McCaughn v. American Meter Co.

BUFFINGTON, Circuit Judge.

The decisive question in this tax ease is whether the taxpayer’s gas meter was, under the Revenue Acts of 1918 and 1921 (40 Stat. 1122, § 900 (16), and 42 Stat. 292, § 900 (11), an “automatic, slot-vending machine.”

The taxpayer made a patented device adapted to operate a release when a coin is dropped in its slot. The device when soldered, as was intended should be done, to a gas meter, a quarter dollar deposited in its slot, released and delivered to the depositor of the coin two hundred and fifty feet of gas. To answer the question whether such apparatus was an…