The One-Wire Plant Marker: A Stamped Plate Hooked Into Bent Wire

"The principal feature of the invention consists in the novel formation of a length of wire into a supporting loop having an extension on which a marking plate is movably secured and supported by the loop." "A marker such as described is extremely simple, the whole consisting of one piece of wire very simply formed while the plate is extremely simple requiring in the form shown only the punching of a hole".

**Wire.** Cut 45 cm of 3 mm galvanised steel wire with the hacksaw. Leave 25 cm straight for the shank. Bend the top back at an obtuse angle, then with the round-nose pliers form an upward loop, a smaller loop under it that pinches, a bar 6 cm long, and a loop at its end whose tip turns up as a hook. **Plate.** Cut a plate 60 × 25 mm from aluminium sheet, round the corners and drill a 4 mm hole 5 mm from one end. Stamp the plant's name into it with the letter punches and hammer. **Fit.** Push the hook through the hole, then swing the plate round so its free end passes behind the pinching loop and its lower edge rests in the upper loop. **Test.** Stand a pot of soil on the kitchen scale. Push the marker straight down into it and note the highest reading; multiply kilograms by 9.81 for newtons. Bend a second marker from 2 mm wire and do the same. Compare with the notebook.

**Henry M. Rolph** of Markham, York County, Ontario, filed US 1,435,178 on 8 February 1922; it is dated 14 November 1922. He noted that even the hole could be dropped by forming the end loop deep enough to take the plate like the pinching loop. **Honest limits.** Galvanised wire and aluminium sheet stand in for his wire and thin sheet metal. The notebook treats the pushed wire as a straight column fixed at the soil; its sizes are examples. Your scale readings are the result.