The Hinged Mosquito Canopy: A Frame That Folds Up From the Head-Board

"My invention relates to certain improvements in mosquito-canopies for bedsteads, cribs, cradles, and other similar articles of furniture; its object being to provide a cheap and efficient frame for the support of the fabric or netting, which will require much less material to cover it than those heretofore constructed, which can be readily attached to bedsteads of ordinary construction, and quickly detached from the same, and which can be conveniently folded back with its covering without detaching it from the bedstead". The frame is "capable of being turned down in a horizontal position in such a manner as to form a canopy over the sleeper, or be elevated to a vertical position, and thrown out of the way when desired". "The fabric necessary to form the canopy, consisting simply of a plain piece of netting, requires no making up, and, as only a small piece is necessary, enables the whole to be constructed much more cheaply than the canopies heretofore in use".

Make a light rectangular frame from dowels and fix it to a head-board or a wall with two hinges, with a stop so it rests level when swung down. Put small hooks along its front edge. Measure the frame and the drop to the bed and work out the netting with the notebook. Cut a plain piece of tulle to that size, hook it along the front and fix its back edge at the head. Swing the frame down and check that the net reaches the mattress all round; swing it up and see that it stays on.

**Simeon P. Whitcomb** of Hornellsville, New York, filed US 177,306 on 9 September 1875; it is dated 9 May 1876. **Honest limits.** The netting figures are flat-piece areas with no seams or overlap; the head-frame figure is a lower bound, because the net must also reach down along the rest of the bed. How much netting you actually need depends on how the net falls. Your cut piece and whether it reaches the mattress are the measurement.