Originally Posted by
greywuuf
I have noticed that a lot of people seem to think the Patent date inscribed on the throat plate is the manufacturing date.
The badged Jones machine I picked up this week was entertaining that way. She told me it's 1903... OK,.. how do you know that? It says it somewhere on the machine....
The slide plate says Patented Mar 29th 1893 and I haven't found any other dates on it. At least her date is not only realistic but actually withing the range of possible dates for this machine.
The other thing people don't take into consideration is that slide plates are lost all the time. If you found a replacement that was older or newer than your machine, you'd grab it as long as it fit, right? Nothing says that plate is even accurate for that particular machine.
Originally Posted by
SteveH
The ones that drive me nutz are the ones who think that the EARLIEST patent is the date... I try to explain the difficulties associated with time travel but then they get hostile....
I can just see it:
Time traveler's friend over a mug of beer: "Here... take this slide plate with you and leave it somewhere. That'll really mess them up...."
Time Traveler: *pockets slide plate with a grin and a wink...*