Slashdot Mirror
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...""
Reg-Free Link
Maybe some of the new tech patents will 'accidently' get burned.. we can only hope
Perhaps the solution to this madness of patenting algorithms, genes, etcetera... is to burn down the patent office again!
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
one of the patents burned in the fire was the first internal sprinkler system...
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
In other news, the first recorded original story on slashdot has been found.
:)
It has been carbon dated to within the mid 1830's.
It has been duped 4796 times since then.
I actually like these kind of outlandish irrelivent stories, must be a slow news day...
liqbase
...included patent on a business method of "using silly patents for intimidation and extortion".
There should be consequences...
--
All this time looking for a solution to the problems with the U.S. patent office and the solution was right in front of my face the whole time. Arson! How could I have missed that one?
The truth is out there. And it's already been patented.
X-patents, eh? Sounds like the patent office is trying to jazz up their image to attract more young patent holders. Makes sense though, I heard they haven't been doing so well marketing to 18-25 year olds.
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 the first US patent is the one for the time machine -- or at least it will be when it gets invented. (Insert shameless plug for Cheapass games here)
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
My great-great-great-grandfather patented Hyperlinking, Rambus memory, and Unix back in the 1800's. I'll be setting up a paypal account shortly so you can pay.
I hope this helps to usher in the return of the working model requirement. As patents used to require a working model in order to be awarded, it surely would've been easier to figure out whose patent was which when the inventor actually had to have a working one! So long to all those hi-tech patents where the company merely drafted a requirements document and fired it off to the USPTO. Let's see you build one first! 10-20 million lines of code later, the hi-tech patent volume slides down a few more notches.
stuff |
Perhaps I'm wrong - maybe the internal combustion engine *was* discovered.
"Where did you say you heard those noises?"
"Just up here, around this bend in the cave"
"Wait! I hear it! What sort of infernal creature is it?"
"God save us, I think it is coming this way!"
"Hold the lantern higher and brace yourselves!"
.....
"Aww, it's just a baby! It's no danger to anyone!"
"Let us call it 'Infernal Combustion Engine'."
"We did find it in this cave, how about 'Internal Combustion Engine'?"
"Brilliant!"
"This discovery will bring peace and prosperity to all the peoples of the world!"
(cue evil Doom3 music)...
...rubber fire hoses
Methinks you forget the entire *point* of a patent system.
The patent system exists so that inventors have an incentive to disclose their inventions to the public. This is so that others can use the invention once the patent expires, and the idea doesn't just sit in some forgotten vault.
The value of a patent to the country as a whole lies not in the time that the patent is valid, but after it expires, when it is freely availible to all for use.
This is from a quick search I did by patent number:
1 - Traction Wheels - July 13, 1836
10 - Cutting Dye Wood - Aug 10, 1836
101 - Sails and Rigging - Dec 6, 1836
1,000 - Carriage Spring - Nov 3, 1838
10,000 - Paddle Wheel - Sep 6, 1853
100,000 - Horse Sun Bonnet - Feb 22, 1870
250,000 - Ditching Machine - Nov 22, 1881
500,000 - Combined Plush Tank & Manhole - Jun 20, 1893
1,000,000 - Vehicle Tire - Aug 8, 1911
1,500,000 - Submersible vessle for navigation under ice - Sept 10, 1920
2,000,000 - Vehicle Wheel Construction - May 12, 1932
2,500,000 - Interlock for Quick Fastening Doors - Dec 6, 1946
3,000,000 - Automatic Reading System - May 6, 1955
4,000,000 - Process for Recycling Asphalt-aggregate compositions - Dec 28, 1976
5,000,000 - Ethanol production by Escherichia coli strains co-expressing Zymomonas PDC and ADH genes - Mar 19, 1991
6,000,000 - Extendible method and apparatus for synchronizing multiple files on two different computer systems - Dec 7, 1999
6,750,000 - Electron device manufacturing method, a pattern forming method, and a photomask used for those methods - Jun 15, 2004
Approximate time between patents:
#1-10,000: 17 years
#10,000-100,000: 17 years
#100,000-500,000: 23 years
#500,000-1,000,000: 18 years
#1,000,000-2,000,000: 21 years
#2,000,000-3,000,000: 23 years
#3,000,000-4,000,000: 21 years
#4,000,000-5,000,000: 15 years
#5,000,000-6,000,000: 8 years
#6,000,000-6,750,000: 5 years
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73