Machine

In patent law. In its broadest signification, this term is applied to any contrivance which is used to regulate or modify the relations between force, motion, and weight. "The term 'machine' includes every mechanical device or combination of mechanical powers and devices to perform some function and produce a certain effect or result."

15 How. (U. S.) 267.

What are sometimes called the "simple machines" are six in number: The lever, the pulley, the wheel and axle, the wedge, the screw, and the inclined plane. These are sometimes known as the mechanical powers, though neither these nor any other machinery can ever constitute or create power. They can only economize, control, direct, and render it useful. Machines, as generally seen and understood, are compounded of these simple machines in some of their shapes and modifications. Although a new machine, or a new improvement of a machine, is an invention, and although only one invention can be included in a single patent, still, several different contrivances, each of which is in one sense a machine, may all be separately claimed in a single patent, provided they all contribute to improve or to constitute one machine, and are intended to produce a single ultimate result; and a new combination of machines is patentable, whether the machines themselves be new or old.

3 Wash. C. C. (U. S.) 69; 1 Story (U. S.) 273, 568; 2 Story (U. S.) 609; 1 Mason (U. S.) 474; 1 Sumn. (U. S.) 482; 3 Wheat. (U. S.) 454.