US2805705A - Stowage compartment for vehicle chairs - Google Patents

Description

Sept. 10, 1957 s. B. HENDRICKSON STOWAGE COMPARTMENT FOR VEHICLE cums Filed Jan. 19, 1955 2 She'ets-Sheet 1 INVENTbR. SEVERIN B. HENDRICKSQN BY M. gb nvy, I

' ATTOR N EYS P 1957 I s. B. HENDRICKSON, 2,805,705

STOWAGE COMPARTMENT FOR VEHICLE CHAIRS Filed Jan. 19, 1955 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 I INVENTOR. SEVERIN B. HENDRICKSON ATTORN EYS United States Patent STOWAGE COMPARTMENT FOR VEHICLE CHAIRS Severin B. Hendrickson, Templeton, Mass., assignor to Heywood-Wakefield Company, Gardner, Mass., a corporation of Massachusetts Application January 19, 1955, Serial No. 482,743

11 Claims. (Cl. 155-103) This invention relates to vehicle chairs and more particularly to stowage compartments for reversible vehicle chairs.

Conventional overhead luggage or parcel racks in public vehicles have numerous drawbacks. In the first place, parcels and the like are apt to drop from them onto chair occupants. Secondly, in order to provide ample head room, they are positioned so far above the floor of the car that luggage can be lifted onto them only with great difliculty. Thirdly, overhead racks are unsightly. And fourthly, their location is inconsistent with the modern trend of lowering the center of gravity of vehicle cars for stability purposes.

It is not a simple matter, however, to locate luggage or parcel racks elsewhere in the car. Nearly all railroad car seats are reversible and the reversing mechanism is usually located under the seat. Thus there may not be sufficient room under the seat for a rack or compartment, and any design for such a compartment under the seat must take into account the problem of avoiding interference with the reversing mechanism. Another problem is that of foot space. Still another problem is that of security. Access to a compartment hidden beneath the seat should only be available to one person in order to avoid accidental mingling of parcels belonging to different people. In practice, there has, hitherto, been no adequate solution to these latter problems and the result is that the ancient overhead racks still continue in use.

Therefore, it is an object of my invention to provide an underslung rack for reversible vehicle chairs and to limit the access to each rack to the occupants of one chair. Another object of my invention is to provide such an underslung rack without interferring with the reversing mechanism of the chair and without taking up essential foot room under the chair.

In the accomplishment of these and other objects of my invention in a preferred embodiment thereof, I employ a reversible chair known in the industry as a flop-over type chair. In this type chair, reversal is accomplished by flopping the back rest over and simultaneously moving the seat from a rearward sloping position in one direction to a rearward sloping position in the opposite direction. In my invention, I provide a luggage or parcel compartment under such a chair and I provide front and rear doors to this compartment. The doors are pivotally mounted to swing downwardly and their motion is governed through a linkage arrangement by the reversing mechanism of the seat and back rest. Thus when the chair is adapted for seating in one direction, the compartment door to the rear thereof is opened and the compartment may be used only by the occupants of the seat to the rear.

It is a feature of my invention that the luggage compartment does not take up essential foot room either of the occupant of the chair in which it is located or of the chair next to the rear. Another feature of my invention is that instead of interfering with the reversing mechanism of the chair, the compartment and doors of my ice invention actually rely upon the said reversing mechanism accomplishing the opening and closing action.

These and other objects and features of this invention, along with incident advantages, will be better understood and appreciated from the following description of one embodiment thereof, selected for purposes of illustration, and shown in the accompanying drawings, in which:

Fig. l is a view in side elevation of a railroad chair constructed in accordance with this invention;

Fig. 2 is a fragmentary view in cross section of one of the storage compartment doors and its operating mechanism;

Fig. 3 is a view in cross section along sight lines 33 of Fig. 2; and

Fig. 4 is a view in cross section along sight lines 4-4 of Fig. 2

The preferred embodiment of my invention herein shown includes in its general organization, a reversible chair of the flop-over type and a stowage compartment underneath the seat of the chair. Since the mechanism of both sides of the chair are exact duplicates of each other, and since the operative elements of my invention may be understood from a detailed description of only one side, this description wil be limited to the details of one side of the chair.

The chair includes a base frame indicated generally at 10, a seat cushion 22 mounted Within the frame and a back rest 30 connected to the frame. The base frame 10 is generally tubular in construction and has, as essential elements, a pair of upright side standards 11 each of which has an arm rest 20 on the top portion thereof. The side standards 11 are joined across the chair by means of intermediate cross braces 12 and 14 and by foot rails 18. The seat 22 is of conventional upholstered construction and is mounted on a base plate 24 which is in turn supported by wedges 26 and 28 attached to the base plate 24 on the underside thereof. The support wedges 26 and 28 are arranged and spaced under the seat 22 so that when it is placed within the base frame 10, the support wedges 26 and 28 rest on the cross braces 12 and 14 respectively. Thus the seat 22 may slide forwards and backwards relative to the chair, and in doing so, the wedges 26 and 28 carry the seat from a position of incline in one direction to a position of incline in the other direction.

The back rest 30 is connected to the frame 10 by crossed link arms 34 and 36. The link arms 34 and 36 are pivotally connected to the side standard 11 by pivots 42 and 48 respectively, and the said pivots 42 and 48 are on the same level and are spaced symmetrically to either side of the transverse center line of the chair. At their other ends the link arms 34 and 36 are pivotally connected to a side plate 32 mounted on the back rest 30, and the said arms 34 and 36 are connected to the said plate 32 by pivots 40 and 46 respectively. The pivots 4-0 and 46 are spaced symmetrically to either side of the transverse center line of the back rest 30, and lie in the plane of the back rest. It will be seen, therefore, that the reversing operation of the chair is carried out by flopping the back rest 36 over from an extreme position on one side to the extreme position on the other side with the top of the back rest in one position becoming the bottom of the back rest in the other position.

In order to shift the seat 22 from a rearwardly sloping position in one direction to a rearwardly sloping position in the other direction during the reversing operation, a lower portion of the link arm 36 below the pivot 48 is provided with a short,v inwardly extending pin 52. The pin 52 fits into a slot 54 which is carried by a plate 59 mounted on the base plate 24 of the seat 22. Thus when the link arm 36 passes from the extreme position on one side to the extreme position on the other side, the pin 52,

. link 64 therein.

midportion 86 is retained in the sleeve 84 by means of a operating in the slot 54, pushes the seat forward or backward as the case may be and in doing so the wedge supports 26 and 28 cause the seat to assume a new sloping angle.

For the purpose of supportingparcels and the like underneath the seat, I install a horizontal rack 16 and mount the same internally of the base frame on the same lever as the foot rails 18. In order to form a compartment under the seat and to close off the compartment alternately from either end depending upon the direction of the chair, I provide a pair of doors under the chair together with means for, raising and lowering these doors into and out of a closed position adjacent to the rack 16. Thus the compartment is formed with the rack 16 serving as a bottom wall, the doors serving as end walls, the base frame 10 providing side walls either by means of a tubular framework as is shown in Fig. l, or by other forms of conventional vehicle car chair side elements. Furthermore in many vehicle car chairs, the inner side of the compartment is formed by the side wall of the vehicle, while the side of the compartment adjacent to the aisle is formed by the elements of the seat frame. The underside of the seat 22 serves as a top wall to the said compartment.

The detailed mechanisms and mode of operation of these doors is the same for each door and, therefore, a detailed description of only one of them will sufiice. Referring to Fig. 2, wherein only one such door-operating mechanism is shown, a door 62 will be seen in the lefthand side of the figure, and consists in an essentially flat metal plate connected to the cross brace 12 by means of a hinge 60. The door 62 may be swung upwardly from a depending position to a substantially horizontal position by means of an operating link 64 which is pivotally connected through a pin 68 to a connection 66 mounted on the underside of the base plate 24 of the seat 22. At itsother end the link 64 is pivotally connected to the door 62 in such a way that the door 62 may be brought to the horizontal position roughly parallel to the link 64 while still maintaining a good leverage of operation, and to accomplish this, link 64 is formed with an extension plate 70. The plate 70 projects below the level of the link 64 and passes through a slot 72 in the plate 62. The plate 70 is then pivotally connected by means of a pin76 to lateral support members 74 which are in turn welded to the door 62. The members 74 extend substantially below the plane of the door 62 when the door 62 is in the horizontal position, and in this way, they position the lever arm subtended between the hinge 60 and the pin 76 in a plane that diverges from the plane of the door 62 to provide a good closing leverage arrangement.

In order to adjust the open and closed positions of the door 62, the midportion of the link 64, indicated at 86, is tubular in form and is tapped internally to receive a threaded member 80. The threaded member 80 is in turn held in a tubular extension 78 of the link 64 by means of a set screw 82. Thus turning the threaded member 80 effectively lengthens or shortens the link 64 and by doing so changes the various positions of the door 62. Also in order to prevent accidental damage to the door 62 or to parcels and the like from swinging the door 62 downwardly to the closed position, I provide a sleeve 84 and slidably mount the midportion;86 of the The sleeve 84 is slotted at 90 and the pin 88 secured to the midportion 86 and lying in the slot 90. In order normally to maintain the link 64 at its full operating length, but also to permit it to shorten if the door 62 is subjected to unusual pressure, a compression spring 92 is placed in the sleeve 84 and bears against the inner end of the midportion 86 of the link 64. In order to provide a ready means for detaching the link 64 from the connection 66, the pin 68 is supportedby a U- shaped bracket secured to the underside of plate 24 adjacent to the connection 66, and the pin 68 may be disengaged from the connection 66 by means of a knob 98 secured to one end thereof. The disengaging operation, however, is resisted by a compression spring 96 which normally bears against a washer 97, which in turn bears against a shoulder of the pin 68, and in this fashion the spring 96 normally urges the pin 68 into its fully engaged position with the connection 66.

From Figs. 1 and 2 it willbe seen that the link 64 controls the position of the door 62 through the change of position of the seat 22 during the back rest reversing operation. When the back rest 30 is flopped over to a reversed position, the seat 22 shifts as was previously explained. During this shift, the link 64 is carried to a new position through its connection to the bottom of the support plate 24 and since the cross brace 12 is fixed in position relative to the seat 22 and the door 62 is pivoted to the cross brace12, the motion of the link 64 causes the door 62 either to open or close depending on which position the seat 22 takes. Referring particularly to Fig. 1, the seat 22 is shown in the extreme position of motion to the left-hand side of the figure. When the seat 22 is in this position, the link 64 is likewise in its extreme position of motion to the left and the door 62 is in the depending position closing ofi the compartment under the chair to access from the front of the chair. Access to the compartment under the chair, however, is open to the rear because the door 102 which is adjacent to that side of the chair is pulled upward to the horizontal position by the action of link 100 which is identical in its construction and operation with the link 64. Thus it will be seen that when the chair is in its forwardly projected position, the occupant of the chair next to the rear (facing in the same direction) will have access to the compartment underneath the chair both for the purpose of placing parcels, baggage and the like therein and for the purpose of increasing foot room if desired.

In the event that an attempt is made to reverse the position of the back rest 30 while parcels remain in the compartment below the chair, no damage will be effected because the spring within the sleeve 84 will yield and the door 62 or 102, as the case may be, will not close under the extreme leverage that otherwise might crush theparcels or bend the doors.

Numerous minor variations of this preferred embodiment of myinvention will now be apparent to those skilled in the art. For instance, a reversible back rest of the type which traverses the seat without inverting may be employed equally as well as the flop-over type described specifically herein. Therefore, it is not my intention to confine the invention to the precise form herein shown, but rather to limit it in terms of the appended claims.

Having thus described and disclosed a preferred embodiment of my invention, what I claim as new and desire to secure by Letters Patent of the, United States is:

1. A reversible vehicle car chair and stowage compartment combination comprising, a chair having a base frame and a seat and a back rest mounted thereon, support means for said back rest on said base frame adapted to permit reversal of position of said back rest from a first position facing in one direction relative to the direction of said car to a second position facing in the other direction relative to said car, a compartment within the frame below said seat and being accessible from either direction, doors swingably mounted on said base frame for limiting the access to said compartment, and door actuating mechanism operatively associated with said back rest support means for controlling the swinging motion of said doors to provide access to said compartment for one direction when said back rest is in said first position and from the other direction when said back rest is in said second position.

2 The reversible vehicle car chair and stowage compartment combination defined in claim 1 further characterized by said door operating mechanism controlling said doors to provide access to said compartment only from the end of said chair opposite to the direction in which said back rest faces when in said first and second positions.

3. A reversible vehicle car chair and compartment combination comprising a support frame having front and back horizontal cross braces, a seat supported on the said braces, a back rest, means movably attaching the back rest to the frame permitting the back rest to face either the front or the back relative to said car, a compartmentwithin the frame below the braces, a pair of doors pivotally mounted one on the front brace and the other on the rear brace for limiting access to the compartment from the front and back thereof, and door operating mechanism responsive to movement of the back rest for raising one of the doors and lowering the other of the doors whereby to provide access to said compartroom only from one direction at a time.

4. The reversible vehicle car chair and compartment combination defined in claim 3 further characterized by said door operating mechanism constructed and arranged to open the door at the rear of the chair when the back rest is moved to face front and vice versa.

5. A reversible chair comprising a frame having a pair of parallel spaced apart horizontal supports, a seat movably carried by the supports, a back rest connected to the frame movable to either side of said seat, means responsive to movement of the back rest to one side of the seat for upwardly tilting the other side of the seat, a rack carried by the frame below the seat, doors pivotally mounted on said supports below the front and rear sides of the seat for opening and closing the space defined by the seat and rack, and means responsive to movement of the back rest to one side of the seat for opening the door below that side of the seat and closing the door on the other side of the seat.

6. A reversible chair comprising a frame having a pair of parallel spaced apart horizontal supports, a seat disposed over the supports, a pair of opposed wedges diminishing outwardly in thickness connected to the seat and each engaging one of the supports, a back rest connected to the frame movable to the front or rear side of the seat for changing the direction of the chair, means responsive to movement of the back rest in one direction for moving the seat in the other direction thereby causing one of the wedges to ride up on one support while the other wedge moves off the other support, doors mounted below the seat on each front and rear side of the frame on said support each pivotally movable between substantially horizontal and vertical position, and actuating means connected to the seat and to each of the doors responsive to movement of the seat to one front and rear side of the frame for moving the door on that side of the frame to its substantially vertical position and the other door to its substantially horizontal position.

7. A reversible chair comprising a frame, a movable seat carried by the frame, a compartment within the frame below said seat, doors pivotally mounted on said frame beneath the seat for opening and closing said compartment, and means responsive to movement of the seat for closing one of said doors and simultaneously opening another of said doors.

8. A reversible chair comprising a frame, a movable seat carried by the frame and a compartment within the frame below said seat, a door pivotally mounted on said frame disposed below each end of the seat movable between a substantially horizontal and a substantially vertical position, said doors cooperating with said seat to open and close said compartment, and levers connected between each of the doors and the seat responsive to motion of the seat for opening one of the doors and simultaneously closing the other said door.

9. A reversible chair comprising a frame, a seat supported on said frame for forward and backward motion, Wedges carried by the seat engaging the frame for lifting the forward portion of the seat with forward motion of the seat and lifting the back portion of the seat with backward motion of the seat, a rack beneath the seat carried by the frame defining with the seat and sides of the frame a stowage compartment, front and rear doors mounted on the frame for opening and closing the compartment, a link pivotally connected to the forward portion of the seat and the rear door, and a second link pivotally connected to the rear portion of the seat and the front door, said links being actuated in response to forward movement of the seat to move the front door to its closed position and the rear door to its open position, and vice versa.

10. A reversible chair comprising a frame having front and rear horizontal supports, a movable seat, Wedges carried by the seat engaging the horizontal supports for lifting the front of the seat when it is moved in the forward direction and for lifting the rear of the seat when it is moved in a rearward direction, a luggage rack beneath the seat and carried by the frame and defining a compartment between itself and said seat and the sides of the frame, doors pivotally supported by the front and rear horizontal supports each being movable to a substantially vertical position to close said compartment and to a substantially horizontal position to open said compartment, and links pivotally connected to the front and back portion of the seat, each said linkpivotally engaging one said door, said links being actuated in response to forward motion of the seat to move the front door to its substantially vertical position and the rear door to its substantially horizontal position, and said links being actuated in response to rearward motion of the seat member to reverse the position of the front and rear doors.

11. A reversible chair as defined in claim 10 further characterized by a flop-over back rest secured to the frame, means responsive to motion of the back rest to the rear position for moving the seat forwardly, and means responsive to motion of the back rest to the forward position for moving the seat rearwardly.

Richardson June 16, 1874 Hale Mar. 15, 1887

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