September 21, 2023 • 33 mins
A fire in 1836 wiped out nearly every patent on file in the United States. How did the patent office rebuild, and how did a second fire in 1877 change things even more?
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
are you? Okay? So to really understand this episode, you
should really listen to yesterday's episode and get up the speed.
(00:26):
But justin brief to cover what I talked about yesterday,
I explained what patents are for, and I gave a
short explanation of how patents and patent law got started
in the United States, keeping in mind that other countries
had already had their own patent laws at that time.
It's not like the United States invented patent law. And
I talked about how in seventeen ninety the young government
(00:48):
of the young United States established patent law, which initially
was incredibly strict, and then it did a one to
eighty and became the opposite. I mean, like, the first
year of issuing patents, the US only granted three patents total,
and then in seventeen ninety three, a big revision to
the law meant that the office was technically supposed to
approve any and all patents as long as they had
(01:12):
the proper application fee, So just from one extreme to
the other. I concluded yesterday's episode by talking about the
first superintendent of the US Patent Office, a doctor named
William Thornton, and now we're going to pick up with
his successor, Thomas Jones, another physician. So Jones changed how
some things worked at the Patent Office, including a change
(01:35):
that carries through to modern patents today, that being that
he started the specification of the invention was allowed to
reference the accompanying sketches of that invention. It's kind of
hard to even imagine that there was a time where
this wasn't a case where you would have a sketch
and or a model, almost definitely a model, but probably
(01:55):
a sketch too, and a set of specifications, but they
didn't reference one another. That changed with Jones's tenure as superintendent.
If you read over a modern patent, you'll often see
that there will be a sketch that's frequently labeled with
several parts that are called out like part A or
Part B or sometimes their numbered or whatever, and then
(02:16):
the actual specification will reference those parts and explain how
they work within the grander functionality of the invention. So Jones,
like doctor Thornton before m felt that patent applications definitely
needed to meet a threshold of usefulness and inventiveness. So
(02:37):
both of them had expressed concern that stripping that power
away from the Patent Office meant that folks with file
patents for stuff that was already in existence or that
they just plane didn't work. So both Jones and Thornton
ignored that revision to the patent law that dated back
(02:57):
to seventeen ninety three, that bit saying hey, you don't
have the right to reject patents. They both said, you
know what, I kind of do. I know the government
says I don't, but I disagree with that. So they
took a much harder stance on pattens that you know,
either failed to describe a new invention or were deemed
to not meet the threshold of usefulness or both. William Elliott,
(03:22):
who was doctor Thornton's chief assistant, he had felt that
he should have been promoted to superintendent and he was
deeply upset when it's instead went to Thomas Jones. So
he then accused Jones of having opened all the mail
that was being sent to the Patent office himself Now
(03:44):
you might say, well, what's the big deal with that,
Why shouldn't the superintendent open the mail that's sent to
the patent Office. Well, according to Elliott, his accusation was
that sometimes people would stuff application envelopes with filthy lucre.
That is, you know, they would put cash in their
(04:05):
application in an effort to grease the wheels of bureaucracy. Essentially,
they would include a bribe with their application. So Elliot
said that before Thomas Jones took over as superintendent, the
Patent Office had it as a matter of fact that
any money that was sent in this way would be
returned to Cinder and that way you avoid impropriety, right,
(04:28):
you're not taking bribes. But since Thomas Jones was demanding
that he be allowed to open all the mail personally,
the implication was that he was possibly pocketing this money,
that he was essentially taking bribes. Now, whether that accusation
had any merit or not, or whether the fact that
(04:48):
Jones had a dispute with Elliott because his sons were
running a business out of the Patent office. One of
Elliott's sons was a freelance draftsman and was working out
of the Patent office. And so there's the possibility that
the Thomas Jones was having words with his chief clerk
because he felt it was inappropriate for the clerk's sons
(05:11):
to be able to run a business out of the
patent office. That's not what the patent office was for.
But I don't know if that's the reason why this
all blew up. I do know that ultimately Thomas Jones
received a reassignment. He moved on to work in a
different office within the US government. However, William Elliott didn't
like get to do a victory lap because he was
(05:32):
also told he had to vacate his position. However, his
son was able to retain his freelance draftsman job at
the Patent Office. That son was named William Parker Elliot.
So he had William Elliott and William Parker Elliott. And
as a draftsman, he would work with inventors to create
(05:53):
the sketches of their invention as part of their patent application,
and he would charge the inventors a fee for doing this.
So that was how he was making his living as
part of this process for patents. He'll figure more in
our tail as we continue this journey through the history
of the Patent Office, which, y'all, if you read over
histories of the patent office, it sounds like it would
be the most boring thing in the world, right, But
(06:14):
as you read about these interpersonal conflicts, you start to think, like, wow,
this is more Game of Thrones than I expected it
to be. Well, anyway, our next superintendent was John D. Craig.
He would serve as the superintendent from eighteen twenty nine
to eighteen thirty five. Craig was, let's call him a
(06:36):
divisive figure. So, according to historian Kenneth Dobbins, Craig was
quote arrogant, subject to rages, disagreeable to patent applicants and
their agents, and a domineering tyrant towards the subordinate employees
of the Patent Office end quote. So Craig inherited an
office that was really short on cash, Like according to
(07:01):
Craigzone calculations, the Patent Office was short to the tune
of around four thousand dollars. And keep in mind, this
is eighteen twenty nine. He suspected hanky and or panky
had been going on, but he didn't find any evidence
of it, Like he thought maybe one of his predecessors
perhaps doctor Thornton had been embezzling money from the Patent Office,
(07:23):
but he couldn't find any evidence supporting that hypothesis. Now,
it's also true that during his tenure, when doctor Thornton
was the first Superintendent, he would often request that Congress
increase funding to the Patent Office, but Congress kind of
ignored him for the most part. This would become something
of a time honored tradition for many years. The Patent
(07:45):
Office would argue it needed more funding, and no one
would seem to care that much at that point. So
Craig had a different approach to granting patents than Thornton
and Jones did. So his predecessors had felt like a
patent review was a vital part of the process that
it really needed to happen. Craig felt the most important
(08:05):
part was that the applicant paid their application fee, and
if that happened, well, then we're good to go. It
just you know, stamp approved on those patent applications if
the fee comes in. So Craig wasn't so fussed about
patent specifications and rarely, if ever, even bothered to read them.
According to contemporary reports, he was adhering to that change
(08:27):
in patent law, the one that dated all the way
back to seventeen ninety three. And if any disputes arose
due to a patent being say a copy of another
invention that had already received a patent, or any other
problem like that, well that was a matter for the courts.
It wasn't a matter for the patent office. So he
was like, Nope, we're going to follow the law and
get all those fees and not worry whether or not
(08:50):
the thing where granting a patent for actually works or
if it's new. He did, however, find the lack of
organization in the office appalling, so he created a system
in which he classified inventions according to subject matter, specifically
for all the models of the invention, so like models
that were designed to do things like farm work would
(09:12):
be grouped together that sort of thing. So he did
bring a certain kind of organization system to the patent process. Remember,
at this stage, the patents that were being granted and
the applications that were being submitted, none of them were
being numbered. There was no numbering system with patents at
this point, so as they were starting to mount up
in the thousands, it was getting more and more difficult
(09:35):
to keep everything sorted and organized. In a little bit
of foreshadowing, Craig also sought a sizeable grant for the
office for the purposes of constructing a fireproof building into
which the Patent Office would then move, because he said,
you know, it would be disastrous if there were a fire,
(09:55):
because we have all these models and stuff. We don't
have copies of these patents. It would be a huge loss.
So Congress surprisingly actually voted to fund the project. But
before that could happen, Before the building could be built,
Craig found himself at the center of an investigation. An
(10:17):
employee at the Patent Office had argued that Craig was
ill suited for his position and that he should be
dismissed from it. That employee was the son of William Elliott,
also named William Elliott. You know William Parker Elliott. So
why did Billy junior take aim at Craig? Well, as
I mentioned earlier, Elliot the younger was a freelance draftsman
(10:40):
for the Patent Office, and Craig had ended up hiring
one of his former students. He had been a teacher
in the past, and one of the students had become
a draftsman. So Craig hired this former student to come
and work at the Patent Office as essentially another freelance draftsman.
But that meant that this student was a compet editor
(11:00):
to Elliott Junior, and so, like his father before him,
Elliot the second filed a complaint against his boss and
it worked so allegedly, President Andrew Jackson himself signed the
dismissal papers in eighteen thirty five and JD. Craig had
to leave as Superintendent of the Patent Office. The Elliots
(11:21):
continued in their role as kingmakers, or at the very least,
as superintendent destroyers. Okay, we're going to take a quick
break to thank our sponsors and we'll pick up with
the next Superintendent of the Patent Office. Okay, So JD.
(11:48):
Craig is out. He's been dismissed from his position as
Superintendent of the Patent Office. So who next leads the office?
That would be James Chamberlain Picket. What a fantastic name.
He was a veteran of the War of eighteen twelve
and he would become the penultimate superintendent for the Patent
(12:09):
Office in February of eighteen thirty five, but he only
stuck around for three months. He was not the superintendent
for very long at all. He actually resigned his position
because an opportunity opened up in the Department of Treasury
and he thought that looks like it's better worked for me.
So I don't have very much to say about him
(12:31):
as leader of the Office because he wasn't around very
long in that capacity. But then we get to our
final superintendent of the US Patent Office, a guy named
Henry L. Ellsworth, another great name. He was said to
be methodical and meticulous. He whipped the office into shape
(12:52):
where there had been chaos. He instituted order, and he
would serve as superintendent until eighteen thirty six. But he
remained the leader of the Patent Office until eighteen forty five.
So how is that possible? How could he be superintendent
until eighteen thirty six but lead the office till eighteen
forty five. Well, it's because in eighteen thirty six, the
(13:13):
US government changed its approach to patent law again. Actually,
this time, the government essentially scrapped all existing patent law
and started over. So once more, clerks had the legal
authority to screen patent applications, and to deny applications that
were for an obvious invention or a copy of something
(13:35):
that already existed, or otherwise failed to qualify for a patent.
Since seventeen ninety three, they technically didn't have the right
to do that. Eighteen thirty six they get the right
to do it again. The length of protection for a
patent expanded from fourteen years to twenty one years at
that point. Now, this would change several times over the years.
I'm not going to go over every single change of
(13:56):
patent law. That would just be exhausting and and not
really that interesting. I will say that currently patent law
allows for twenty years of protection from the date that
the patent is issued, and then you are also able
to file for an extension of up to five more years. Anyway,
(14:17):
the eighteen thirty six Act officially established a Patent Office
as a division of the State Department. No longer would
there be a superintendent in charge. Instead, the head of
the Patent Office would now hold the title of commissioner.
So you might say, well, that's a kind of fine point.
But it's true that Ellsworth was the last superintendent, but
(14:39):
he was also the first Commissioner of the Patent Office,
because the title changed while he was holding that position,
and he took his duties really seriously. One of those
was that for all new incoming patents, the office would
assign a number to that patent. Finally, we get to
patent numbering, where we actually can see the chronological sequence
(15:04):
of patents that were granted. The very first patent, in
case you're curious, Patent number one was for a new
design for locomotive wheels, as filed by one John Ruggles.
The changes to patent law happened in the summer of
eighteen thirty six, but it was the winter of eighteen
thirty six where we would see another massive change happen
(15:28):
to patents, this time not because of legislative maneuvers, but
because of a disaster. So on December fifteenth, eighteen thirty six,
the worst case scenario for the Patent Office happened. There
was a fire in the Patent Office, and it was
a massive fire that essentially wiped out all the patents,
(15:51):
the models, and the drafts that had been made since
seventeen ninety. Now at this time, the Patent Office occupied
US section of the Blodget Hotel, which also had a
couple of other tenants in it. Right, you had the
US post Office. But ironically, the other big organization that
(16:11):
had a space in the Blodget Hotel was a fire department.
And as Steve Martin would say in the documentary Roxanne,
we're supposed to be putting them out, But seriously, the
cause of the fire was due to a really dumb
practice that the US Post Office workers were following. All right,
(16:33):
so let's set the scene. It's December, it's Washington, DC.
Things can get really cold. So to keep warm, some
of the offices had wood burning stoves where you would,
you know, put some wood in the stove and burn
it in order to generate heat and keep the office comfortable.
So at the end of the workday, the Postal Office
(16:54):
workers would collect the ashes from their wood stove and
then they would bring those ashes down into the basement
and they would store them in a box at the
basement of the hotel. And the box was made out
of wood. And I think you can probably see where
this is going. So on that night in December of
(17:17):
eighteen thirty six, the ashes that they dumped in this
wooden box were still hot. There still had some coals
inside those ashes, those coals ultimately set fire to the
wooden box, and the wooden box happened to be right
next to the post offices supply of firewood in the
basement really convenient, right. So the fire grew and in
(17:39):
the wee hours of the morning, people began to notice
that something was a miss at the Blodget Hotel. As
for the fire department, it had equipment, but it didn't
have any firefighters because the firefighter force was a volunteer
force and for reasons I'm not aware of, I'd need
to look into it further, but apparently early they had
(18:00):
faced such a discouraging experience that they disbanded, so there
was no actual firefighting force in that fire department. So
the fire ended up spreading mainly to the areas that
were inhabited by the Patent Office, and they destroyed thousands
of documents and models and sketches. The Post Office actually
(18:21):
got off pretty lightly. Their documents were in a separate
section of the Blodget Hotel, and so Post Office workers
were actually able to get in there and rescue important
stuff from the Post Office before the flames could spread there. Now,
early on, some folks suspected that the fire was actually arson,
that someone had said it on purpose, and the reason
(18:43):
was that the US government was currently in the middle
of an investigation into the Post Office itself. There were
various charges of corruption that were playing out with the
US Post Office, so rumors began to spread that may
this was actually an effort to remove evidence by burning it,
(19:05):
that someone working at the Post Office, perhaps a leader,
had decided to try and do this in an effort
to confound the investigation. But since the actual fire ended
up impacting the Patent Office but not really the Post Office,
that hypothesis was ultimately rejected, and later investigations showed it
(19:28):
was more likely this carelessness and bad practice of storing
ashes in a wooden box in the basement that actually
led to the fire, not intentional arson. Now, former Superintendent
Craig's requests to build a flame resistant Patent office really
became a top priority. If you remember JD. Craig had,
(19:50):
while he had some really controversial opinions about patents and
it was apparently a terrible boss, he did really believe
that the Patent Office needed to move into a more
fire resistant building, and so he had petitioned Congress to
fund that, and in fact Congress did, but it would
(20:11):
take a while for that to get built. Most of
the old patents that had been stored in the Blodget
hotel were lost, and that would also prompt changes to
how the Patent Office would store patent sentiment that the
office would require copies of patents to protect against another
catastrophic loss in the future, so that you're not storing
the one and only copy of a patent in a
(20:33):
single place. It's a bit hard to believe that no
one bothered with copies up to that point, but I
guess until there's a disaster, there's not much incentive to
protect yourself. Also, making a copy was not the easiest
thing in the world necessarily at the time, so it
could be a pretty time consuming process if you don't
have access to the like a printing press or something,
(20:56):
and so maybe that was part of it as well. Anyway,
the Office was able to restore around two thy eight
hundred old patents, designating them with a number that was
preceded by the letter X. This distinguished them from new
patents that were being filed with the office under the
(21:17):
eighteen thirty six Revised Law, so we do have a
record of some of the patents between seventeen ninety and
eighteen thirty six, and like I said, they're designated as
X and then a number. But again it's just a
fraction of all the patents that were received by the
office leading up to eighteen thirty six. I think there
was something like more than ten thousand patents total, so
(21:42):
you know, between a fifth and a fourth of them
survived and all the rest were destroyed. By the way,
the office was actually able to restore patents mostly by
talking to the inventors or patent holders who had filed
for the patent in the first place, to to recreate
(22:02):
their initial patent and their sketches and stuff like that.
They had to remake them, so it wasn't like there
was just a copy hanging around for most of these.
It would take four years before the Patent Office's new
digs would actually be ready. Most of the new building
(22:22):
was made of stone and marble, and it was thought
to be far safer than the Blodget Hotel had been,
at least with regard to fires, and for nearly four
decades it served as a decent but not perfect place
for the Patent Office. As I mentioned, you know, the
early practice with patents was that inventors were to include
a model of their invention if possible, and models take
(22:47):
up a lot of space. So it wasn't a perfect
place for the Patent office because there was no such
thing as an office that was accepting models, physical models.
It took up a lot of space. They would rapidly
start to run out of storage space and they would
have to request things like an extension to the building
(23:08):
or something along those lines. So if you review the
work of the commissioners who held the office from say
eighteen forty onward to like eighteen seventy seven, you see
a lot of requests for new construction work so that
they can have more space to store things like models.
But things would change in eighteen seventy seven. The office
(23:31):
made sure to make copies of stuff. With the introduction
of photography, that included actually making photographs of the models.
You know, obviously, it's a much harder thing to make
a copy of a model than it is a copy
of a document, so photographs are largely used as instead
of creating a copy. Obviously, if you made a copy
of every single model, well now you've just doubled the
(23:53):
challenge of storing everything, so they would photograph the models
rather than ask for a replica of a model. But yeah,
they really changed their approach and made sure they had
copies stored in different places, so that should something like
this happen again, it would not result in as big
a disaster as the eighteen thirty six fire did. And
(24:17):
this sets us up for the second big fire, which
would happen on September twenty fourth, eighteen seventy seven. We're
coming up to the anniversary of that major fire of
the US Post Office, the second major fire. Before we
get into any of that, let's take another quick break
to thank our sponsors. Okay, we're back. So obviously, between
(24:46):
eighteen thirty six and eighteen seventy seven, there were a
ton of different commissioners who led the Patent Office. Most
of them only held the position for like a couple
of years at most. But in eighteen seventy seven, the
Commissi was a guy named Ellis Spear. He was a
veteran of the Civil War on the Union side, I
should add he had also been a farmer, and he
(25:09):
loved classical literature. He had joined the Patent Office in
eighteen sixty five, right after the end of the Civil War,
and by eighteen seventy seven he found himself promoted to commissioner.
And while his time as leader overall has sort of
a positive aspect to it, the eighteen seventy seven fire
is an obvious exception to that. Right, it's not that
(25:32):
it was his fault, but that was a big, expensive catastrophe.
So the fire seemingly started in the room that they
were using to store the models. How it got started
remains a mystery, so there are various hypotheses suggesting how
the fire might have started. One suggests that some chemicals
(25:56):
that were being stored in that room perhaps created really
flamm fumes, and maybe there was even a case of
spontaneous combustion, which is possible that can happen. Others suggested
that maybe one of the models had like a lens,
an optical lens that perhaps focused some sunlight onto a
(26:18):
flammable surface, and that's how the fire got started. So
essentially like having a magnifying lens position just right so
that when sunlight is coming through, uh, it's focused on
a point that heats up and then bursts into flame.
Maybe that's how it happened. Others said that, well, it
was probably closer to what happened in eighteen thirty six.
That maybe it was that the day was unseasonably chilly,
(26:41):
because again this happened in September, not in December, and
that because it was unseasonably chilly, some office workers, you know,
set a fire in their office, like a in a
grate in order to keep the heat up, and that
this ended up creating barks that set the fire. It's
(27:03):
hard to say what it was. No one really knows,
but whatever the cause, the fire quickly engulfed those models.
Among them was a model of Eli Whitney's cotton Gin,
the only model that was produced for that patent, and
that was completely destroyed by the fire. The fire claimed
far more individual pieces than the fire that happened in
(27:26):
eighteen thirty six because there had been more than forty
years of additional patents granted since then. So while the
fire didn't destroy the whole building or anything like that,
there had been a lot of patents granted between eighteen
thirty six and eighteen seventy seven. I mean, the pace
of innovation had picked up considerably as the nineteenth century
(27:49):
went on. All told. Estimates put the fire's tally at
consuming around eighty thousand models and six hundred thousand drawings
attached to patent applications. But and this is a key element,
no patents were completely lost, not a single one. There
(28:11):
were some partial losses, but nothing was lost completely. So
that meant the new processes were protecting those patents. The
patent office did not find itself starting from nothing. Again,
the preventive measures actually worked. The copies helped mitigate some
of the problems that would follow. So back in eighteen
(28:32):
thirty six, when all of those patents were destroyed, it
meant that inventors, patent holders and their lawyers were able
to argue that no, really they held the rights to
a particular invention. And because the patents were gone, there
was nothing to refer to, right. You couldn't go and
see like, oh, did you actually file that patent because
the patents didn't exist, So people could make false claims left,
(28:55):
right and center, and people with the real claim found
themselves fighting for their rights court, but they lacked the
documentation to show that they actually had the authority to
make that claim. So it was a really messy legal situation.
A similar thing happened in eighteen seventy seven, but the
copies and documentation were able to mitigate that a bit,
(29:18):
not totally, but a little bit. The monetary cost of
the eighteen seventy seven fire was by far much greater
than the one that happened in eighteen thirty six. However,
the fact that the office lost none of the patents
was a huge deal. So one change that ended up
being the result of this fire is that the Patent
(29:40):
Office deemed it was no longer necessary for inventors to
include a model of their invention with their patent application.
So until eighteen seventy seven that had still been the custom,
but the challenges of storing and caring for the models
had just become too great as more applications were pouring
in from inventors in the United States, so the Patent
Office would no longer accept models of inventions from eighteen
(30:02):
seventy seven on. That's understandable, it's also kind of a bummer.
It also meant that sometimes it was difficult to determine
if a particular invention would work or not. Like with
a model, you could at least take a slightly more
educated guess as to whether or not the underlying functions
of the invention would work without the model. When you're
(30:24):
just looking at a two dimensional sketch and then a
list of specifications, it's a little more challenging. As I've
mentioned in this show, patent law has changed a few
times since the nineteenth century, but the intent largely remains
the same. It's meant to provide protection and incentive for inventors,
and in return, inventors share their work so that future
(30:46):
generations can continue to benefit from their innovation and then
build upon it further. And while it doesn't always work
out that way, and issues like patent trolls can still
become a real headache, in general, I think it's been
a pretty good idea. Someone should probably patent it now.
Before I sign off, I want to remind y'all that
(31:07):
I'm going to be at this year's iHeartRadio Music Festival
at the House of Music that's happening this weekend on
Friday and Saturday. I'll be recording in the iHeart Podcasts
Studio powered by Bose. Come by on Friday at six
pm to the Free House of Music outside T Mobile Arena.
I will see you there and you can look out
(31:27):
for my episode that I record there next week. It
should be live on Monday. Also to remind you of
what the House of Music actually is. I can't wait
to see this in person. I've been reading about it
and I'm really intrigued. So it's a selection of interactive
exhibits and these experiences that are in the House of
(31:48):
Music are modeled after some of the artists that are
performing at the Music Festival, and they include people like
Kelly Clarkson on one side and Public Enemy on the other.
I mean, it's a big spectrum. Fallow Boy has a
room in there. TLC has a room in there. Not
all of them are necessarily mixed reality experiences, but they're
(32:08):
all interactive and they're meant to kind of encourage the
joy of music and the sharing of joy in music.
So I'm really looking forward to seeing it for myself
and to record in this special studio that Bose has
worked with iHeartRadio to create. So again this Friday at
(32:29):
six pm in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the T Mobile Arena.
Outside the T Mobile Arena, you'll find the House of Music.
That's where you're gonna find me, the bald guy talking
about technology and Yeah, I hope to see y'all out there,
and I hope you're well, and I'll talk to you
again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For
(32:56):
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
are you? Okay? So to really understand this episode, you
should really listen to yesterday's episode and get up the speed.
(00:26):
But justin brief to cover what I talked about yesterday,
I explained what patents are for, and I gave a
short explanation of how patents and patent law got started
in the United States, keeping in mind that other countries
had already had their own patent laws at that time.
It's not like the United States invented patent law. And
I talked about how in seventeen ninety the young government
(00:48):
of the young United States established patent law, which initially
was incredibly strict, and then it did a one to
eighty and became the opposite. I mean, like, the first
year of issuing patents, the US only granted three patents total,
and then in seventeen ninety three, a big revision to
the law meant that the office was technically supposed to
approve any and all patents as long as they had
(01:12):
the proper application fee, So just from one extreme to
the other. I concluded yesterday's episode by talking about the
first superintendent of the US Patent Office, a doctor named
William Thornton, and now we're going to pick up with
his successor, Thomas Jones, another physician. So Jones changed how
some things worked at the Patent Office, including a change
(01:35):
that carries through to modern patents today, that being that
he started the specification of the invention was allowed to
reference the accompanying sketches of that invention. It's kind of
hard to even imagine that there was a time where
this wasn't a case where you would have a sketch
and or a model, almost definitely a model, but probably
(01:55):
a sketch too, and a set of specifications, but they
didn't reference one another. That changed with Jones's tenure as superintendent.
If you read over a modern patent, you'll often see
that there will be a sketch that's frequently labeled with
several parts that are called out like part A or
Part B or sometimes their numbered or whatever, and then
(02:16):
the actual specification will reference those parts and explain how
they work within the grander functionality of the invention. So Jones,
like doctor Thornton before m felt that patent applications definitely
needed to meet a threshold of usefulness and inventiveness. So
(02:37):
both of them had expressed concern that stripping that power
away from the Patent Office meant that folks with file
patents for stuff that was already in existence or that
they just plane didn't work. So both Jones and Thornton
ignored that revision to the patent law that dated back
(02:57):
to seventeen ninety three, that bit saying hey, you don't
have the right to reject patents. They both said, you
know what, I kind of do. I know the government
says I don't, but I disagree with that. So they
took a much harder stance on pattens that you know,
either failed to describe a new invention or were deemed
to not meet the threshold of usefulness or both. William Elliott,
(03:22):
who was doctor Thornton's chief assistant, he had felt that
he should have been promoted to superintendent and he was
deeply upset when it's instead went to Thomas Jones. So
he then accused Jones of having opened all the mail
that was being sent to the Patent office himself Now
(03:44):
you might say, well, what's the big deal with that,
Why shouldn't the superintendent open the mail that's sent to
the patent Office. Well, according to Elliott, his accusation was
that sometimes people would stuff application envelopes with filthy lucre.
That is, you know, they would put cash in their
(04:05):
application in an effort to grease the wheels of bureaucracy. Essentially,
they would include a bribe with their application. So Elliot
said that before Thomas Jones took over as superintendent, the
Patent Office had it as a matter of fact that
any money that was sent in this way would be
returned to Cinder and that way you avoid impropriety, right,
(04:28):
you're not taking bribes. But since Thomas Jones was demanding
that he be allowed to open all the mail personally,
the implication was that he was possibly pocketing this money,
that he was essentially taking bribes. Now, whether that accusation
had any merit or not, or whether the fact that
(04:48):
Jones had a dispute with Elliott because his sons were
running a business out of the Patent office. One of
Elliott's sons was a freelance draftsman and was working out
of the Patent office. And so there's the possibility that
the Thomas Jones was having words with his chief clerk
because he felt it was inappropriate for the clerk's sons
(05:11):
to be able to run a business out of the
patent office. That's not what the patent office was for.
But I don't know if that's the reason why this
all blew up. I do know that ultimately Thomas Jones
received a reassignment. He moved on to work in a
different office within the US government. However, William Elliott didn't
like get to do a victory lap because he was
(05:32):
also told he had to vacate his position. However, his
son was able to retain his freelance draftsman job at
the Patent Office. That son was named William Parker Elliot.
So he had William Elliott and William Parker Elliott. And
as a draftsman, he would work with inventors to create
(05:53):
the sketches of their invention as part of their patent application,
and he would charge the inventors a fee for doing this.
So that was how he was making his living as
part of this process for patents. He'll figure more in
our tail as we continue this journey through the history
of the Patent Office, which, y'all, if you read over
histories of the patent office, it sounds like it would
be the most boring thing in the world, right, But
(06:14):
as you read about these interpersonal conflicts, you start to think, like, wow,
this is more Game of Thrones than I expected it
to be. Well, anyway, our next superintendent was John D. Craig.
He would serve as the superintendent from eighteen twenty nine
to eighteen thirty five. Craig was, let's call him a
(06:36):
divisive figure. So, according to historian Kenneth Dobbins, Craig was
quote arrogant, subject to rages, disagreeable to patent applicants and
their agents, and a domineering tyrant towards the subordinate employees
of the Patent Office end quote. So Craig inherited an
office that was really short on cash, Like according to
(07:01):
Craigzone calculations, the Patent Office was short to the tune
of around four thousand dollars. And keep in mind, this
is eighteen twenty nine. He suspected hanky and or panky
had been going on, but he didn't find any evidence
of it, Like he thought maybe one of his predecessors
perhaps doctor Thornton had been embezzling money from the Patent Office,
(07:23):
but he couldn't find any evidence supporting that hypothesis. Now,
it's also true that during his tenure, when doctor Thornton
was the first Superintendent, he would often request that Congress
increase funding to the Patent Office, but Congress kind of
ignored him for the most part. This would become something
of a time honored tradition for many years. The Patent
(07:45):
Office would argue it needed more funding, and no one
would seem to care that much at that point. So
Craig had a different approach to granting patents than Thornton
and Jones did. So his predecessors had felt like a
patent review was a vital part of the process that
it really needed to happen. Craig felt the most important
(08:05):
part was that the applicant paid their application fee, and
if that happened, well, then we're good to go. It
just you know, stamp approved on those patent applications if
the fee comes in. So Craig wasn't so fussed about
patent specifications and rarely, if ever, even bothered to read them.
According to contemporary reports, he was adhering to that change
(08:27):
in patent law, the one that dated all the way
back to seventeen ninety three. And if any disputes arose
due to a patent being say a copy of another
invention that had already received a patent, or any other
problem like that, well that was a matter for the courts.
It wasn't a matter for the patent office. So he
was like, Nope, we're going to follow the law and
get all those fees and not worry whether or not
(08:50):
the thing where granting a patent for actually works or
if it's new. He did, however, find the lack of
organization in the office appalling, so he created a system
in which he classified inventions according to subject matter, specifically
for all the models of the invention, so like models
that were designed to do things like farm work would
(09:12):
be grouped together that sort of thing. So he did
bring a certain kind of organization system to the patent process. Remember,
at this stage, the patents that were being granted and
the applications that were being submitted, none of them were
being numbered. There was no numbering system with patents at
this point, so as they were starting to mount up
in the thousands, it was getting more and more difficult
(09:35):
to keep everything sorted and organized. In a little bit
of foreshadowing, Craig also sought a sizeable grant for the
office for the purposes of constructing a fireproof building into
which the Patent Office would then move, because he said,
you know, it would be disastrous if there were a fire,
(09:55):
because we have all these models and stuff. We don't
have copies of these patents. It would be a huge loss.
So Congress surprisingly actually voted to fund the project. But
before that could happen, Before the building could be built,
Craig found himself at the center of an investigation. An
(10:17):
employee at the Patent Office had argued that Craig was
ill suited for his position and that he should be
dismissed from it. That employee was the son of William Elliott,
also named William Elliott. You know William Parker Elliott. So
why did Billy junior take aim at Craig? Well, as
I mentioned earlier, Elliot the younger was a freelance draftsman
(10:40):
for the Patent Office, and Craig had ended up hiring
one of his former students. He had been a teacher
in the past, and one of the students had become
a draftsman. So Craig hired this former student to come
and work at the Patent Office as essentially another freelance draftsman.
But that meant that this student was a compet editor
(11:00):
to Elliott Junior, and so, like his father before him,
Elliot the second filed a complaint against his boss and
it worked so allegedly, President Andrew Jackson himself signed the
dismissal papers in eighteen thirty five and JD. Craig had
to leave as Superintendent of the Patent Office. The Elliots
(11:21):
continued in their role as kingmakers, or at the very least,
as superintendent destroyers. Okay, we're going to take a quick
break to thank our sponsors and we'll pick up with
the next Superintendent of the Patent Office. Okay, So JD.
(11:48):
Craig is out. He's been dismissed from his position as
Superintendent of the Patent Office. So who next leads the office?
That would be James Chamberlain Picket. What a fantastic name.
He was a veteran of the War of eighteen twelve
and he would become the penultimate superintendent for the Patent
(12:09):
Office in February of eighteen thirty five, but he only
stuck around for three months. He was not the superintendent
for very long at all. He actually resigned his position
because an opportunity opened up in the Department of Treasury
and he thought that looks like it's better worked for me.
So I don't have very much to say about him
(12:31):
as leader of the Office because he wasn't around very
long in that capacity. But then we get to our
final superintendent of the US Patent Office, a guy named
Henry L. Ellsworth, another great name. He was said to
be methodical and meticulous. He whipped the office into shape
(12:52):
where there had been chaos. He instituted order, and he
would serve as superintendent until eighteen thirty six. But he
remained the leader of the Patent Office until eighteen forty five.
So how is that possible? How could he be superintendent
until eighteen thirty six but lead the office till eighteen
forty five. Well, it's because in eighteen thirty six, the
(13:13):
US government changed its approach to patent law again. Actually,
this time, the government essentially scrapped all existing patent law
and started over. So once more, clerks had the legal
authority to screen patent applications, and to deny applications that
were for an obvious invention or a copy of something
(13:35):
that already existed, or otherwise failed to qualify for a patent.
Since seventeen ninety three, they technically didn't have the right
to do that. Eighteen thirty six they get the right
to do it again. The length of protection for a
patent expanded from fourteen years to twenty one years at
that point. Now, this would change several times over the years.
I'm not going to go over every single change of
(13:56):
patent law. That would just be exhausting and and not
really that interesting. I will say that currently patent law
allows for twenty years of protection from the date that
the patent is issued, and then you are also able
to file for an extension of up to five more years. Anyway,
(14:17):
the eighteen thirty six Act officially established a Patent Office
as a division of the State Department. No longer would
there be a superintendent in charge. Instead, the head of
the Patent Office would now hold the title of commissioner.
So you might say, well, that's a kind of fine point.
But it's true that Ellsworth was the last superintendent, but
(14:39):
he was also the first Commissioner of the Patent Office,
because the title changed while he was holding that position,
and he took his duties really seriously. One of those
was that for all new incoming patents, the office would
assign a number to that patent. Finally, we get to
patent numbering, where we actually can see the chronological sequence
(15:04):
of patents that were granted. The very first patent, in
case you're curious, Patent number one was for a new
design for locomotive wheels, as filed by one John Ruggles.
The changes to patent law happened in the summer of
eighteen thirty six, but it was the winter of eighteen
thirty six where we would see another massive change happen
(15:28):
to patents, this time not because of legislative maneuvers, but
because of a disaster. So on December fifteenth, eighteen thirty six,
the worst case scenario for the Patent Office happened. There
was a fire in the Patent Office, and it was
a massive fire that essentially wiped out all the patents,
(15:51):
the models, and the drafts that had been made since
seventeen ninety. Now at this time, the Patent Office occupied
US section of the Blodget Hotel, which also had a
couple of other tenants in it. Right, you had the
US post Office. But ironically, the other big organization that
(16:11):
had a space in the Blodget Hotel was a fire department.
And as Steve Martin would say in the documentary Roxanne,
we're supposed to be putting them out, But seriously, the
cause of the fire was due to a really dumb
practice that the US Post Office workers were following. All right,
(16:33):
so let's set the scene. It's December, it's Washington, DC.
Things can get really cold. So to keep warm, some
of the offices had wood burning stoves where you would,
you know, put some wood in the stove and burn
it in order to generate heat and keep the office comfortable.
So at the end of the workday, the Postal Office
(16:54):
workers would collect the ashes from their wood stove and
then they would bring those ashes down into the basement
and they would store them in a box at the
basement of the hotel. And the box was made out
of wood. And I think you can probably see where
this is going. So on that night in December of
(17:17):
eighteen thirty six, the ashes that they dumped in this
wooden box were still hot. There still had some coals
inside those ashes, those coals ultimately set fire to the
wooden box, and the wooden box happened to be right
next to the post offices supply of firewood in the
basement really convenient, right. So the fire grew and in
(17:39):
the wee hours of the morning, people began to notice
that something was a miss at the Blodget Hotel. As
for the fire department, it had equipment, but it didn't
have any firefighters because the firefighter force was a volunteer
force and for reasons I'm not aware of, I'd need
to look into it further, but apparently early they had
(18:00):
faced such a discouraging experience that they disbanded, so there
was no actual firefighting force in that fire department. So
the fire ended up spreading mainly to the areas that
were inhabited by the Patent Office, and they destroyed thousands
of documents and models and sketches. The Post Office actually
(18:21):
got off pretty lightly. Their documents were in a separate
section of the Blodget Hotel, and so Post Office workers
were actually able to get in there and rescue important
stuff from the Post Office before the flames could spread there. Now,
early on, some folks suspected that the fire was actually arson,
that someone had said it on purpose, and the reason
(18:43):
was that the US government was currently in the middle
of an investigation into the Post Office itself. There were
various charges of corruption that were playing out with the
US Post Office, so rumors began to spread that may
this was actually an effort to remove evidence by burning it,
(19:05):
that someone working at the Post Office, perhaps a leader,
had decided to try and do this in an effort
to confound the investigation. But since the actual fire ended
up impacting the Patent Office but not really the Post Office,
that hypothesis was ultimately rejected, and later investigations showed it
(19:28):
was more likely this carelessness and bad practice of storing
ashes in a wooden box in the basement that actually
led to the fire, not intentional arson. Now, former Superintendent
Craig's requests to build a flame resistant Patent office really
became a top priority. If you remember JD. Craig had,
(19:50):
while he had some really controversial opinions about patents and
it was apparently a terrible boss, he did really believe
that the Patent Office needed to move into a more
fire resistant building, and so he had petitioned Congress to
fund that, and in fact Congress did, but it would
(20:11):
take a while for that to get built. Most of
the old patents that had been stored in the Blodget
hotel were lost, and that would also prompt changes to
how the Patent Office would store patent sentiment that the
office would require copies of patents to protect against another
catastrophic loss in the future, so that you're not storing
the one and only copy of a patent in a
(20:33):
single place. It's a bit hard to believe that no
one bothered with copies up to that point, but I
guess until there's a disaster, there's not much incentive to
protect yourself. Also, making a copy was not the easiest
thing in the world necessarily at the time, so it
could be a pretty time consuming process if you don't
have access to the like a printing press or something,
(20:56):
and so maybe that was part of it as well. Anyway,
the Office was able to restore around two thy eight
hundred old patents, designating them with a number that was
preceded by the letter X. This distinguished them from new
patents that were being filed with the office under the
(21:17):
eighteen thirty six Revised Law, so we do have a
record of some of the patents between seventeen ninety and
eighteen thirty six, and like I said, they're designated as
X and then a number. But again it's just a
fraction of all the patents that were received by the
office leading up to eighteen thirty six. I think there
was something like more than ten thousand patents total, so
(21:42):
you know, between a fifth and a fourth of them
survived and all the rest were destroyed. By the way,
the office was actually able to restore patents mostly by
talking to the inventors or patent holders who had filed
for the patent in the first place, to to recreate
(22:02):
their initial patent and their sketches and stuff like that.
They had to remake them, so it wasn't like there
was just a copy hanging around for most of these.
It would take four years before the Patent Office's new
digs would actually be ready. Most of the new building
(22:22):
was made of stone and marble, and it was thought
to be far safer than the Blodget Hotel had been,
at least with regard to fires, and for nearly four
decades it served as a decent but not perfect place
for the Patent Office. As I mentioned, you know, the
early practice with patents was that inventors were to include
a model of their invention if possible, and models take
(22:47):
up a lot of space. So it wasn't a perfect
place for the Patent office because there was no such
thing as an office that was accepting models, physical models.
It took up a lot of space. They would rapidly
start to run out of storage space and they would
have to request things like an extension to the building
(23:08):
or something along those lines. So if you review the
work of the commissioners who held the office from say
eighteen forty onward to like eighteen seventy seven, you see
a lot of requests for new construction work so that
they can have more space to store things like models.
But things would change in eighteen seventy seven. The office
(23:31):
made sure to make copies of stuff. With the introduction
of photography, that included actually making photographs of the models.
You know, obviously, it's a much harder thing to make
a copy of a model than it is a copy
of a document, so photographs are largely used as instead
of creating a copy. Obviously, if you made a copy
of every single model, well now you've just doubled the
(23:53):
challenge of storing everything, so they would photograph the models
rather than ask for a replica of a model. But yeah,
they really changed their approach and made sure they had
copies stored in different places, so that should something like
this happen again, it would not result in as big
a disaster as the eighteen thirty six fire did. And
(24:17):
this sets us up for the second big fire, which
would happen on September twenty fourth, eighteen seventy seven. We're
coming up to the anniversary of that major fire of
the US Post Office, the second major fire. Before we
get into any of that, let's take another quick break
to thank our sponsors. Okay, we're back. So obviously, between
(24:46):
eighteen thirty six and eighteen seventy seven, there were a
ton of different commissioners who led the Patent Office. Most
of them only held the position for like a couple
of years at most. But in eighteen seventy seven, the
Commissi was a guy named Ellis Spear. He was a
veteran of the Civil War on the Union side, I
should add he had also been a farmer, and he
(25:09):
loved classical literature. He had joined the Patent Office in
eighteen sixty five, right after the end of the Civil War,
and by eighteen seventy seven he found himself promoted to commissioner.
And while his time as leader overall has sort of
a positive aspect to it, the eighteen seventy seven fire
is an obvious exception to that. Right, it's not that
(25:32):
it was his fault, but that was a big, expensive catastrophe.
So the fire seemingly started in the room that they
were using to store the models. How it got started
remains a mystery, so there are various hypotheses suggesting how
the fire might have started. One suggests that some chemicals
(25:56):
that were being stored in that room perhaps created really
flamm fumes, and maybe there was even a case of
spontaneous combustion, which is possible that can happen. Others suggested
that maybe one of the models had like a lens,
an optical lens that perhaps focused some sunlight onto a
(26:18):
flammable surface, and that's how the fire got started. So
essentially like having a magnifying lens position just right so
that when sunlight is coming through, uh, it's focused on
a point that heats up and then bursts into flame.
Maybe that's how it happened. Others said that, well, it
was probably closer to what happened in eighteen thirty six.
That maybe it was that the day was unseasonably chilly,
(26:41):
because again this happened in September, not in December, and
that because it was unseasonably chilly, some office workers, you know,
set a fire in their office, like a in a
grate in order to keep the heat up, and that
this ended up creating barks that set the fire. It's
(27:03):
hard to say what it was. No one really knows,
but whatever the cause, the fire quickly engulfed those models.
Among them was a model of Eli Whitney's cotton Gin,
the only model that was produced for that patent, and
that was completely destroyed by the fire. The fire claimed
far more individual pieces than the fire that happened in
(27:26):
eighteen thirty six because there had been more than forty
years of additional patents granted since then. So while the
fire didn't destroy the whole building or anything like that,
there had been a lot of patents granted between eighteen
thirty six and eighteen seventy seven. I mean, the pace
of innovation had picked up considerably as the nineteenth century
(27:49):
went on. All told. Estimates put the fire's tally at
consuming around eighty thousand models and six hundred thousand drawings
attached to patent applications. But and this is a key element,
no patents were completely lost, not a single one. There
(28:11):
were some partial losses, but nothing was lost completely. So
that meant the new processes were protecting those patents. The
patent office did not find itself starting from nothing. Again,
the preventive measures actually worked. The copies helped mitigate some
of the problems that would follow. So back in eighteen
(28:32):
thirty six, when all of those patents were destroyed, it
meant that inventors, patent holders and their lawyers were able
to argue that no, really they held the rights to
a particular invention. And because the patents were gone, there
was nothing to refer to, right. You couldn't go and
see like, oh, did you actually file that patent because
the patents didn't exist, So people could make false claims left,
(28:55):
right and center, and people with the real claim found
themselves fighting for their rights court, but they lacked the
documentation to show that they actually had the authority to
make that claim. So it was a really messy legal situation.
A similar thing happened in eighteen seventy seven, but the
copies and documentation were able to mitigate that a bit,
(29:18):
not totally, but a little bit. The monetary cost of
the eighteen seventy seven fire was by far much greater
than the one that happened in eighteen thirty six. However,
the fact that the office lost none of the patents
was a huge deal. So one change that ended up
being the result of this fire is that the Patent
(29:40):
Office deemed it was no longer necessary for inventors to
include a model of their invention with their patent application.
So until eighteen seventy seven that had still been the custom,
but the challenges of storing and caring for the models
had just become too great as more applications were pouring
in from inventors in the United States, so the Patent
Office would no longer accept models of inventions from eighteen
(30:02):
seventy seven on. That's understandable, it's also kind of a bummer.
It also meant that sometimes it was difficult to determine
if a particular invention would work or not. Like with
a model, you could at least take a slightly more
educated guess as to whether or not the underlying functions
of the invention would work without the model. When you're
(30:24):
just looking at a two dimensional sketch and then a
list of specifications, it's a little more challenging. As I've
mentioned in this show, patent law has changed a few
times since the nineteenth century, but the intent largely remains
the same. It's meant to provide protection and incentive for inventors,
and in return, inventors share their work so that future
(30:46):
generations can continue to benefit from their innovation and then
build upon it further. And while it doesn't always work
out that way, and issues like patent trolls can still
become a real headache, in general, I think it's been
a pretty good idea. Someone should probably patent it now.
Before I sign off, I want to remind y'all that
(31:07):
I'm going to be at this year's iHeartRadio Music Festival
at the House of Music that's happening this weekend on
Friday and Saturday. I'll be recording in the iHeart Podcasts
Studio powered by Bose. Come by on Friday at six
pm to the Free House of Music outside T Mobile Arena.
I will see you there and you can look out
(31:27):
for my episode that I record there next week. It
should be live on Monday. Also to remind you of
what the House of Music actually is. I can't wait
to see this in person. I've been reading about it
and I'm really intrigued. So it's a selection of interactive
exhibits and these experiences that are in the House of
(31:48):
Music are modeled after some of the artists that are
performing at the Music Festival, and they include people like
Kelly Clarkson on one side and Public Enemy on the other.
I mean, it's a big spectrum. Fallow Boy has a
room in there. TLC has a room in there. Not
all of them are necessarily mixed reality experiences, but they're
(32:08):
all interactive and they're meant to kind of encourage the
joy of music and the sharing of joy in music.
So I'm really looking forward to seeing it for myself
and to record in this special studio that Bose has
worked with iHeartRadio to create. So again this Friday at
(32:29):
six pm in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the T Mobile Arena.
Outside the T Mobile Arena, you'll find the House of Music.
That's where you're gonna find me, the bald guy talking
about technology and Yeah, I hope to see y'all out there,
and I hope you're well, and I'll talk to you
again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For
(32:56):
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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