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Patents Science

Some Of The Lost X-Patents Found 281

Posted by Hemos from the recovering-the-past dept.
Jerry Browne writes " The New York Times (reg req) is carrying a story about the recent discovery of some lost patents. Apparantly a fire at a temporay storage site in July 1836 destroyed the first 10000 patents issued. From the article..."The Patent and Trademark Office has issued nearly seven million patents; the first 10,000 are known as the X-patents. They were issued from July 1790, when the United States patent system was created under an order signed by George Washington, to July 1836, when every one of them burned in a fire...In the 168 years since the fire, only about 2,800 have been recovered....Until this spring, that is, when two lawyers...a clue to several important patents from the 1790's - including one from 1826 for the first internal combustion engine...""
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Some Of The Lost X-Patents Found More

Some Of The Lost X-Patents Found

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  • No Subscribe Link (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:01AM (#9920708)
    Reg-Free Link [nytimes.com]

  • Burned (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:01AM (#9920712)
    Maybe some of the new tech patents will 'accidently' get burned.. we can only hope
    • Maybe some of the new tech patents will 'accidently' get burned.. we can only hope

      Yes, but why just some? Why not all of them? That would solve all of our patent problems, don't you think?

    • Re:Burned (Score:5, Funny)

      by RLW ( 662014 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:42AM (#9921124)
      Don't forget to burn everyone who filed one of these insipid patents written in bombastic pseudo techno/legalese.

      Build a fire for a patent lawyer and keep him warm for a day.
      Set a patent lawyer on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.

      • Re:Burned (Score:5, Funny)

        by Demonspawn ( 187073 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @12:01PM (#9921295)
        Actually, works better phrased this way:

        Set a patent lawyer a fire and keep him warm for a day.
        Set a patent lawyer afire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.

        Extremly humorous that your post is moded 'flamebait' tho ;)

        --Demonspawn

    • Re:Burned (Score:5, Interesting)

      by glesga_kiss ( 596639 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @12:07PM (#9921352)
      Who's to say that these old ones were "accidently" burned in the first place? Didn't the US get a major boost when it was a fledging nation by ignoring patents and copyright from the old world? The mention of one for the internal combustion engine makes me wonder...didn't Henry T Ford stick his middle finger up at patents?

      Mmmm, several hundred year old consipracy. This is gonna drive 'em nuts for years... ;-)

    • Re:Burned (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cowbutt ( 21077 )
      Maybe some of the new tech patents will 'accidently' get burned.. we can only hope

      Actually, no. At least not the ones that genuinely are innovative.

      I'd quite like to see the expiry date on all of them mysteriously reduce by 2/3rds or so, but I'd hate to see that ingenuity lost forever and need to be re-invented.

      The problem with tech patents is that the tech industry is still incredibly immature and developing at a rapid rate. Patent durations that make sense for mechanical devices aren't really approp

  • Hmmm. Is that the solution? (Score:5, Funny)

    by FFFish ( 7567 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:02AM (#9920715) Homepage
    Perhaps the solution to this madness of patenting algorithms, genes, etcetera... is to burn down the patent office again!

  • Prior Art? (Score:3, Funny)

    by forsetti ( 158019 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:02AM (#9920721)
    Gee -- maybe they'll find prior art to cover all of SCO's claims???
  • More patents. Sheesh.

  • What (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:03AM (#9920731)
    No backups? Amateurs!

  • Ironically (Score:5, Funny)

    by Megaweapon ( 25185 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:04AM (#9920740) Homepage
    one of the patents burned in the fire was the first internal sprinkler system...
  • much more interesting if they found the missing episodes...

  • X-reposts (Score:5, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:05AM (#9920759) Homepage Journal
    In other news, the first recorded original story on slashdot has been found.

    It has been carbon dated to within the mid 1830's.

    It has been duped 4796 times since then.

    I actually like these kind of outlandish irrelivent stories, must be a slow news day... :)

  • Newly discovered patents from 1790 (Score:5, Funny)

    by 1gor ( 314505 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:06AM (#9920770)
    ...included patent on a business method of "using silly patents for intimidation and extortion".

    There should be consequences...

  • 1826 the first engine ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:07AM (#9920776)
    According to http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarsga sa.htm

    The very first self-powered road vehicles were powered by steam engines and by that definition Nicolas Joseph Cugnot of France built the first automobile in 1769 - recognized by the British Royal Automobile Club and the Automobile Club de France as being the first. So why do so many history books say that the automobile was invented by either Gottlieb Daimler or Karl Benz? It is because both Daimler and Benz invented highly successful and practical gasoline-powered vehicles that ushered in the age of modern automobiles. Daimler and Benz invented cars that looked and worked like the cars we use today. However, it is unfair to say that either man invented "the" automobile.


    [...]

    1824 - English engineer, Samuel Brown adapted an old Newcomen steam engine to burn gas, and he used it to briefly power a vehicle up Shooter's Hill in London.

    • Re:1826 the first engine ? (Score:5, Informative)

      by SEE ( 7681 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:34AM (#9921051) Homepage
      Not first engine, first internal combustion engine. Steam engines -- even ones running on gas -- are external combustion engines. The technologies are quite distinct.

    • Re:1826 the first engine ? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Animats ( 122034 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @12:06PM (#9921348) Homepage
      Cugnot's was steam-powered. [3wheelers.com] Didn't work very well, either.

      The Age of Steam didn't really get going until Watt. Newcomen steam engines had been around for almost a century before Watt, but the approach was terrible. In a Newcomen engine, the cylinder was heated and cooled on every cycle. This is horrendously inefficient, but nobody knew that then. It took a huge engine to produce very modest power outputs. (Typical specs: 60-inch cylinder, 15HP) Watt built a Newcomen engine and started making measurements of the properties of steam and the heat capacity of the materials in the engine. Once he had some numbers to work with, he realized that a much simpler cycle would work much better.

      Then the problem was making an engine that didn't lose all the pressure through leaks. It took until 1782 before Boulton and Watt built something that could rotate a shaft. By 1788, they finally had a good engine. [sciencemuseum.org.uk]

      They also had a patent extension from 1775 to 1800, given them directly by Parlament. Boulton and Watt used this to become a big company. That's how the Industrial Revolution started.

      Visit the Kensington Science Museum in London, and you'll see many of the earliest steam engines.

  • Of course! (Score:5, Funny)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:07AM (#9920778) Homepage
    All this time looking for a solution to the problems with the U.S. patent office and the solution was right in front of my face the whole time. Arson! How could I have missed that one?

  • Patent Office Arson... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ianoo ( 711633 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:08AM (#9920784) Journal
    The original fire was no doubt caused by early open-source advocates protesting against Babbage's patents on the Difference Engine!

    With that in mind, if some of you OSS fellows fancy meeting me Arlington, Virginia for a re-enactment of this great event, be sure to bring matches, gasoline and plenty of firelighters.

  • Just waiting to hear Darl (Score:5, Funny)

    by not_a_product_id ( 604278 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:09AM (#9920795) Journal
    I'm sure SCO will say that they have some smoking gun patent in there registered by Darl's great great great grandfather

  • X-patents? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:09AM (#9920802)
    The truth is out there. And it's already been patented.

  • What is the distribution pattern (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nebaz ( 453974 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:09AM (#9920807)
    If 10,000 patents were all that were issued from 1790 to 1836 (40 years) and considering we are up to patent number 7,000,000 (approx) right now, it would be interesting to have a graph of patents granted over time from 1790 to the present. My guess is that it would be an exponential curve.
    • Yeah well, even without drawing it, I can guarantee you it's not a straight line.

    • How insightful (Score:5, Interesting)

      by siskbc ( 598067 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:20AM (#9920914) Homepage
      If 10,000 patents were all that were issued from 1790 to 1836 (40 years) and considering we are up to patent number 7,000,000 (approx) right now, it would be interesting to have a graph of patents granted over time from 1790 to the present. My guess is that it would be an exponential curve.

      Of course it would. The population has grown exponentially, as has effectively every other non-ratio metric associated with our country. GDP has gone up exponentially, food consumption has gone up exponentially, the stock market...you get the idea.

      A much more insightful study would be patents/person by year. I would imagine that this figure has also gone up, though likely not quite with an exponential dependence. Most interesting would be sharp jumps in this curve that one might associate with specific events, like WWII, certain presidents getting elected, new USPTO directors, and so on.

      • A much more insightful study would be patents/person by year.

        And a comparison to patents/company by year. I think that would show the real trend of patents.

        • Fun (Score:2)

          by siskbc ( 598067 )
          And a comparison to patents/company by year. I think that would show the real trend of patents.

          I agree, but I think you can do better than a simple ratio, as I'd want to eliminate non-patenting companies (like farms), and patents not assigned to companies. - I'd look at:

          the fraction of companies that pantented *anything* in a given year vs. time.

          the fraction of patents assigned to companies (as opposed to individual inventors) vs. time

          patents per employee at patenting companies vs. time

          patents/yr vs.

      • Re:How insightful (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Saeger ( 456549 ) <farrellj@nOSPam.gmail.com> on Monday August 09, 2004 @12:35PM (#9921638) Homepage
        In fact, it's been observed that just about any evolutionary process you care to name will advance exponentially. This is known as The Law of Accelerating Returns [kurzweilai.net] (which is more general than the more familliar "Moore's Law" that people like to apply to everything except what it was intended for (transistors)).

        WARNING: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears

        --

    • my guess is that if you were able to plot some index that showed technological progress over the years, it would have a similar exponential trend too..

    • Re:What is the distribution pattern (Score:5, Informative)

      by nebaz ( 453974 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:43AM (#9921131)
      Doing a little research I have indexed "round number" patents and gotten the following results.

      Patent 10000 [uspto.gov] was issued in 1853 , 50000 [uspto.gov] was issued in 1865, 100000 [uspto.gov] was issued in 1870, 200000 [uspto.gov] was issued in 1878, 500000 [uspto.gov] was issued in 1893, 1000000 [uspto.gov] was issued in 1911, 2000000 [uspto.gov] was issued in 1935

      Patent 3000000 [uspto.gov] was issued in 1955, 4000000 [uspto.gov] was issued in 1976, 5000000 [uspto.gov] was issued in 1991, 6000000 [uspto.gov] was issued in 1999, 6500000 [uspto.gov] was issued in 2002,
      • I did some quick charting against US population and the year; the peak time (so far) for new patents was from 1999 to 2002 with 166,667 per year (FWIW, we are almost there in 2004)

        The rate of population increase since 1900 has averaged about 1.37% per year. Patents have increased at more than double that rate at 2.73% per year.

        Furthermore, the population growth appears to be slowing while the patent growth is speeding up.

        I would guess that this is the result of a lot more businesses getting patents for
      • Just FYI, the first two digits of a patent number are known as "series". They are mostly, but not strictly sequential.

        For example, there are patents in the "09" and "10" series, but I don't believe there are any "08" series. I could be wrong about that, but I've never seen an "08" series in my technology.

        Also, it should be observed that there weren't any television patents before 1940, there weren't any cable tv patents before 1950, and there weren't any flat panel tv patents before 1990. There are sim

    • Re:What is the distribution pattern (Score:5, Interesting)

      by servognome ( 738846 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:57AM (#9921263)
      This is from a quick search I did by patent number:
      1 - Traction Wheels - July 13, 1836
      10 - Cutting Dye Wood - Aug 10, 1836
      101 - Sails and Rigging - Dec 6, 1836
      1,000 - Carriage Spring - Nov 3, 1838
      10,000 - Paddle Wheel - Sep 6, 1853
      100,000 - Horse Sun Bonnet - Feb 22, 1870
      250,000 - Ditching Machine - Nov 22, 1881
      500,000 - Combined Plush Tank & Manhole - Jun 20, 1893
      1,000,000 - Vehicle Tire - Aug 8, 1911
      1,500,000 - Submersible vessle for navigation under ice - Sept 10, 1920
      2,000,000 - Vehicle Wheel Construction - May 12, 1932
      2,500,000 - Interlock for Quick Fastening Doors - Dec 6, 1946
      3,000,000 - Automatic Reading System - May 6, 1955
      4,000,000 - Process for Recycling Asphalt-aggregate compositions - Dec 28, 1976
      5,000,000 - Ethanol production by Escherichia coli strains co-expressing Zymomonas PDC and ADH genes - Mar 19, 1991
      6,000,000 - Extendible method and apparatus for synchronizing multiple files on two different computer systems - Dec 7, 1999
      6,750,000 - Electron device manufacturing method, a pattern forming method, and a photomask used for those methods - Jun 15, 2004
      Approximate time between patents:
      #1-10,000: 17 years
      #10,000-100,000: 17 years
      #100,000-500,000: 23 years
      #500,000-1,000,000: 18 years
      #1,000,000-2,000,000: 21 years
      #2,000,000-3,000,000: 23 years
      #3,000,000-4,000,000: 21 years
      #4,000,000-5,000,000: 15 years
      #5,000,000-6,000,000: 8 years
      #6,000,000-6,750,000: 5 years
      • Doh! mod down -1, for too slow looking up info and submitting post
      • Magnetic Ring, Chiu [alexchiu.com] 5,989,178 [164.195.100.11]

        November 23, 1999

        A magnetic ring adapted to be worn on the little finger of the hand. The magnetic ring includes a ring and a pair of permanent magnets that extend from the ring. When the magnetic ring is worn on the little finger of the right hand, the pair of permanent magnets are oriented on the top and bottom, respectively, of the little finger, with the South pole of the magnet that is oriented on the top of the little finger generally contacting the top of the little f

    • Re:What is the distribution pattern (Score:5, Funny)

      by bugnuts ( 94678 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @12:55PM (#9921833) Journal
      An early inventor probably sent out something like

      "Hello, my name is Benjamin Franklin and I am an inventor. I used to have no patents and no respect as a scientist, but today I have over 500 patents including the Franklin Stove and the Electric Kite! Follow these instructions exactly and in 200 years, you'll have nearly 6 MILLION patents in your name!

      1: Copy this letter 10 times and add your name to the top as a co-inventor
      2: Make a unique modification to the invention at the bottom
      3: Submit that to the patent office and send this letter to 10 friends

      In 200 years we will have over 6,000,000 patents!"

      The government obviously had to stop this somehow, and make it look like an accident.

  • X-patents? (Score:5, Funny)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:13AM (#9920850) Homepage
    X-patents, eh? Sounds like the patent office is trying to jazz up their image to attract more young patent holders. Makes sense though, I heard they haven't been doing so well marketing to 18-25 year olds.

  • Working models of patent inventions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by StefanJ ( 88986 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:18AM (#9920889) Homepage Journal
    There was once a requirement that patent applications be accompanied by a working model of the invention.

    The patent office once stored thousands of these little gadgets.

    When the requirement was lifted, the patent office cleared out the warehouse, and gave way the models.

    As you can imagine, most were probably trashed . . . given to kids who destroyed them. The surviving specimens are hot collector's prizes.

    I once visited a collector's house, while doing "Dead Media" research. He had a few models. Most were of really pedestrian things, like automated brick makers.

    STefan
    • When I was about 13 I visited the basement workshop of the man who patented the machine that makes corrugated cardboard. He had the working miniature patent model there gathering dust. It was about a foot square.

      Needless to say, it was awesome!

  • US Patent Number 1 (Score:5, Funny)

    by drphil ( 320469 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:18AM (#9920894)
    Of course the first US patent is the one for the time machine -- or at least it will be when it gets invented. (Insert shameless plug for Cheapass games here)

  • X-patent? (Score:3, Funny)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:18AM (#9920895) Homepage
    Sounds like something ESPN's marketing team would make up to say that Tony Hawk has on the 900 or Rodney Mullen has on the Dark Slide.
  • Cheapass Games has created a game [cheapass.com] about the struggle to file the first U.S. Patent.

    Stefan

  • ah yes... (Score:5, Funny)

    by SQLz ( 564901 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:22AM (#9920926) Homepage Journal
    ....including one from 1826 for the first internal combustion engine..

    Ah yes,thats the patent I based my "internal cubustion engine, ON THE INTERNET" patent. Big bucks I tell you.

  • This doesn't matter. These patents would have expired a very long time ago.

    Had this been copyright, it's a different story. Realistically, copyrights never expire anymore (thanks to Disney + Sonny Bono and our "Big Business First" congressional philosophy).
    • Nah, all copyrights from 1922 or earlier are expired in the U.S., and even in the retroactive life-plus-seventy EU anything issued as far back as 1836 will have almost certainly run out by now, since the author would have had to live 98 years after the publication.

  • Pay up! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stonent1 ( 594886 ) <stonentNO@SPAMstonent.pointclark.net> on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:24AM (#9920951) Journal
    My great-great-great-grandfather patented Hyperlinking, Rambus memory, and Unix back in the 1800's. I'll be setting up a paypal account shortly so you can pay.
  • I hope this helps to usher in the return of the working model requirement. As patents used to require a working model in order to be awarded, it surely would've been easier to figure out whose patent was which when the inventor actually had to have a working one! So long to all those hi-tech patents where the company merely drafted a requirements document and fired it off to the USPTO. Let's see you build one first! 10-20 million lines of code later, the hi-tech patent volume slides down a few more notches.
    • The National Maritime Museum (http://www.nmm.ac.uk/) in the UK has world's largest collection of original drawings, consisting of some 1 million plans dating from the early 18th Century. With a couple of other resources, it's possible to track British shipbuilding continuously from 1688. Since it's a public collection, if you can name the ship they're obliged to provide a copy of the plans (but not for free).

      But the designs for the first 16 ships of the modern fleet didn't exist as drawn plans at all, rathe

    • The requirement of a working model may have been doable in the days of mainly mechanical inventions. But these days, a lot of inventions are electrical. A large processor such as an Athlon 64 probably has dozens have patents. Should they be required to submit an Athlon 64? How will the PTO test it? What if the invention is on a method of making a processor. Can't really model that, can you? Not to mention drug patents, or software patents.

  • also... (Score:4, Funny)

    by sootman ( 158191 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:25AM (#9920966) Homepage Journal
    "Until this spring, that is, when two lawyers... a clue"

    OMG they... a clue? Great!

    That reminds me, this morning, I... my breakfast.
    • How does one ... a clue? Give it a few drinks and take it to a movie?
    • Is this similar to "...Profit!"?

    • "Until this spring, that is, when two lawyers... a clue"

      OMG they... a clue? Great!

      That reminds me, this morning, I... my breakfast.

      What does ... mean in this context, and are the ...s equivalent? Do they mean

      Found?
      Ate?
      Poured milk on?
      Lost?
      Fried?

      Or does it mean something naughty? If that's the case I don't want to hear about what the lawyers did to the clue, or for that matter what you did to your breakfast. Eww.
    • you ... your breakfast.?

      Tell me you didn't do that. I mean, ok, we are here on ./, most of us are geeks and pretty desperate, but there are limits, k .

      Try getting a dog (or perhaps a pig - whatever you prefer). I heared that can help (ok, it might still not be great, but better than ... your breakfast)
      Or best of all - get a girlfriend - that should prevent the entire situation.



      So again - please don't throw away your breakfast, just cuz it looks suspicious, either feed it to your pets or get a girl

  • 10000 Patents. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fozzmeister ( 160968 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:28AM (#9920993) Homepage
    They were issued from July 1790, when the United States patent system was created under an order signed by George Washington, to July 1836

    10000 Patents in 43 years, That is a lot lower than the amount of patents issued nowadays. Perhaps the patent officers should take a cue from the old (dead) guys and be waaaaaaaay more stingy with patents that are granted. My bet is because they can't keep up with the amount of patents they pass more patents, so companies file for more patents.
    • You do realize the large difference between the US population in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and that of today (start of the 21st century). Also a huge difference exists between the economy of today and then.

      Those all play into the a large increase of patents granted in the last 100 years or so.
    • I hereby patent a device for taking 1790 from 1836 and ending up with 43.
  • Ms. Quinn describes him as the inventor "who arguably discovered the first internal combustion engine." You'd think that someone who is the spokeperson for the Patent Office would know the difference between discovered and invented. Or maybe not.

    Perhaps I'm wrong - maybe the internal combustion engine *was* discovered.

    "Where did you say you heard those noises?"
    "Just up here, around this bend in the cave"
    "Wait! I hear it! What sort of infernal creature is it?"
    "God save us, I think it is coming this way!"
    "Hold the lantern higher and brace yourselves!"
    .....
    "Aww, it's just a baby! It's no danger to anyone!"
    "Let us call it 'Infernal Combustion Engine'."
    "We did find it in this cave, how about 'Internal Combustion Engine'?"
    "Brilliant!"
    "This discovery will bring peace and prosperity to all the peoples of the world!"

    (cue evil Doom3 music)...

  • The article (more accurately, the patent agency spokeswoman quoted therein) makes the same semantic mistake that many do...the 1826 patent went to the man who INVENTED the internal combustion engine, not the man who DISCOVERED it. Invention and discovery are not synonymous and only semiliterate slobs use the words interchangeably.

    Thank you; that is all.
  • And now the US office processes over 300,000 applications per year. Its cool, how much smarter we are now.

  • Patent #10001 (Score:5, Funny)

    by jimand ( 517224 ) * on Monday August 09, 2004 @11:43AM (#9921134)
    ...rubber fire hoses
  • My great great great grandfather patented patenting in patent No 1 it was recently recovered...so for each patent issued since I'm due a licencing fee...

  • Another win for Darl (Score:3, Funny)

    by Angst Badger ( 8636 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @12:07PM (#9921350)
    including one from 1826 for the first internal combustion engine...

    Well, of course-- that would be the original SCO internal combustion engine, the principles of which have been stolen by every car on the planet!
  • Put them in a meseum.

    Right next to the patent system itself.

    They both are SO last millennium...

  • So that's what happed to my ancestor's patent for (Score:3, Funny)

    by wsanders ( 114993 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @02:44PM (#9922943) Homepage
    "fetting down wordf and ideaf in corporeal form"!

    Y'all owe me one feptillion dollarf...

  • Fascinating Old Patents (Score:3, Interesting)

    by midnightthunder ( 171291 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @03:08PM (#9923151)
    The original requirement for a patent model allowed for a maximum volume of one cubic foot, measured on all faces as the limit in model size. I am sure that originally, that seemed reasonable enough. Still, it became quite evident as the Patent Office was busy turning into a massive filing system of 12 inch by 12 inch by 12 inch models that this was a nightmare in progress, reminiscent of the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Arc wherein an item is carted off into an endless warehouse. The models themselves vary from small individual components to astonishing miniaturized versions of large machinery to full size examples of individual products. The materials vary from wood, to machined metals to amazing works done in tin. Around 1890, the cubic foot rule had become unworkable and the models were no longer accepted. After allowing the Smithsonian to pick and choose from among the models, the remainder were scrapped. From among these, a small fraction have survived and reside in museums and collections. Some of these are sufficiently interesting as to serve as the centerpieces of collections. While the models themselves may be more of museum pieces, than educational, which could be debated either way, the documentation of the evolution of patents and how they build one each upon the others that have cut the path before them is of historical and technical interest.

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