On 2011 Apr 15, at 1:25 PM, allison wrote:
  there is only one thing that was not made 1909, that
is a patent date.
  It's from much later maybe
 30s or 40s at least.  Still a find though. 
I noticed that too. It's interesting there isn't a more recent patent
date, closer to the time of manufacture, as so often improvements in
such a new technology resulted in new patents from the manufacturers as
they competed for market position.