This provision evidently has reference only to such writings and discoveries as are the result of intellectual labor. It was so held in the Trade-Mark cases, where the court said that "while the word 'writing' may be liberally construed, as it has been, to include original designs for engravings, prints, etc., it is only such as are original and are founded in the creative powers of the mind." In the year 1888, a suit was brought in the United States circuit court for the eastern district of Massachusetts for the purpose of subjecting a perforated roll like one of these [exhibiting] to the domain of a copyright upon a sheet of music which had been lawfully and regularly copyrighted. That case was elaborately litigated, and was the subject of argument on both sides before his honor, Judge Colt, then the circuit judge and now the chief judge of the circuit court of appeals for the first judicial circuit. Judge Colt in that case, commonly called the McTamanny case, gave an elaborate and learned decision to the effect that this perforated paper roll, or any sheet of perforated paper like it, intended for the mechanical reproduction of a tune, did not infringe a copyright upon the tune thus reproduced. That was in 1888, and that decision was universally acquiesced in by all the judges and all the people of the United States for thirteen years. During that thirteen years a number of gentlemen devoted themselves to making the machines, pianolas, or whatnot, that are capable of being used with these perforated sheets; and among those gentlemen is the modest and excellent inventor, Mr. Davis, who appeared before the committee yesterday. Those men proceeded in full reliance upon the decision of Judge Colt, acquiesced in by everybody that they had a perfect right to perforate those sheets of music and use them in mechanical playing instruments; and great amounts of ingenuity have been devoted to the development of that particular art, and large amounts of capital have been devoted to it, in full reliance upon the decision of Judge Colt, in which everybody acquiesced. But the Æolian Company, of Meriden, Conn.--and in the statement that I am about to make I am going to state what is true; I can not prove the statements here to-day, but I could prove them if the committee should sit and take testimony and send for persons and papers---- Senator SMOOT. You can file the proof, can you not, Mr. Walker? Mr. WALKER. It would be like a big litigation to do so, and it would be putting a very heavy expense upon me that I would hardly be called upon to bear. But I can tell you how I know. Mr. CURRIER. If the statements that you are to make now are not true, gentlemen can controvert them.