24
On June 3, 1939 John Henry Miller applied for a patent for an
“
Illuminated
Picture Frame.
”
His idea was to tilt the top of pictures forward, particularly oil
paintings, in a frame with a tubular light at the bottom. The light would be multi-
colored and motorized to give life and better visibility to the picture. Miller
points out in his application
“
The use of such pictures in a restaurant, banquet
hall, and the like, affords the persons sitting at the tables, the unusual pleasure of
seeing activated pictures...
”
U. S. Patent Number 2,220,262
was issued to Miller on
November 5, 1940. But was the
frame ever produced? An article
in the
Baltimore Sun
newspaper
dated July 1, 1963 reports on the
closing of Miller Brothers
Restaurant. It mentions
“
...and
the dark oil paintings of good
food and drink...
”
Did Miller not
illuminate his own collection of
paintings?
And how did waiters at Miller Brothers remove crumbs from table tops?
Evidently, not too acceptably, until Miller filed for a patent for his
“
Crumb
Scraper
”
on August 7, 1939.
Miller
‟
s idea was to make a compact
crumber at a reasonable cost that could
be
“
carried very conveniently in the
pocket
”
. Of methods in use at the time of
his application, Miller writes
“
The use of
the conventional brush and crumb pan is
cumbersome, and usually disturbs the
diners at the table in its use, because of
the relatively large area of operation
required by them.
”
He describes the scraper as
“
It consists of
a simple narrow piece of transversely
curved strip of metal, plastic, or the like,
bent on a segment of a circle of about 120
degrees.
”
U. S. Patent Number 2,238,745 was issued to Miller on April 15, 1941.
