Armless Judge Going to Europe to Aid Crippled

1915
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There He Will Arrange Plans to Help Allies' Maimed

Photo Caption: With only his mechanical arm — designed by himself — Judge Quentin D. Corley dresses and shaves himself, handles his own food, writes his own opinions and handles his own records in the County Court of Dallas County, Texas. He drives an auto, bowls, plays billiards, carries bundles and even helps his wife with the housework.

Over in Europe there are many armless men who feel they are hopelessly helpless. So the Dallas judge is going abroad to do what he can to aid war victims "for humanity's sake," as told in another column on this page.

The top picture shows Judge Corley completing his dressing operations. A contrivance, attached to a suit case, permits him to put on his collar and tie. With an almost similar machine he shaves himself. Below is a photograph of the judge bowling.

DALLAS, Texas, Dec. 16. — Quentin D. Corley, the "armless judge" of this city, will soon take up the burden of the maimed in the European conflict. On Dec. 22 he will leave for Washington, D. C., to confer with an official whose name is not known and who had told the Belgium ambassador to America that Judge Corley, the armless, does the work of a man in everyday life.

It is expected that the judge will sign a contract with the Allies to teach armless soldiers to be happy and to be useful.

The judge says any work he may do will be for the sake of humanity and not for money. "I shall only accept the same salary. I am getting now, and expenses," he says. "If they see fit to honor me if I do their men a service, I shall be glad of that, too."

Story of the Judge's Career

Judge Corley's story is a strange one. He was of a roving disposition when young, and took no qualms at satisfying it as a guest of the railroads. He was riding thru New York State on a freight train when a burly brakeman's head showed over the far end of the car. He slipped and fell as he tried to flee. The trainmen picked him up a poor, mangled youth. One arm was gone at the shoulder and the other just above the elbow.

As he lay in the hospital fighting for life, he began figuring how he would use that life once he was out again.

"I strove to invent and picture in my mind a mechanical hand, but of course I could not get anything but the open and shut movement; no one has," he says. "Then I thought that if I made an arm with an elbow joint in it, and so rigid that it would have both lateral and perpendicular movement, I had the problem solved."

A youth of 23, seemingly handicapped for all time and yet doomed by a healthy body to live a long life, Corley came home to his parents in Dallas with only his idea of a mechanical arm — and a deathless ambition to conquer the terrible odds against him.

How His Plans Worked Out

For four years he studied law with all the mental force of his brilliant mind, and at night he spent hours upon the plan for his mechanical arm. When completed, it was a steel hook made of two steel flanges, which opened and shut on cogs, a little handle which turned them being worked by his teeth. In this way he gripped things tightly, and with the hook he could handle almost anything he could lift.

From then on it was easy. He soon learned to write and then passed the bar examination. He began to practice law and to practice the use of his arm, and study means by which he could use it. His progress was wonderful. He invented other machines, to be used in dressing and sport, until today he can do almost anything a normal being desires to do.

He has a desire bordering on passion to aid the soldiers who have lost both arms in battle. There were more than ten thousand of them in the Allies' armies alone at last count.

Wants to Make Them Useful

"I know I can teach them to use my inventions within a short time, and I want to do it," he says. "I want them to get away from the terrible feeling that they are burdens upon the state and upon their families. If they'll put these men in my hands I can teach a thousand in three months to use this arm and take their places in life and seek happiness."

His friends say he can do it, too. He has pupils all over Texas who are learning from him the secrets. They invariably make good when he turns them loose.

Judge Corley has the inventions he uses patented, but does not sell them. "I have them for humanity," he says.

The plan on which the Belgian ambassador is said to want Judge Corley to work will be a school under his supervision, at which armless men will be equipped and trained by him. It will take him to Europe about four years, if the war continues a year or so longer.

—Saturday Blade, Chicago, Dec. 18, 1915, p. 5.

Student Designs Gold Ore Machines

1915

Big Saving in Ore Refinement May Be the Result

New equipment for use of the seniors of the University of Washington, which was designed and is being built under the direction of Fred Porter, a senior will soon be installed, and with it the men will perform a series of experiments of great practical and economic value.

Two complete sets of machinery have been designed by Porter for use in fine grinding and concentration of gold ore, some of the equipment being of the same style as has been used in the Alaska, Idaho and Montana gold fields in the last few years for the purpose of experimentation. The experiments to be performed may, besides being the work necessary to constitute the thesis required to gain a degree, result in a large saving in the refinement of ore.

One of the processes to be performed will be that of flotation concentration. the process discovered by Mrs. Everson, described in these columns last week.


Plan to Interest Mechanics

Use Inventor's Tools and Gain Equity in His Patents

William L. Bessola, an experienced mechanic known to practically every one connected with mechanical departments of mines in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and who holds patents for many mechanical devices, is endeavoring to interest capitalists and others in a proposition the success of which is assured.

As a forerunner to the manufacture and of the perfected tools on a large scale it is the plan of Mr. Bessola and his associates to secure the cooperation of every user of tools that they seek to replace with the new inventions, and to this end they have permitted a number of the leading plumbers, master mechanics and men generally connected with things mechanical, to purchase equities in the exploitation company, which not only entitles them to substantial interest in that direction, but also secures for each a proportionate right in the patents which Mr. Bessola has taken out.

—Saturday Blade, Chicago, Dec. 18, 1915, p. 9.

History of Roller Skates — First Used in Pantomime Act

1877

History of Roller Skates

Invented by a Yankee and First Used in a Ravel Pantomime.

The late ex-Mayor Winslow made good deal of money in skates, ice and roller, although he was a man of many affairs, says the Worcester, Mass., Gazette. His death naturally recalls the days when the rink was in its prime, and when the gallant and graceful Kynock, professor in the art of rolling about, used to promenade first with one pretty girl and then with another, occasionally darting off with vast outer-edge sweeps backward and forward.

Forty years ago the Ravels, French pantomimists of extraordinary cleverness, made great profit in the United States. One of their shorter pantomimes was Godinski, or the Skater of Wien. The last scene showed a Polish pond covered with gay skaters, who careened around merrily and threw property snowballs at each other. Godinski appeared with a chair learning to skate. This was the original act, and before the days of the Ravels nobody had ever seen a roller skate. The scene ended by the ice breaking, Godinski fell through, but was rescued in the end.

These skates ran on little wheels set squarely, in the place of the blades of an ice skate — the simplest possible form. They did not pivot and could not be used for figure-skating. Except they were low, they were like the high road skates lately put in use in Scotland and now on trial in Europe, they set Yankee inventors to thinking, why not a real skating party on boards as well as actors.

One day there opened in what was then upper Washington street, Boston, in the top story of Plympton's furniture warehouse, a school and practice ground for roller skaters. This was about the year 1867. Plympton's brother had invented a skate on which you could do the outer edge by leaning over, as on ice. The rollers were in pairs and on pivots. The boys and girls came out and found it easy to learn, but it was not advertised and few heard of it. The result was the closing of the place and the apparent failure of the invention as a popular toy.

The inventor went to Europe. Pursuing more liberal methods, he made a huge success. He planted rinks in every principal city, and gathered ducats in piles. Unfortunately they lasted nowhere more than a few years. New plants had to be constantly established.

When the Lalimes took up roller skating at the Worcester rink, which, by the way, was admirably adapted for the sport, and the skating craze broke out in this country, it was all over in Europe, but Plympton had made fortune out of it. Here, too, rinks were short-lived.

The Winslow skate, made later, brought out lawsuits with Plympton, who claimed an infringement. But Plympton's patent had not long to run, and the dispute was in some way adjusted.

It was an admirable exercise, and there was no end to the possible skill. It was a pity it could not last, but Americans overdo all amusements.