PATENTS. 



617 



Georgia, Alabamn, and the Territory of Okla- 

 homa are among the lowest averages. 



In all, J.O.'H patents were granted to citizens 

 of foreign countries. Kngland leads, with 653 ; 

 (icniiaiiN C..MII-S next, with "i07. Then the pre- 

 ponderance crosses the Atlantic again to Canada, 

 wliM-c citizens took out 296 United States 

 patents. After Austria- Hungary, which is rep- 

 resented by (i(i patents, the average falls rapidly 

 through the less progressive states. 



The report of W. E. Simonds, Commissioner 

 of Talents, appears in the "Patent Office Ga- 

 zette" for Feb. 7, 1893. It opens with the inev- 

 itable prayer for increased room in the Patent 

 Office. Substantially the same petition has been 

 repeated by successive Secretaries of the Interior 

 and Commissioners of Patents for several years. 

 The weight of records already stored, and con- 

 stantly increasing through the necessities of the 

 office, is actually threatening to crush the build- 

 ings themselves, and the commissioner pathetic- 

 ally observes that portentous cracks have ap- 

 peared in the ceiling of his own room. 



During 1891 10 persons were added to the ex- 

 amining corps of the Patent Office, and 4 to the 

 clerical force. Prior to that time the work had 

 been falling behindhand, in spite of all efforts 

 to keep it up. With the additions named it has 

 been possible practically to keep up with the de- 

 mands of the office, although the list is still 

 about 100 cases behindhand. This, however, 

 does not show the real deficiencies in the office, 

 for a large part of the examining corps have 

 been working overtime since the autumn of 1892. 

 There are about 200 of these examiners, and, 

 in round numbers, 40,000 applications for pat- 

 ents come before them every year. This gives 

 each examiner 200 cases, but this does not by 

 any means give an adequate idea of the num- 

 ber of separate actions falling to the share of 

 each. The commissioner estimates that each 

 examiner has an average of about 730 actions on 

 application every year; besides this, they hear 

 and decide upon a great variety of motions, 

 largely petitions for the dissolution of interfer- 

 ences, which are often argued by counsel, and 

 demand the same kind of study and thought 

 that falls to the share of judges in a court of 

 law. Of course this enormous mass of work ne- 

 cessitates elaborate classification, and the pat- 

 ents are all divided into classes. These so over- 

 lap each other that each ought properly to be 

 classified by itself, so that each examiner, in de- 

 ciding upon the novelty of an invention, need 

 go over the ground but once. It is most desir- 

 able, in fact, that these classes should all be 

 printed at the public expense and bound in 

 separate volumes. This has been done as a mat- 

 ter of private enterprise in the case of bicycles 

 and velocipedes, the list filling 2 volumes, or 

 1,503 pages altogether. Under tne official classi- 

 fication these improvements are found in the 

 subclasses of velocipedes and tires, which in 

 turn belong to the general division of carriages 

 and wagons. In the preparation of this digest 

 the examiner had actually to read nearly 200,000 

 patents, comprised in 150 subclasses, and in al- 

 most every one of these were found inventions 

 which had to be included in the final list. The 

 commissioner recommends the appointment of 

 32 new assistant examiners, at a salary of $1,200 



each, to devote all their time for the present to 

 index work of this character. In addition, In 

 would have 16 more assistant examiners, to be 

 employed in bringing current work up to date. 



The Columbian Expedition. The office ha* 

 been subjected to an extraordinary strain in pre- 

 paring for the World's Columbian Exposition at 

 Chicago. This has demanded a vast amount of 

 care and labor, and since no addition could be 

 made to the clerical force the end had to be ac- 

 complished with the means at hand. The result 

 is most satisfactory, the exhibit comprising about 

 2,500 working models. These are divided into 

 many groups or classes, the models in each 

 class ranging from more than 200, iu the case of 

 steam engines, down to 3 or 4, as in the case of 

 fire escapes, chain . making, and wood sawing. 

 The models in each group are carefully arranged 

 in chronological order, exemplifying the univer- 

 sal theory of development. A large proportion 

 of these models have been selected from those in 

 the Patent Office, but many had to be made, and 

 many have been supplied by inventors and manu- 

 facturers. The whole exhibit forms a collection 

 which has probably never been equaled in point 

 of cost, value, and perfection of arrangement. 

 Among the most notable and important of the 

 group are the harvesters, the exhibit beginning 

 with a model representing a grain header used 

 in Gaul in the first century of the Christian 

 era, and ending with the machines that are used 

 in gathering the crops of the present year. 



Legislation. The treaty of 1883, designed 

 for the protection of industrial property, was 

 concluded at Paris, and was subsequently joined 

 by the United States in 1887. But no legisla- 

 tion has been enacted to carry out the provi- 

 sions of the treaty, and there is some fair ground 

 for difference of "opinion as to what laws ought 

 to be made. The next conference of the In- 

 ternational Union will convene at Brussels in 

 1894. Our patent laws are exceptionally liberal 

 toward foreigners ; but this liberality is not, 

 as a rule, extended to American inventors by 

 foreign countries. The latest German law con- 

 tains a provision seemingly designed to modify 

 the adverse rulings that have subsisted against 

 American inventors, but no modification of the 

 statute has yet been secured. 



Inventions. Herewith are briefly described, 

 and in many cases illustrated, a number of the 

 inventions that have been patented during the 

 year. The selection is made from a vast number 

 of devices covering upward of 5,000 pages in the 

 " Patent-Office Gazette " and elsewhere, and the 

 omissions of meritorious designs must necessarily 

 be largely in excess of those for which space is 

 available in the "Annual." . 



Life-Saving Devices. Earlv in the year the 

 proprietors of the London "l)aily Graphic" 

 offered a prize of $500 to the inventor of the 

 best means of establishing communication be- 

 tween a stranded ship and the shore. Between 

 February and Marcn, when the competition 

 closed, no fewer than 1.899 devices were offered, 

 and soon afterward 800 more which were ruled 

 out on account of limitation of time, making in 

 all 2,200: of this number all but 100 came from 

 Great Britain, and of the remaining 100 Ger- 

 many and Austria sent the larger part. Singu- 

 larly enough, considering American fecundity of 



