A patent filing and a company history document two separate claims

The image

The surviving patent record shows the device before it had its trademarked name: US Patent 4,017,168, filed by Garrett W. Brown on 16 September 1974 and granted on 12 April 1977, describes, in the language of the filing itself, a pair of interconnected spring-loaded arms, one end pivotally supported by a carrying brace worn by a cameraman, the other connected to a handle positioned at approximately the camera's own center of mass. The patent record lists the invention's title plainly as "Equipment for use with hand held motion picture cameras."

What the documents show

The patent's own language states the mechanical principle without reference to any brand name: the camera and its equipment are mounted in an expanded, balanced arrangement around the handle, and the weight is counterbalanced by the spring-loaded arms themselves, without separate counterweights, while a remote viewer lets the operator see the frame from a position not fixed to the camera's own orientation. A separate account from Tiffen, the company that now manufactures the Steadicam brand, describes the same invention's first production use: its own company history page states that the device made its feature-film debut on Bound for Glory, shot by cinematographer Haskell Wexler, and separately records that Rocky, released the same year, 1976, used prototype units for its Philadelphia Museum steps sequence, a run through the Italian Market, and a shot recorded from a moving van that the company's own page calls the first Steadicam shot ever filmed from a moving vehicle.

Production context

Brown is quoted on Tiffen's page describing the Wexler shot: a continuous take beginning thirty feet up on a descending crane and continuing on foot through a crowd of extras, lasting over two minutes, which he says he could barely judge through the rig's small viewfinder until the dailies screened. That account documents the production problem the mechanism solved: sustaining one uninterrupted, physically demanding camera move across a change from crane-mounted to hand-carried operation without a visible cut.

Reference versus imitation

The two documents divide cleanly by kind: the patent establishes the mechanical claim under Brown's name alone, while the manufacturer's history page, written decades later by the company that now sells the product, credits specific productions and quotes Brown's own recollection. Citing the patent for the counterbalancing principle it describes, and the company history for the production anecdotes it records, is reference to two different kinds of document. Treating a manufacturer's retrospective marketing history as equivalent in weight to the patent's legal claim, without noting which document makes which claim, would blur two records this entry keeps separate.

• Does a claim describe the patent's mechanical specification, or a later company history's retrospective account of first use?
• Is the cited "first" use scoped to a specific production, given two 1976 films are both described using early units?
• Is the manufacturer's own promotional history being checked for what it can and cannot independently confirm?

The patent dates the mechanism; the manufacturer's own later account, not an independent archive, dates its earliest credited productions, and this entry keeps that distinction rather than presenting both as one document.