This week I’ve been haphazardly exploring unsurprisingly nifty Google patents database. Surprise discoveries included a talking alarm system invented by my great-great-uncle in 1927. The patent shown here, though, I found particularly pleasing, mostly due to the patentee’s names. Lamprey & Bugbee write, “Our invention relates to knitting-machines adapted to the production of striped goods, and, as here shown, it is particularly applicable to circular rib-knitting machines. It is the object of our invention to provide improved means for automatically operating and controlling the operations of two yarns of different colors in such manner that a tubular fabric can be produced having alternate stripes of different colors and of any desired width repeated to the end of the tube without stopping the machine to change the yarns to throw one color out of action and another into action.” 
from “Patent No. 383,817: Knitting-Machine,” by Benjamin B. Lamprey and Almon C. Bugbee, 29 May 1888