What
Is A Patent Drawing ?
Each patent drawing will have the
patent number, the name of the patent, the dates
it was applied for and when it was issued, one or
more illustrations, signatures, and often the name
of the firm that illustrated it.
Brief
History of Patents
The
concept
of patents dates back to 1421, Florence, Italy,
when Filippo Brunelleschi was granted the first
recorded patent, for the design and use of a ship,
the Badalone. This ship was intended to ferry
supplies up the Arno river to the city for the
building of the Florentine cathedral dome, that
Brunelleschi had designed. Unfortunately the
Badalone sank during delivery of a load of white
marble. The Venetian Senate passed the first
patent law in 1474, granting limited duration
monopoly for original devices.
In
England
King Henry IV granted that country's first patent
for stained glass manufacturing in 1449. During
this time, a patent was a government-granted
monopoly, so could be as much a right to
manufacture or trade as well as the right to deny
others to do so. Toward the end of the 16th
century, the Crown's corrupt abuse of granting
monopolies was causal in the evolution of the rule
of law and judicial power at the expense of the
monarch, and set the country on the path to
eventual civil war.
In
the
United States, the governmental right to grant
patents was enshrined in the constitution in
Article 1. The first U.S. patent act was in 1790.
Prior
to
1910, when they were abolished by Congress,
inventors could submit caveats to the Patent
Office. They were preliminary applications in
which the inventor made claims to one or more
potential inventions without presenting the detail
required in a formal patent application. The
Patent Office noted the subject matter of the
caveat and placed it in a confidential archive. If
within one year another inventor filed an
application on a similar process or device, the
Patent Office notified the holder of the caveat,
who then had three months to submit a formal
application.
In
Japan
during the Edo period, there was a tendency to
abhor new things, a "Law for New Items" was
proclaimed in the year 6 of the Kyoho Era (1721).
The purpose of this law was described as "to
ensure that absolutely no new types of products
would be manufactured".
Interesting
Facts About Patents
•
Thomas Jefferson was the first Patent Examiner.
• In 1790, the cost to obtain a patent was
between $4 and $5.
• The first U.S. patent was granted on July 31,
1790, to Samuel Hopkins of Pittsford, Vt., for
an improvement in "the making of Pot ash and
Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process."
• Mary Kies of Killingly, Conn., was the first
women to obtain a patent, she received a patent
in 1809 for a way to weave "straw with silk or
thread."
• Oscar Hammerstein financed
his theatre interests from the proceeds of some
80 patents, most of them related to cigar making
machines.
• Chester Carlson, a patent agent who tired of
having to make multiple copies of patent
applications using carbon paper came up with a
new copying system in 1959 and took it to IBM
for evaluation. The "experts" at IBM determined
potential sales to be minimal because people
wouldn’t want to use a bulky machine when they
had carbon paper. Carlson’s invention was the
xerography process, the company founded on the
system is Xerox.
• Abraham Lincoln while a congressman from
Illinois, received Patent No. 6,469 for "A
Device for Buoying Vessels over Shoals." The
idea of the invention was that if a ship ran
aground in shallow waters, the bellows would be
filled with air, and the vessel, thus buoyed,
would float clear. The model Lincoln whittled
can be seen at the Smithsonian's National Museum
in Washington.
• Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) received Patent
No. 121,992 for "An Improvement in Adjustable
and Detachable Straps for Garments." He later
received two more patents: one for a
self-pasting scrapbook and one for a game to
help players remember important historical
dates.
• Though George Ferris built the first Ferris
Wheel in 1893 for the Columbia Exposition in
Chicago he never patented the idea. The patent
office has since issued more than 100 patents
for round-a-bouts and Ferris Wheel improvements.
•
Almon Stowger, an undertaker, was convinced a
telephone operator, the wife of a competitor,
was sending calls to her husband's company that
were meant for him, he invented an automatic
switching system to eliminate the operators that
became known as the "Stowger switch".
