Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 November 1876 — Curiosities of the British Patent System. [ARTICLE]

Curiosities of the British Patent System.

A writer in Chambert' Journal has bees examining into fee history of the British Patent Office; and he describes manv curious grants in the early history of the office. Among other facts, the writer states that there are 4,000 applications for patents every year; and that fee office receives the snug sum of SR>O,OOO a year in fees and stamps. The first patents, issued in the time of James 1., werrmore hr the nature of monopolies or privileges, for which a consideration was paid to shrewd Jamie himself. The first patent of all was an exclusive privilege for drawing, engraving, and publishing mans of London, Westminster, Windsor, Bristol, Norwich, Canterbury, Bath, Oxford, and Cambridge. The next was for the privilege of publishing portraits of His Bacred Majesty. The third was for an unexplained group of wonderful inventions, for plowing land without horses or oxen, making barren land fertile, raising water, and . constructing boats for swift movement on water. Many of the patents relating to clothing are singular either for their immediate objects or for the language in which they are couched. One patent for breeches, at a date when trousers bad not yet come much into use, described* a mode of cutting out and making “ to do away with all the inconveniences hitherto complained of”—by the aid of elastic sprihgs, morocco elastic supporters, straps, buckles, etc. Another “protects trousers from mud,” by means of a shield attached to the hinder part of the boot heel, which shield receives the splashed mud. George Holland patented a mode of “ making false or dummy calves in stockings.” A famous modiste has an improvement in ladies’ dresses, “ rendering the same body capable of adapting itself to fit different figures.” For those “ who cannot bear a ligature round the leg,” a patentee has a garter made of steel springs, connected with a silver plate placed in the waistband of the dress. One patent tells of a machine for brushing trousers ■ a framework supports a spindle which carries a set of concave brushes; a cylinder of wicker or cane is placed inside the trousers to keep them distended; and the spindle is set rotating by an endless band acting on a beveled pulley. The searchers after a machine for producing perpetual motion —that dreamy fallacy of the middle ages—have not failed to make their appearance in the patent world. In 1859 two Germans, Krause and Rotman, residing at Milwaukee, in fee United States, sent a letter to “ Her Majesty,the Queen Victoria, Patent Office, London.” Her Majesty most likely did not read it, but the Patent Office folks did. It ran feus: “Your Majesty, we humbly advertise that we find out the perpetual motion, a machine very singular in its construction, but fee same time very important by the power it gives. We intend to secure for ourselves the patent right for the United States; and, as we are informed your Majesty has secured a reward for the invention, we respectfully ask your Majesty if we may come to show our invention ? To prevent mistake, we humbly beg not to believe any person without having the original patent of the United States, and the copy of this letter.” From the cradle to the grave, says the writer, patentees take care of us in some way or other. Even Dolly is attended to. One patent among many tells us that “ dolls hitherto made have never been so constructed as to allow of their being placed in a sitting posture, with the legs bending at and hanging down from the kneesand announdes that this important desideratum has now at length been secured. Another inventor “gives a rocking motion to dolls’ cradles” oy an elaborate array of clock-work, eccentric wheel, winch and connecting-rod. One of fee early patentees had “a hydraulike, which, being placed by a bedside, causeth sweetesleepe to those which either by hott feavers or otherwise cannot take rest.” A patent medicinal powder, compounded of tobacco and herbs, was so meritorious that “ if one teaspoonful be struck Ibra dose up the nose as snuff, will cure various disorders of fee hypocondriac and melancholy kind.” Eighty sears ago many persons believed in a patented mode of curing numberless achesand pains “by drawing - over the parts affected various pointed metals, which from the affinity they have with the offending matters, or from some other cause, extract or draw out the same, and thus cure the patient.” One patentee has a thief-proof coffin, in which the corpse is secured by chaining or hooping it to a false bottom; and another a coffin made impregnable by some special application of “ tapped ana casehardened screws.”

If we cut short our budget of curious patents, it is only because space fails us. Two of the Lilywhites, the celebrated cricketers, have at different times patented bowling machines; in one instance for the adoption of machine bowling in actual play; in the other only for practice at batting, when a trained bowler is not at hand. If the reader will imagine sbmething of the catapult or cross-bow kind, he may form some idea ‘of these cricketing oddities. One patentee has a balloon for catching fisji; a balloon inflated with air and ballasted with water, is supposed to drag or trawl the fishing lines or nets. Before the Manchester and Liverpool Railway was constructed, a bright genius conceived the ideaof using balloons to draw a ship overland between those towns, on a tramway of twenty feet gauge I A balloon has been patented for preventing sea sickness; a platform resting on a huge ball and socket, supports the seats for the passengers; the platform is connected by cords with a circle of small balloons; and the balloons are expected to keep the platform always horizontal—of course to the great satisfaction of the passengers. Balloons are also intended, by another patentee, to keep in motion the swings which are such a source of delight at countiy fairs. One of the very earliest patents was for/‘a fish call, very useful for the fishermen to calr all klnde of fishes to their netts, speares, or hookes; and for fowlers to call severall kindes of fowles or birds to their netts or snares.’’ In one part the inventor speaks ,of his fish call as a “ looking glass’’—rather a puzzle to interpret. Acrobats are invited to use a patent shoe soled with iron, which will enable the wearer, with the aid of a powerful electro- magnet to walk head downwards along a metallic celling. There are patents for milking cows, for preserving Hie hands from chapping, and for curing the croup In fowls. Snufl-taking is made easy by “.two snuff boxes, one with a slider and the other with a sweep, out of which snuff may be taken without pulling it (the box!) out of the pocket, and without spilling.” _ . —Dr. Rolland says “ One tires of talking to fools;” and Mr. Howells wittily adds: “Many good people are tired of hearing the. fools talked to."