A reader sent this along about book covers. They are apparently a collectible item.
On this one, scroll right (or down) and check these out. It is interesting that could be patented back in the day. If you look at the design you can see what they were trying to accomplish with the design oddities, but I don't think you could get a patent on this now. I have a pal who is a patent attorney. I'll ask him.
I think this is the patent:
ReplyDeletehttps://patents.google.com/patent/US779161A/en
There seems to be a whole classification for "book covers, loose"
I'm not sure that it was a requirement to cover our schoolbooks, but it was something that most or all students did. No cover-materials were supplied by the school, and I don't think my mother would ever expend money on something glossy when free grocery-bags were so available.
The libraries in my area used cellophane sleeves over dustjackets; these had a perfect amount of over-size and a strategic bit of clear tape on each 'wing' such that one needed to bend the hard-cover nearly backwards to remove the sleeved jacket. I always took great care to model my brown paper covers on these, so that they would be especially secure without any tape sticking to any part of the hard cover.