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Some Of The Lost X-Patents Found
Jerry Browne writes "
The New York Times (reg req) is carrying
a story
about the recent discovery of some lost patents. Apparantly a fire at a
temporay storage site in July 1836 destroyed the first 10000 patents issued. From the article..."The
Patent and Trademark Office has issued nearly seven million patents; the
first 10,000 are known as the X-patents. They were issued from July 1790,
when the United States patent system was created under an order signed
by George Washington, to July 1836, when every one of them burned in a
fire...In the 168 years since the fire, only about 2,800 have been recovered....Until
this spring, that is, when two lawyers...a clue to several important patents
from the 1790's - including one from 1826 for the first internal combustion
engine...""
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Historical reference. There are patents today which refer to older patents, which refer to still older patents, etc. Sometimes it's interesting to trace the developments of current ideas from their initial inspirations.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Not first engine, first internal combustion engine. Steam engines -- even ones running on gas -- are external combustion engines. The technologies are quite distinct.
Doing a little research I have indexed "round number" patents and gotten the following results.
Patent 10000 was issued in 1853 , 50000 was issued in 1865, 100000 was issued in 1870, 200000 was issued in 1878, 500000 was issued in 1893, 1000000 was issued in 1911, 2000000 was issued in 1935
Patent 3000000 was issued in 1955, 4000000 was issued in 1976, 5000000 was issued in 1991, 6000000 was issued in 1999, 6500000 was issued in 2002,
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
For specifics on the internal, external, and who actually created both. The obligatory Wiki link.
The Age of Steam didn't really get going until Watt. Newcomen steam engines had been around for almost a century before Watt, but the approach was terrible. In a Newcomen engine, the cylinder was heated and cooled on every cycle. This is horrendously inefficient, but nobody knew that then. It took a huge engine to produce very modest power outputs. (Typical specs: 60-inch cylinder, 15HP) Watt built a Newcomen engine and started making measurements of the properties of steam and the heat capacity of the materials in the engine. Once he had some numbers to work with, he realized that a much simpler cycle would work much better.
Then the problem was making an engine that didn't lose all the pressure through leaks. It took until 1782 before Boulton and Watt built something that could rotate a shaft. By 1788, they finally had a good engine.
They also had a patent extension from 1775 to 1800, given them directly by Parlament. Boulton and Watt used this to become a big company. That's how the Industrial Revolution started.
Visit the Kensington Science Museum in London, and you'll see many of the earliest steam engines.
Uh, the Nazis *did* bill the Reichstag Fire as a terrorist conspiracy, and a reason for extended police powers, and a reason for the nation to need to "stand together" and not criticize them.
There should be a term that refers to events like the Reichstag Fire and 9/11.
May we never see th
Be our guest.
Just FYI, actual patent documents are stored temporarily in Carlyle and permanently in that huge underground cave thingy in West Virginia. The only thing that exists on paper at the USPTO are the last few (thousand) applications that entered the system before we went 100% electronic image format.
But let me guess... Electronic image format is yet another sign that the USPTO is trying to ruin your great innovations?
For example, there are patents in the "09" and "10" series, but I don't believe there are any "08" series. I could be wrong about that, but I've never seen an "08" series in my technology.
Also, it should be observed that there weren't any television patents before 1940, there weren't any cable tv patents before 1950, and there weren't any flat panel tv patents before 1990. There are simply a lot more different technologies to patent these days.
It appears that every time more copyrights are in danger of expiring, minions of Disney in congress will act to extend them again.
It also appears that in Eldred v. Ashcroft, the Supreme Court let the copyright term extensions of 1976 and 1998 slide but hinted strongly that it would overturn a third successive extension.