At the time, the paper industry was pushing its Fourdrinier machines faster and faster. These machines sent a watery mixture of pulp fibers across a rapidly moving wire screen, where the water drained away and the fibers formed into paper. But as speeds approached about 500 feet per minute, the wire began moving faster than the pulp flowing across it. Waves and ripples developed, producing uneven paper. Mills could make paper faster, but they couldn’t consistently make good paper faster.
Working at the Rhinelander mill in 1906, Eibel figured out the problem and came up with a surprisingly simple solution. He increased the pitch of the machine, raising one end of the wire from the customary two or three inches to about twelve inches. Gravity accelerated the pulp down the wire, bringing the two closer to the same speed. The troublesome waves disappeared, and suddenly the machine could produce good paper considerably faster.
Eibel filed for a patent on August 22, 1906, and U.S. Patent No. 845,224 was granted the following February. According to testimony later examined by the United States Supreme Court, his discovery “surprised and startled” the paper trade and spread “like wildfire.” Within a few years, machines were running at 600, 650 and even 700 feet per minute. Manufacturers producing roughly two thirds of America’s print paper eventually became licensees of Eibel’s invention.
Photo credit U.S. Patent Office
But with that success came a bitter fight over who would have to pay for it. Some of America’s largest paper manufacturers licensed Eibel’s process, while others challenged his right to collect royalties at all. Thirteen paper companies actually contributed money to a fund organized to resist Eibel’s patent rights. His patent was declared invalid by one federal court in 1914, restored on appeal in 1916, and another fight with the Minnesota & Ontario Paper Company eventually worked its way through the courts.
There was even a little apparent courtroom gamesmanship. After Eibel sued, Minnesota & Ontario lowered one of its machines from a 15 inch pitch to six inches and argued it worked just as well. After the company won an appeal, it raised the machine back to 15 inches. When that victory proved not to be final, it lowered the machine again. The Supreme Court noticed, dryly observing that there were some “natural inferences” to be drawn from all of that.
The fight finally reached the United States Supreme Court in January 1923. On February 19, Chief Justice William Howard Taft delivered the decision siding with Eibel. The Court concluded that he hadn’t simply discovered the obvious fact that water runs downhill. Eibel had identified the cause of a problem that had frustrated papermakers for years and figured out how to solve it. His patent survived, and the little experiment conducted at the Rhinelander Paper Company became part of United States Supreme Court history.
Eibel’s own career continued long after his invention. He remained with the Rhinelander Paper Company until 1918 and eventually served as its general manager. After several years in California and later managing the former Peshtigo Paper Company, Eibel returned to Rhinelander in 1926 to once again manage the mill before leaving in 1928. He eventually made his home in the Marinette and Menominee area, where he spent his later years in retirement.
William Eibel died at his home in Marinette in September 1947 at the age of 74, more than forty years after that experiment in Rhinelander. His is one of those wonderful pieces of Northwoods history that’s easy to overlook. A young papermaker came to Rhinelander, stood beside a machine that simply wouldn’t go any faster, figured out why, and found a solution. The paper industry fought over it for years, the United States Supreme Court ultimately upheld it, and an idea born inside the Rhinelander Paper Company helped change the way America made paper.
Sources: Rhinelander Daily News; Rhinelander Paper Company 50 Year Anniversary Edition, U.S. Patent Office
