700 



PATENTS. 



The number of the last patent issued in 1891 was 

 466,021. Connecticut still maintains her tradi- 

 tional leadership as regards ratio of patents to 

 population (1 patent to 1,018 souls in 1891), but 

 Massachusetts is close behind, with 1 patent to 1,- 

 055. South Carolina is at the foot of the list, with 

 1 patent to 23,492. To New York the largest 

 number of patents have been issued in each of the 

 three years under consideration to wit, 4,288 in 

 1889, 4,585 in 1890, and 3,907 in 1891. England 

 continues to hold first place among foreign na- 

 tions in the procuring of American patents, and 

 of her colonies Canada leads in inventiveness. It 

 will be seen, on reference to the foregoing table, 

 that the year 1891 falls slightly behind 1890 in 

 the number of patents issued as well as in the 

 principal totals. Such variations, however, char- 

 acterize any given term of years, and have no 

 especial significance. 



The reports of the Commissioner of Patents 

 during the three years under review have been 

 of especial interest from the fact that the Hon. C. 

 E. Mitchell, of Connecticut, became commis- 

 sioner in March, 1889, and brought some new 

 ideas to the management of the office. He found 

 it necessary in each report to plead, as his prede- 

 cessors had done, for increased room, for an in- 

 creased number of assistants, and for better sala- 

 ries in the case of those already employed. He 

 was succeeded in office, Aug. 1. by W. E. Simonds. 



The place of the Patent Office among the de- 

 partments of the Government is in many re- 

 spects unique. It alone of all the departments 

 is self-supporting, and has now on the books of 

 the treasury a very large sum to its 'credit. The 



space at the disposal of the working force is 

 totally inadequate. The rooms, omitting the 

 store and reception rooms, number 48, and their 

 combined capacity, deducting the space occu- 

 pied by the necessary furniture, is 247,441 cubic 

 feet. The number o'f occupants constantly em- 

 ployed during business hours is 270; the cubic 

 feet of space per occupant is therefore 916 feet. 

 The best authorities estimate the number of 

 cubic feet reasonably required by each person at 

 4,000. The ingenuity of the officers is constant- 

 ly taxed to its utmost to find storage room even 

 for the copies of patents as they are printed 

 from week to week. The actual cash income 

 from the sale of these copies exceeds $60,000 a 

 year, yet they are stored in different parts of the 

 building, on different floors, and so widely sepa- 

 rated that the searcher for a particular patent 

 may be obliged to go from one end of the build- 

 ing to another several times before he can deter- 

 mine the exact location of the file for which he 

 is searching. During the past six years the 

 patrons of the Patent Office that is to say, the 

 inventors and designers of the country at large 

 have paid into the Treasury over $1,000,000 in 

 excess of all expenditiires, and the net income of 

 each succeeding year has thus far invariably ex- 

 ceeded that of its predecessors. The present 

 issue of the "Official Gazette " is 7,000 copies, 

 of which 2,953 are furnished to subscribers at 

 $5 .a year, and 3,576 are distributed to public 

 libraries, members of Congress, and others who 

 are entitled to them. 



The halls of the model room now contain over 

 150,000 models, and the number added during 



