76 New Patents. 



to perfect the specification, would he not run great risk of divulging 

 his invention, although he had entered the principal heads ? — Those 

 heads should be kept secret, but public notice of the application 

 should be given ; one object of my proposition is, that if an acci- 

 dental disclosure of the whole secret did take place, the inventor 

 should not suffer any material injury from it. 



Will you instance, in the case of Mr. Watt's improvement in the 

 steam engine, the proposals which you suggest for the improvement 

 of the process in obtaining a patent? — I think that the deed which 

 Mr. Watt inroUed for his specification, ought to have been lodged 

 at the time of making the first application for his patent ; and he 

 should have been allowed at least two years for making engines and 

 the experiments necessary for specifying the means by which those 

 principles should be carried into execution; within those two years 

 he should have made such a specification as would have really in- 

 structed competent workmen how to practise the invention, 



Gould Mr. Watt have made that statement of heads of invention, 

 without previous experiments? — Yes, at the time he drew up those 

 heads (which I say are not specific enough to be a specification,) 

 he really had made no engine, and only a private experiment by 

 himself, with a very incomplete model. 



Would those heads have secured him against any rivalry? — They 

 di J so in fact most completely ; his paper was most admirably well 

 drawn, and very definite; but those who wanted to practise the in- 

 vention could not do it upon that specification. It told them plain 

 enough what they were forbidden to do, during the term of his 

 patent, but did not explain how they might do it, after the expira- 

 tion of that term. 



Then he gave in for a complete specification, that which, accord- 

 ing to your ideas, ought to have been given in in the first instance ? — 

 Exactly so ; and he never did make any complete specification such 

 as I think ought to be given in the second instance ; the conse- 

 quences of that omission have been important in his case, for long 

 after the expiration of his patent, which was prolonged and kept 

 in force in the whole for more than thirty years, those who wanted 

 to make steam engines, had to go and steal a knowledge of his in- 

 vention from his factory, or from examining engines made by him, 

 with as much difficulty as if he had never had a patent. Reading 

 the specification did not answer the purpose at all. 

 [To be continued.) 



LIST OF NEW PATENTS. 



To J. Aitchison, Clyde-buildings, Glasgow, merchant, for his im- 

 provements in the concentrating and evaporating of cane juice, so- 

 lutions of sugar, and other fluids. — Dated the loth of September 1829. 

 — 6 months allowed to enrol specification. 



To T. Cobb, Calthorpe-house, Bradbury, Oxford, esquire, for his 

 improvements in the manufacture of paper, intended to be applied to 

 the covering of walls, or the hanging of rooms, and in the apparatus 

 for effecting the same. — 15th of September. — 6 months. 



To 



