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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...""
If 10,000 patents were all that were issued from 1790 to 1836 (40 years) and considering we are up to patent number 7,000,000 (approx) right now, it would be interesting to have a graph of patents granted over time from 1790 to the present. My guess is that it would be an exponential curve.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
There was once a requirement that patent applications be accompanied by a working model of the invention.
The patent office once stored thousands of these little gadgets.
When the requirement was lifted, the patent office cleared out the warehouse, and gave way the models.
As you can imagine, most were probably trashed . . . given to kids who destroyed them. The surviving specimens are hot collector's prizes.
I once visited a collector's house, while doing "Dead Media" research. He had a few models. Most were of really pedestrian things, like automated brick makers.
STefan
Of course it would. The population has grown exponentially, as has effectively every other non-ratio metric associated with our country. GDP has gone up exponentially, food consumption has gone up exponentially, the stock market...you get the idea.
A much more insightful study would be patents/person by year. I would imagine that this figure has also gone up, though likely not quite with an exponential dependence. Most interesting would be sharp jumps in this curve that one might associate with specific events, like WWII, certain presidents getting elected, new USPTO directors, and so on.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Ironically, British troops had attacked Washington DC 24 years earlier, burning nearly everything except those patents, which they very carefully avoided.
They were issued from July 1790, when the United States patent system was created under an order signed by George Washington, to July 1836
10000 Patents in 43 years, That is a lot lower than the amount of patents issued nowadays. Perhaps the patent officers should take a cue from the old (dead) guys and be waaaaaaaay more stingy with patents that are granted. My bet is because they can't keep up with the amount of patents they pass more patents, so companies file for more patents.
After watching "Connections" on the Discovery channel, I always thought it would be cool if you could graph the references between research papers and also do the same for patents.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
But the designs for the first 16 ships of the modern fleet didn't exist as drawn plans at all, rather they were models. It was a case of "one like this, please, but 25 times larger."
Even when it drawn plans became the norm, the Navy Board would require a model: from http://www.nmm.ac.uk/site/request/setTemplate:sing lecontent/contentTypeA/conWebDoc/contentId/14112/v iewPage/2, "You are to prepare and send with your Draught a Solid or Model shaped exactly by the same with the Load Water Line, the height of the Decks and Wales, the Channels, Chainplates, Ports, Gallerys etc marked thereon; And that everything proper to explain your Design be done both on the Draught and Solid in as particular manner as possible for our consideration and directions therin before you proceed on your Building or Rebuilding.
Letter from the Navy Board to the Master Shipwrights at the Royal Dockyards, 1716."
So using models for patent applications is a very reasonable concept when describing a three-dimensional entity.
Mmmm, several hundred year old consipracy. This is gonna drive 'em nuts for years... ;-)
(hopefully) that discussions should not be reduced to a set of childish rules.
The requirement of a working model may have been doable in the days of mainly mechanical inventions. But these days, a lot of inventions are electrical. A large processor such as an Athlon 64 probably has dozens have patents. Should they be required to submit an Athlon 64? How will the PTO test it? What if the invention is on a method of making a processor. Can't really model that, can you? Not to mention drug patents, or software patents.
Actually, no. At least not the ones that genuinely are innovative.
I'd quite like to see the expiry date on all of them mysteriously reduce by 2/3rds or so, but I'd hate to see that ingenuity lost forever and need to be re-invented.
The problem with tech patents is that the tech industry is still incredibly immature and developing at a rapid rate. Patent durations that make sense for mechanical devices aren't really appropriate for tech patents at this stage in the game.
Eventually, I'd like to see patents and copyrights "self-tune" according to some metric like the median number of registered works per capita (i.e. if almost everyone in the country has a few hundred registered works in their name - as opposed to their slavemaster^Wemployer's name - then it would appear hardly any protection is necessary as somehow people are innovating and creating and managing to make doing so a profitable enterprise). I expect this would integrate well with rms' thoughts on "functional" (i.e. programs, devices), "creative" (fiction, music) and "representative" (memoirs, manifestos) works (see section 7 of linked article).
--
Except for the fact that (as many believe) the Nazis started the fire to strengthen their position.
The original requirement for a patent model allowed for a maximum volume of one cubic foot, measured on all faces as the limit in model size. I am sure that originally, that seemed reasonable enough. Still, it became quite evident as the Patent Office was busy turning into a massive filing system of 12 inch by 12 inch by 12 inch models that this was a nightmare in progress, reminiscent of the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Arc wherein an item is carted off into an endless warehouse. The models themselves vary from small individual components to astonishing miniaturized versions of large machinery to full size examples of individual products. The materials vary from wood, to machined metals to amazing works done in tin. Around 1890, the cubic foot rule had become unworkable and the models were no longer accepted. After allowing the Smithsonian to pick and choose from among the models, the remainder were scrapped. From among these, a small fraction have survived and reside in museums and collections. Some of these are sufficiently interesting as to serve as the centerpieces of collections. While the models themselves may be more of museum pieces, than educational, which could be debated either way, the documentation of the evolution of patents and how they build one each upon the others that have cut the path before them is of historical and technical interest.