- X-Patent
The X-Patents are all the
patent s issued by theUnited States Patent and Trademark Office from July1790 (when the first U.S. patent was issued), to July1836 . The actual number is unknown, but the best estimate is 9,957. The records were burned in a fire, in December 1836, while in temporary storage. No copies or rosters were maintained by the government at the time, leaving only the inventors’ copies to reconstruct the collection.The USPTO and its earliest days
The Patent Commission of the U.S. was created in
1790 . Its first three members wereSecretary of State Thomas Jefferson , Secretary of WarHenry Knox , andAttorney General Edmund Randolph .On
July 31 ,1790 inventorSamuel Hopkins ofPittsford, Vermont became the first person to be issued a patent in the United States. His patented invention was an improvement in the “making of Pot Ash by a new apparatus & process.” The earliest patent law required that a working model of each invention be produced in miniature.The Patent Law was revised for the first time in
1793 . It adopted a simple registration system where a patent would be granted for a $30 fee. The Patent Board was replaced by a clerk in theDepartment of State .James Madison , Secretary of State, created a separate Patent Office within the State Department and he appointed Dr. William Thornton as its first superintendent in May1802 .The Patent Office was the only major government building to survive the British invasion of
Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812. This is credited to Dr. William Thornton who was building a musical instrument in the same building. He persuaded British officers that they would be destroying the shared intellectual record of mankind if the patents were burned. [cite web |url=http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ahrpa/opa/kids/special/1836fire.htm |title="Great Patent Fire of 1836" |accessdate=2007-11-23 |format= |work= ]The 1836 fire
The disastrous fire occurred on
December 15 ,1836 , when the patents were in temporary storage while a new (more fireproof) facility was being built. A fire station was located next to the temporary storage facility, but the hoses and pumps were frozen, and the firemen were unable to prevent the loss.Recovery of the X-Patents
The
United States Congress immediately passed a law to aid re-issuing of the missing patents after the fire. About 2,800 such patents have been recovered, and 1,989 are online.Following the 1836 fire, a serial numbering system was instituted. This system is still in use today. When an earlier patent was recovered and re-issued, the USPTO sometimes gave it a fractional number (eg. 2960½X, issued on
June 2 ,1818 ; 8736¾X, issued onMarch 27 ,1835 ) to preserve the correct sequence. Most, but not all, fractional patents are X-Patents.Prior to this, U.S. patents were identified by titles and dates. Since then, all new patents issued are preserved and given a serial patent number started from 1. The recovered patents are also numbered from 1, however, these numbers have an “X” added to them. The X is generally added to the end of the number except for the first patent which has the X in the beginning of the number. Therefore, they are called X-Patents.
The latest X-Patents were recovered in
2004 from theDartmouth College archives. Of the 14 found, 10 were granted toSamuel Morey including the first known patent for aninternal combustion engine .A list of some X-Patents
References
External links
* [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?TERM1=x+&Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=0&f=S&l=50 X-Patents Online at USPTO Website]
* [http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ahrpa/opa/kids/special/1836fire.htm Great Patent Fire of 1836]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/technology/09patent.html "New York Times" article on the 2004 recovery of 14 X-Patents]
* [http://www.patentstation.com/mdm/p142.htm Interesting Patent Events]
* [http://www.patentstation.com/pic/pdfdl/US0X0000001.pdf The U.S. Patent No. 1X]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/18/business/18PATE.html “Patent Models’ Strange Odyssey”] by Teresa Riordan, "The New York Times", February 18, 2002.
* [http://www.dartmouth.edu/~vox/0405/0823/patents.html Early patent records found in library]
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