CHAPTER XLI.

THE BUREAU OF PATENTS—CRAZY INVENTORS AND WONDERFUL INVENTIONS.

Patent-Rights in Steamboats—Origin of Copyright and Patent-Laws—Congress Settles the Matter—A Board of “Disinterested, Competent” Persons—Destruction of the Patent-Office by Fire—The New Building—The Corps of Examiners—The Commissioner’s Speech—Twenty Thousand Applications _per annum_—Fourteen Thousand Patents Granted in One Year—Wonderful Expansion of Inventive Genius—“The Universal Yankee”—Second-hand Inventions—Where the Inventions Come from—Taking Out a Patent for the Lord’s Prayer—A Patent for a Cow’s Tail—A Lady’s Patent—Hesitating to Accept a Million Dollars—How Patentees are Protected—The American System—What American Inventors Have Done, and What They Haven’t—The First Superintendent—The Present Commissioner—Exploits of General Legett—His Efficiency in Office—The Inventor Always a Dreamer—Perpetual Motion—The Invention of a D. D.—His Little Machine—“Original with Me”—Silencing the Doctor—A New Process of Embalming—A Dead Body Sent to the Office—Utilizing Niagara—A _Generous_ Offer—An Englishman’s Invention—Inventors in Paris—How to Kill Lions and Tigers in the United States with Catmint—A Fearful Bomb-shell—Eccentric Letters—Amusing Specimens of Correspondence.

With the settlement of the English colonies in America came a great many English customs and laws, and among those adhered to was that of granting patents or passing special Acts for the protection of inventors.

In 1728, the Legislature of Connecticut granted the exclusive right of practicing the business or trade of steel-making, provided the petitioners improved the art to any good and reasonable perfection within two years. In 1785, the State of Maryland passed an act giving to one James Rumsey the exclusive right to construct, employ and navigate boats of an improved construction, to run against the current of rapid rivers. In 1787, an act was passed vesting the exclusive right of propelling boats by steam and water for a limited time. In this year a number of acts were passed to protect inventions of machines for ruff-carding-belts, grinding flour, &c., and in 1789, one for the protection of a hand fire-engine in New Hampshire was enacted.

The founders of the Constitution saw the advantages to be derived from protecting the useful arts and sciences, and we find in Article 1, Section 8, the authority and power given Congress “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing, for a limited time, to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries,” etc.; “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers.” Accordingly, Congress, in 1790, immediately after the ratification of the Constitution, found it necessary and thought it beneficial to enact a statute which authorized the issue of a patent to inventors and discoverers of any useful manufacture, engine, machine, and those who should devise any improvement thereon not before known or used.

The application, consisting of a clear description of the invention, was at that time made to the Secretary-of-State, and the Attorney-General of the United States. If such application was found to be new, a patent was issued by authority of any two persons enumerated, attested by the signature of the President of the United States, who granted to the inventor the exclusive right of making, constructing, using, or vending to others to be used, the invention or discovery, for the term of fourteen years.

As the nation increased in power and talent, this Act was modified as the necessities of the time required. Abuses crept in, the most noted of which was the granting and issuing of a great many patents without any record being kept to indicate that such patents were ever granted. This was caused by lack of organization and want of proper assistance. The Executive and Members of the Cabinet, having other duties to perform, neglected the proper examination of applications, and the system degenerated into as bad a one as the English.

This Act, with the amendment, was, in 1836, swept from the statute books, and the Patent-Office was established on a surer basis, with an organization of a Commissioner, Chief Clerk, an Examiner, a Draughtsman, and some five clerks to conduct the examination and issues of applications. As the decisions of the Commissioner, who was then presumed to examine all applications, was not always impartial and right, an appeal was allowed to a Board composed of three disinterested and competent persons, who were appointed by the Secretary of State, as occasion required.

The Patent-Office Building, which was at that time situated on the present site of the General Post-Office, was completely destroyed by fire in December, 1836, and all models, drawings and records were consumed. Congress appropriated money, and issued circulars directed to all who were thought to be interested in the restoration.

The majority of the patentees sent in duplicates of their papers and models, but many were never heard from, and for this reason the office is unable to present a complete record of the grants. After the fire, the business of the Office was conducted in the City Hall building until the present building was erected for the Patent-Office, a few years later. In 1849, the Office was placed under the supervision of the Secretary of the Interior or Home Department, where it now remains.

The fostering of invention encouraged home manufactures, one of the results most eagerly sought, after the war with Great Britain. So active became the inventive genius and so prolific of results, that Congress was compelled, from time to time, to increase the examining corps, and the little band of seven persons, who occupied the contracted rooms in the City Hall, has expanded into a corps of eighty examiners and assistants, more than two hundred clerks and other officials, all under the control of a Commissioner and an Assistant-Commissioner.

The grant of one thousand patents in 1836, when the office was first regularly organized, has enlarged into one hundred and sixty thousand at the present time. And the latter number is scarcely two-thirds of the number of applications. With this enormous increase followed a corresponding labor and intricacy in examining so large a number of applications, but so perfectly has the system been developed, that very few mistakes are made in the way of wrongfully granting patents.

Hon. S. S. Fisher, United States Commissioner of Patents, before the American Institute, New York City, September 28, 1869, made an eloquent address concerning the American system of granting patents, from which I make the following extracts:

“The great Patent Act of 1836 established what is now distinctively the American system in regard to the grant of letters-patent.

“In the Patent-office, under the act of 1836, the Commissioner and one examining-clerk were thought to be sufficient to do the work of examining into the patentability of the two or three hundred that were offered; now sixty-two examiners are over-crowded with work, a force of over three hundred _employes_ is maintained, and the applications have swelled to over twenty thousand per annum. This year the number of patents granted will average two hundred and seventy-five per week, or fourteen thousand a year.

“In England and on the Continent all applications are patented without examination into the novelty of the inventions claimed. In some instances the instrument is scanned to see if it cover a patentable subject matter, and in Prussia some examination is made into the character of the new idea; but in no case are such appliances provided, such a corps of skilled examiners, such a provision of drawings, models, and books, such a collection of foreign patents, and such checks to prevent and review error, as with us. As a result, an American patent has in our courts a value that no foreign patent can acquire in the courts of its own country.

* * * * *

“The foreign patents of American inventors, that have been copies of patents previously granted in this country, are the best that are granted abroad. Many an English or French invention, that has been patented without difficulty there, has been stopped in its passage through our office by a reference to some patent previously granted in this country. In spite of our examination, which rejects over one-third of all the applications that are made, invention has been stimulated by the hope of protection; and nearly as many patents will issue in the United States this year as in the whole of Europe put together, including the British Isles. But a few days ago I took up a volume of Italian patents, when I was amused and gratified to find on every page the name of the universal Yankee, re-patenting there his American invention. He is, I suspect, much the best customer in the Patent Office of United Italy.

“We are an inventive people. Invention is by no means confined to our mechanics. Our merchants invent, our soldiers and our sailors invent, our school-masters invent, our professional men invent, aye, our women and children invent. One man, lately, wished to patent the application of the Lord’s Prayer, repeated in a loud tone of voice, to prevent stammering; another claimed the new and useful attachment of a weight to a cow’s tail, to prevent her from switching it while milking; another proposed to cure worms by extracting by a delicate line and tiny hook, baited with a seductive pill; while a lady patented a crimping-pin, which she declared might also be used as a paper-cutter, as a skirt-supporter, as a paper-file, as a child’s pin, as a bouquet-holder, as a shawl-fastener, or as a book-mark. Do not suppose that this is the highest flight that the gentle sex has achieved. It has obtained many other patents, some of which have no relation to wearing apparel, and are of considerable value.

“Every inventor supposes that he has a fortune in every conception that he puts into wood and iron. Stealing tremblingly and furtively up the steps of the Patent Office, with his model concealed under his coat, lest some sharper shall see it and rob him of his darling thought, he hopes to come down those steps with the precious parchment that shall insure him a present competency and enrich his children. If he were offered a million in the first flush of his triumph, he would hesitate about touching it without sleeping over it for a night. Yet fourteen thousand millions would be a pretty heavy bill to pay from a treasury not over full. No commission could satisfy the inventor, and no price that we could afford to pay would take the place of the hope of unlimited wealth, which now lightens his toil.... We say, we cannot pay you in money, we will pay you in time. A new thought developed, explained, described, put on record for the use of the nation—this is the one side. The right to the exclusive benefit of this new thought, for a limited time, and protection in that right, this on the other. This is the patent system. A fair contract between the inventor and the public.

“The inventor’s best security is to take out a patent.

“To secure this fair dealing, we have on the one side the Patent Office, with its examiners, its drawings, its models, its books and its foreign patents, to scan and test the invention.

“On the other side we have the courts of law to protect the inventor and punish the thief. It is impossible that these instrumentalities should do their work imperfectly. This is the American system. Under its protection great inventions have been born, and have thriven. It has given to the world the steamboat, the telegraph, the sewing-machine, the hard and soft rubber. It has reconstructed the loom, the reaping-machine, and the locomotive. It has won from the older homes of the mechanic arts their richest trophies, and like Columbus, who found a new world for Castile and Leon, it has created new arts in which our nation has neither competitive or peer.”

The first Superintendent of the Patent Office was Doctor W. Thornton, a gentleman of great attainments, who held his position for many years. The present Commissioner of Patents is General Mortimer D. Leggett, born of Quaker parents, in the State of New York, fifty years ago. At an early age, he went with his parents to the Western Reserve, Ohio. He received an academical education, studied law, was admitted to the bar, and at twenty-eight, was established in a flourishing business in Warren, Ohio. Jacob D. Cox, late Secretary of the Interior, studied law with General Leggett, and ultimately became his partner under the firm name of Leggett & Cox. General Leggett afterwards filled the position of Professor of Pleadings and Equity Jurisprudence, in the Ohio Law College, which he occupied till 1857, and later was called to become the Superintendent of Public Schools in the city of Zanesville, which his management made pre-eminent among the schools of the West. At the beginning of the war, he entered the field at the head of the Seventy-eighth Ohio. This regiment received its first baptism in the snow and sleet of Fort Donelson, and was under fire there.

The executive and administrative ability of Colonel Leggett, as shown in the discipline and condition of his regiment, attracted the attention of General Grant, who made him Provost-Marshal of the post. He did his work so well, that he was repeatedly chosen again, and by the warm commendation of his chief, was made Brigadier-General. At the battle of Shiloh, and the siege of Corinth, General Leggett held advanced posts. In the siege of Vicksburg, General Leggett commanded the first brigade of Logan’s Division—the brigade which, for its gallant service, was honored by being designated for the coveted distinction of marching first into the captured works. Soon after, he received command of this division, and was made Major-General, and with it, made with Sherman, the famous “march to the sea.”

There are many young men who live to say—that the most genial, beneficent, and valuable influence, exerted upon them during the toilsome campaign, and the dangerous periods of idleness in camp-life, was that of General Leggett, who ever inspired patience by his unfailing good humor, persistent fidelity to temperance, both by precept and lofty example. He made many a dreary march seem like a picnic excursion; and his quick, fearless, yet sympathetic glance, often inspired the sinking heart at the moment of danger. Beyond this, he was a true soldier, in caring anxiously for the comfort of his soldiers, in enforcing rigid discipline, and in stimulating officers and men to excel in drill and all service.

At the close of the war, General Leggett became Superintendent and Business Manager of the engine works at Zanesville and Newark, Ohio, the largest establishment of the kind in the West, where he remained, till he was called by the friend who remembered his brave services in the peril of war,—to the administration of one of the most important branches of the Government service in time of peace. He has already inaugurated one of the most potent movements toward the encouragement of the useful arts, ever made in this country—viz.: the publication in popular form, and at low rates, of the Patent Office drawings and specifications.

General Leggett has a clear red-and-white complexion, wide, open laughing blue eyes, and an aspect of fresh health which amounts to youth. His frame and brain are cast in herculean mould. He is a man of muscle, as well as mind—the former having been toughened by long geological foot-tramps through the mountains of Virginia, as well as by the exposures of war, and of an all-time active life.

The official chair of General Leggett has not proved too much for his better self, as it does for so many. He meets all who approach him with a smile and kind word, apparently not forgetting that in a republic the potentate of to-day may be the suppliant of to-morrow, and that at any rate, but one man at a time can be a Commissioner of Patents. He brings to his official administration and decisions the same untiring industry, intelligence and integrity; the same broad views, clear insight and devotion to duty, which in every previous sphere that he has filled have made his whole life an honorable success.

With all its comprehensive cares, one side of the Commissioner’s official life tends to jollity, good digestion, and long life. In no other position in the world, probably, could a man discover how many crazy people there are outside of the lunatic asylum. The born inventor is always a dreamer. For the sake of his darling thought, he is willing to sacrifice himself, his wife and children, every thing but the “machine” growing in his brain and quickening under his eager hand. How often they fail! How often the precious thought, developed into form, is only a mistake—a failure.

Sometimes this is sad—quite as often it is funny. The procession which started, far back in the ages, with its machine of “Perpetual Motion,” long ago reached the doors of the American Patent Office. The persons found in that procession are sometimes astonishing. A doctor of divinity, well-known at the Capital, and not suspected of studying any machinery but that of the moral law, appeared one day in the office of the Commissioner.

“I know I’ve got it,” he said.

“What, sir?”

“PERPETUAL MOTION, sir. Look!” and he set down a little machine. “If the floor were not in the way, if the earth were not in the way, that weight would never stop, and my machine would go on forever. I know this is original with me—that it never dawned before upon any other human mind.”

So enthusiastic was the doctor, it was with difficulty he could be restrained from depositing his ten dollars and leaving his experiment to be patented. The Commissioner, quietly, sent to the library for a book—a history of attempts to create Perpetual Motion. Opening at a certain page, he pointed out to the astonished would-be inventor, where his own machine had been attempted and failed, more than a hundred years before. The reverend doctor took the book home, read, digested, and meditated thereon—to bring it back and lay it down before the Commissioner, in silence. No one has ever heard him speak of Perpetual Motion since.

It would take a large volume, to record all the preposterous letters and inventions received at this office. A very short time since, a man sent a letter to the Patent Bureau describing a new process of embalming which he had originated. It was accompanied by a dead baby—“the model” which he requested should be placed in one of the glass cases of the Exhibition Room. He considered himself deeply injured when his request was refused.

A letter was recently received by the Commissioner of Patents, from a man in Portsmouth, England, offering this Government the benefit of an invention of his own for utilizing water-power, so as to force the water to a great height when confined in reservoirs constructed for the purpose. He offers the invention free of all charge, because, he states, that it pains him to see “such mighty power as there is at the Niagara wasted.” In addition, he offers his own services at the _low_ rate of £1,000 per annum, to build and operate the invention. He says in his letter, that “if the mighty great power in Niagara was accumulated, it would move a great deal.” He also states that he “has a good plan for a velocipede and a bicicle, that he thinks would be a good thing for this country,” but admits that “people in England don’t like it.”

Referring again to his water-power, he claims that if this Government would build the road, he can take ships across the isthmus of Panama “in a box, water and all.”

The Commissioner recently received the following communication from the Legation of the United States:

PARIS, Dec. 3, 1872.

“SIR:—A very large number of inventions and discoveries are submitted to this Legation, with the request that we shall transmit them to Washington. Most of them are, as you may suppose, worthless. We have had, for instance, serious plans proposed for the extermination of all the lions and tigers in the United States by the use of catmint, the _modus operandi_ being to dig an immense pit, and fill it with this herb. The well-known love of the feline race for catmint will naturally induce the lions and tigers to jump into the pit and roll themselves upon it; whereupon concealed hunters are to appear and slaughter the ferocious animals.

“Another plan is for the destruction of grasshoppers upon the plains by the use of artillery; it being perfectly well known that concussion kills insects.

“A third is for the capture of a besieged city by the use of a bomb which, upon exploding, shall emit so foul a smell that the besieged will rush headlong from the walls, and fall an easy prey to the besiegers.”

The President of the United States receives many letters of like character, which are by him transmitted to the Bureau of Patents. I append verbatim copies (including orthography) of three which represent many thousands more of equal intelligence received at this Department of the Government.

AUGUST 31st 1872

MR. U. S. GRANT Sir it is with pleasure I take this opportunity Of writing to You I Am well at Present Hoping those few lines will find you enjoying Good health And prosperity I am doing all I can for you in this locality and I hope and expect you will be our next President Of the United States I would like to have an Office of Siveliseing the Indians What Salary will you give me per Annum please Write to me and let me no in fact I am in need of A little money at present Will you please send me 600 or 1000 dolors to —— —— Sumthing Aught to be done for the poor Indean And I beleave that I can sivelise them. If you will give me 200 or 300 per month it will doo.

MARCH 13 1873

HON. SIR PRESEDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA I announce to you that I am inventing Perpetual Motion I have once had my paterns stolen or I should had the machine in running order before this and I have altered my plan so that it carrys a shaft and wheel and when constructed on a large plan it will move machinery, And being on a new plan and different from all others and I am sure of success which I hope to place before the world soon. Though in consequence of poor health and not having the means to work with it will take some months longer to accomplish it I might write you the plan but I am not sure that you will receive this And now I wish to ask a few questions which I hope you will answer by writing as soon as you receive this

1st has there been a patent granted or applied for on perpetual motion

2nd has the Government a bounty offered to the inventor

3d when the Machine is in perfect running order and shure that it will go without stoping will you and a man from the Patent Office come on and grant me a patent and fetch me the bounty if there is one.

4th is there eney way that I can have time to get the machine completed before others can apply for a Patent

Please write soon and address ——

MAY 1872

HON FRIEND—_Solicitor of Patents_ I have invented a secret form of writing expressly for the use of our gov in time of warfare the publick demands it, It is different from any other invention known to the publick in this or any gov. It consists simply of the English alphabet and can be changed to any form that the safety of our gov. demands it no higherglyphicks are employed but it is practicable and safe I propose to sell it to our gov for the sum of one million dollars I will meet any committee appointed to investigate the matter. If you will give me your influence in Congress and aid in bringing a sale of the invention about to our gov or any other I will reward you with the sum of ten thousand dollars ($10,000) It is no illusion or a whim of the brain but is what I represent it to be scientific practicable and safe, Wishing to hear from you on the subject I remain

Yours most truly ——