American Patent Research Articles

Radio, Beam and Broadcast: its Story and Patents

THE author gives a good account of the art of radio-communication. In an appendix he quotes British and American patent specifications or gives extracts from them describing the main steps in the evolution of the art. Many wonderfully accurate guesses into the future have been made, but few are so wonderful as Du Maurier's drawing published in Punch of 1878 of what appears to be an elaborate home radio set and a lady telling her page-boy to turn on the tap for the concert from Covent Garden, etc., at stated times in the evening. Long-distance broadcasting was anticipated, as one of the panels is marked “Bayreuth.” In 1892 Sir William Crookes, in a paper in the Fort nightly Review, makes an excellent forecast of radio-telegraphy, suggesting that 50 yards would be a suitable wave-length, and that the instruments for reception would have to be tuned to this wave-length. We are inclined to agree with the author that, in the near future, broadcasting of local urban interest only will be effected over existing telephone or lighting wires and so kept out of the ether. The ether is already becoming congested, mainly due to broadcasting. A single broadcasting station takes as much of the ether as would accommodate at least ten radio-telegraph stations.

Seventy-Five Years of American Patent Administration

Seventy-Five Years of American Patent Administration

A Review of the American Patent Literature on Arsphenamine (Salvarsan) and Other Arsenicals.

A Review of the American Patent Literature on Arsphenamine (Salvarsan) and Other Arsenicals.

The Incongruities of American Patent Litigation.

The Incongruities of American Patent Litigation.

Progress of invention in the Nineteenth Century

THE author describes scientific discovery and invention from the point of view of a man familiar with the American patent office. Henry, and not Sturgeon, is therefore the inventor of the horse-shoe electro-magnet; Morse, and not Cooke, is the inventor of the telegraph. He has the patent office official's knowledge of science. He bursts into rhapsody only at the beginning and ending of chapters. He gives in each chapter bits of the history of an industry, not very satisfying because very incomplete. But each chapter is readable, being somewhat like an article in an illustrated magazine intended for general readers.