[emeritus]

I just checked Espace, the European Patent Office's patent search facility, and, while it does find GB585791, it only provides an electronic text version of the document and not a facsimile of the original document, although it does refer you to the corresponding US patent. I know from personal experience that documents that are linked as equivalents in patent databases are not necessarily identical, and our practice at GEC was always to get actual copies of all equivalent family members when looking for prior art. The EPO's current service seems to be an unfortunate change from what was provided a decade or so ago when I was actively involved in patents, when PDFs of all 20th century UK patents were provided. No doubt an economy measure which is especially unfortunate, as attempting to do a search via the UK Patent Office (IPO) web site merely takes you the the EPO's Espace. Personally I usually rely on the German Patent Office's service, which does have an English-language option for non-german speakers, and (IMHO) offers far superior search and print options. Their copy of GB585791 is a scanned copy of their own paper copy, and is stamped with the date it was publicly available in their library. Ironic that I now have to go to a german web site to get a copy of a UK patent!