December they were at
355,000.

Any attempt to pin this one down will rely on your or a researcher
getting the patent number.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

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Clarification of Question by buckram-ga on 07 Jun 2003 09:45 PDT

Sorry, no patent number was provided.  Of course, pre-1975 patents can
also be searched by CCL (Current U.S. Classification); however,  I
found no Sept. 22, 1886 patents in the CCL listings for Class D17
("Musical Instruments"),  Subclass 24 ("Mechanical Instruments," 
which includes music boxes).

From browsing the U.S. Patent Office's database, it seems that patents
were issued on Sept. 21 and Sept. 28, 1886, but no dates in between. 
Yet, other sites indicate, as you have, that this patent was from
Sept. 22, 1886.  A puzzling situation!