Hangers for supporting articles from a vertical wall member and which provide vertical adjustment means are well known in the prior art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,881,673, issued to Peterson on May 6, 1975 discloses a tensioning device designed primarily to support a filter bag in a baghouse gas filtering apparatus. The device comprises a pair of pivoted, scissor-like bars having ratchet teeth. The bars fit through a bore in a rigid support frame and the teeth engage the horizontal member of the support frame. Advancing the bars through the bore draws a suspensory means that is attached to a filter bag and to the advancing bars, thereby applying tension to the bag. U.S. Pat. No. 1,690,941 issued to Nickerson on Nov. 6, 1928 discloses a lamp socket securing means comprising a bracket member having a pair of spaced apart, parallel arms each having two co-planar portions that have a plurality of teeth extending from opposite sides thereof. The teeth interact with a spring clip for position adjustment. U.S. Pat. No. 952,053 issued to Tarleton on Mar. 15, 1910 discloses an adjustable pipe hanger comprising a stem having a plurality of notches or indentations along one edge that interacts with a spring loaded ball detent for vertical position adjustment. U.S. Pat. No. 178,733 issued to Carter et al. on June 13, 1876 discloses a chandelier height adjusting device which employs a pair of oppositely facing, pivotal cams having teeth-like projections secured to a vertically extending rod member that is spring loaded and to which the chandelier is attached. Another outer tube has a series of teeth-like projections on its inner surface that interact with the projections on the cam for position adjustment.
The present invention provides a novel method for position adjustment in that the means for adjustment is integral with the hanger. The prior art devices required either pivot means for disengaging the hanger member from the support or a manual manipulation of several interacting parts to adjust the supported article from one position to the next.
Accordingly it is an object of the present invention to provide a simple, inexpensive hanger device for adjustably securing an article to a wall member.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a hanger device in which one of either the bayonet member or the channel means is equipped with resiliently deformable projections that interact with projection receiving means on the other of either the bayonet member or the channel means to thereby allow position adjustment by simply advancing or retracting the bayonet member to the desired position.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a hanger device in which the force required to adjust the position of the article to be supported can be varied by relatively simple design changes to thereby permit use of the hanger device with a wide variety of articles of varying size and weight or for use in applications requiring child resistant adjustment.
Still further objects of the invention will become apparent from the detailed description of the invention below.