The Invitation to the annual Frederick Carder birthday dinner has been issued. For those attending the Symposium this is a special evening to begin a celebratory weekend.

The invitation reads:
The 2014 Annual Carder Dinner to celebrate Frederick Carder’s 151st birthday and 111 years of Steuben Glass will be held on Thursday, September 18, 2014 at the Corning Country Club.
6:00 pm – Cash bar
7:00 pm – Dinner and champagne toast, given by Bill Mehlenbacher
Black tie optional

The program is “A Walk Through Carder’s Corning: What was, what is, and what isn’t”
by Peetie Dimitroff
Centerpieces from the Mehlenbacher Collection.

Members of the Carder Steuben Club are invited.
Please RSVP no later than Friday, September 5.
Tickets are $65 in advance.
Send checks to Peetie Dimitroff, 140 East First St., Corning NY 14830

Please indicate your dinner selections:
__ Herb rubbed flank steak w/ roasted garlic butter
__ Roasted vegetable Napolean w/ fresh mozzarella
__ Grilled salmon w/ citrus and pepper salad
__ Seared chicken paillards

Space is limited; please make your reservations early

Revisiting Middle “C”

Alan,
Responding to Rande Bly’s recent Gazette contribution regarding Mr. Carder’s middle initial: Mr. Bly stated that on page 311 of Dimitroff’s book there is a patent application with the name Frederick Carder thereon, and also a memo from the U.S. Patent Office with the name Mr. F. C. Carder. This is in response to my article of several years ago that claims that Mr. Carder had no middle name. First, the patent pages on page 311 are not a patent application; they are copies of 2 pages of the issued patent itself. In fact, they are probably copies of the very pages that had been sent to Mr. Carder by the Patent Dept. of Corning Glass Works after the patent had been issued. Second, the memo addressed to Mr. F. C. Carder is not from the U. S. Patent Office, but is from the Patent Dept. of Corning Glass Works, and it accompanied the copy of the patent sent to Mr Carder. At CGW inventors were always sent a copy of their new patents in this way. (I have a few of my own.)

I have found many CGW memos and letters that give Mr. Carder’s name with the middle initial “C.” Even his own secretaries often used this middle initial on his letters. But Mr. Carder did not have a middle name, and I am at a loss to explain why he never made an attempt to address the problem. See item 35 on page 358 of Gardner’s book.

Regarding Mr. Bly’s remark about Mr. Carder’s possible use of the name Caleb in England, I have not found such an occasion in spite of extensive searching.

Ed Bush,
Painted Post, NY