Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 February 1896 — Uncle Sam Lost on This. [ARTICLE]

Uncle Sam Lost on This.

The Patent Office Is a money-making office for the government. But it could not be if every patent made as much trouble as one just issued. When filed eight years ago. this application contained 204 sheets of drawings, whereas one sheet is usually sufficient. The drawings alone must have cost the inventor .SI,OOO. The specification papers made a pile two feet thick of typewritten manuscript. Jt took tho examiner six weeks to go through the case for preliminary action. So complicated w r as the case that the Patent Office at length sent an expert to Chicago and gave him a month to investigate the machine, which comprised more than 1,800 parts. At last the application was allowed. Then the whole case had to be printed and all the drawings photolithographed at government expense, making a big book. The first edition cost Uncle Sam $0 a copy, but the law says all copies of patents shall sell for ten cepts. It is probable that more than SI,OOO worth of time of the Patent Office was devoted to this case, to say nothing of the expense of publishing the patent. All the government received for the work was the regular fees fixed by law. amounting to $35 in all. The patent is a machine for setting i ,