Robert Bunsen, Open Source Pioneer?

cygtoad writes "Today marks Robert Bunsen's 200th birthday. I found this interesting factoid on the man: 'Bunsen and Desaga did not apply for patent protection on their burner and it was quite soon that others began to produce their own versions. Some even went so far as to claim the invention as their own, including one person who was granted a patent on the device. Both Bunsen and Desaga were involved in writing letters to the proper authorities to refute these claims.' Does anyone have an older example of such an open information pioneer? In my book he deserves some honor." Benjamin Franklin famously chose not to patent the design of the stove that bears his name, too; you can read all about it.

Comments

Makes business sense, probably...

[nebaz]

When you have a system where you can actually make more money suing for patent infringement and protecting "intellectual property" than you can for actually creating a product, what do you think businesses will do? It probably wasn't the case back then.

Faraday

[leathered]

I thought Michael Faraday came up with the original gas laboratory burner. Bunsen merely improved on the design. I guess, like the telephone or television, no person can claim to be the sole inventor.

Fire was patented and the patent was enforced

[perpenso]

Fire. The inventor of fire never got a patent on it. Think of all the royalties he missed out on!

Untrue. Zeus held the patent, there was even enforcement. Prometheus paid quite a high price for his infringement.

Re:Fire was patented and the patent was enforced

[brentrad]

Actually Zeus was ok with Prometheus using fire for his own personal use, but then Prometheus decided to make fire available to mankind through torch-to-torch networks, and he got hit by a massive distribution judgement.

Re:Fire was patented and the patent was enforced

[Chrisq]

No, it was George Flint, a young man from Wales. The lore is that he was banging rocks around 842BCE, and sparks flew, catching his little pile of pine needles on fire. George ran to Uck, who said, "do it again". Bang, George went. Uck killed George, then claimed to invent fire and got 72 virgins. Uck's decendants include Edison and Sarnoff.

Obvious nonsense. It's never dry enough to light anything with a flint in Wales. Besides which if a welshman invented fire it would be much more likely to involve friction and wool than flint and pine needles.

Re:Fire

[SnarfQuest]

I'm going to apply for a patent for "fire, on the internet,"

Let the flamewar begin. I'll sue you all for patent abuse!

I contend that...

[Hazel Bergeron]

I contend that, if you were to abolish patents completely tomorrow, people would still want to create and invent and solve problems. The pace of innovation would not slow down but increase, because no firm could ever rest on its laurels.

The arguments that clever people do not work unless paid very highly; that people do not express themselves unless given copyright protection; that people do not invent unless they can win a patent - all these arguments are oft repeated and rarely proven. IME all the cleverest people want is an environment where they can dedicate their time to their art.

The Davy Lamp (1815)

[SpaceToast]

After a series of deadly methane explosions in British coal mines, Sir Humphrey Davy (1778-1829) invented an oil lamp with a metal mesh-encased wick, which became known as the Davy lamp. He released it without patent, and the design quickly spread. Humphrey determined through experimentation that methane only exploded at a certain mixture with oxygen, at a certain (high) temperature. The metal mesh dissipated the heat of the wick below the ignition point, which alerting the miners to the presence of methane ("fire damp") by burning at a different color. It was considered an early triumph of the application of the scientific method to a critical public need.

For a fascinating read on the era, I can't recommend Richard Holmes' recent book The Age of Wonder highly enough.