On November 8, 1907, a little known inventor finished a patent application for “Game,” and it was notarized and sent to the United States Patent Office in Washington, DC for consideration. A few days later it began its journey across the desks of clerks, examiners and reviewers. That patent application described the very first game of Skee-Ball, and the applicant was Joseph Fourestier Simpson.
Simpson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 31, 1852, to a merchant class family. His father sold cotton duck fabric for sails, work clothes and tarpaulins right up to the end of the Civil War, when the southern sources for cheap cotton dried up. He passed away soon after that, leaving Simpson fatherless at age 17, just as the young man was getting ready to make his way in the world. Simpson was an exceptional young man, meticulous, highly observant, curious and tenacious when ideas caught his attention. And unlike his merchant father, he had a passionate desire to invent.
Starting as a railway clerk, Simpson worked hard, and within a few years, he started his own lumber planing business. And he started inventing. While running the mill, he patented an ingenious over-center trunk latch, which allowed an overfilled travel trunk to be closed easily. Although it was exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exposition and commended for “utility and low cost,” he was unable to find a manufacturing and sales outlet for his invention. He closed his planing business and worked with his cousin to develop and patent a ratchet wrench, but ran into the same problem in finding manufacturing and sales. In 1890 he and his family moved to Vineland, New Jersey. He continued to struggle with ups and downs of the industrial economy, reinventing himself as a manager, an attorney working in real estate, an investor and broker for mining and railway projects, and a manufacturer of knitted goods. Simpson was working tirelessly to advance himself on his own merit in an unforgiving economy that treated those without independent family wealth harshly.
In his middle years around the turn of the century, Simpson became even more creative, with a plethora of innovations and inventions. He still had a problem attracting capital and businessmen to manage and promote his innovations, and one by one, they fizzled.
Finally, Simpson developed the most successful and groundbreaking invention of his career: the game of Skee-Ball. And he began his more than twelve month journey to getting a patent for the game. He and his attorney, Charles Rutter, outlined seven claims in the patent application. These seven features were what Simpson knew made the game unique. But there was one feature that made the game different than any other game that has come before it, or since. The skee jump that launched the ball into the air, much like a ski-jumper. It was the first claim of the patent and stated:
“In a game apparatus, in combination, a board along which a projectile is adapted to travel, an obstruction upon said board for causing said projectile to be projected into the air in a direction which will be a continuation of its original movement, and a target in the line of the trajectory of said projectile. ”
Over the next thirteen months Simpson, Rutter and the patent office would fight it out in a frustrating, grueling battle of claims and counters before Simpson’s patent was finally granted.
About the author:
Thaddeus Cooper is the co-author of Seeking Redemption: The Real Story of the Beautiful Game of Skee-Ball, a deep dive into the history of the game. You can find more information about Thaddeus, and his co-author, and their book, at: http://www.nomoreboxes.com/.