

.s/A' WILLIAM SIEMENS, F.R.S. 421 



abandon his patent if he had not been taken up by Boulton, who 

 thus enabled him to give his invention the development which 

 made it the foundation of a great advancement in civilisation. 

 The invention by "Watt of the separate condenser and air-pump 

 was just one of those which required a great deal of knowledge 

 and mechanical skill in order to develop its merit, and such must 

 be the case in every instance where any important change was 

 rciih-mplated. Then he came to the last class of interested parties 

 who, so far, had not been represented in the discussion the user ; 

 and, although he himself belonged to the class of inventors, he 

 thought the user had, after all, the first right to be considered. 

 In connection with this point, he thought a little anecdote which 

 he heard with regard to a Minister of State under Louis XV. was 

 appropriate. Pensions had been granted to poets, and poetry was 

 a very good thing, of course ; then a poet came to him claiming a 

 pension, but the Minister declined to grant it. Well, said the 

 poet, " Ilfaut queje vive" " Je n'en vois pas la necessite," replied 

 the Minister, politely shrugging his shoulders. If the public 

 could do without inventions, they surely would have the right to 

 .say, we will not have any inventors. If they could do without 

 them, and could be happy without them, they had a perfect right 

 to say, we will not have patents. But nearly all thinking men 

 now were agreed that they could not get on without patented 

 inventions. The cry of " No patents " had died away, because it 

 was founded on error, and they had now to consider what was the 

 best form of grant to give to an intending patentee, not for his 

 own aggrandisement, but for the public advancement. If they 

 kept the public interest involved in the question chiefly in view, 

 they would be much more likely to arrive at a fair and reasonable 

 conclusion than if they started with the idea of an indefeasible 

 right in the inventor. After all, letters patent were not property, 

 in the sense of real estate. Real property was absolute, and was 

 not taken away after a term of fourteen or fifteen years. But no 

 country had ever proposed, and no inventor had ever asserted, the 

 right to a perpetual monopoly in his invention. The granting of 

 a patent was a temporary endowment, in order that the patentee 

 might have, first, time to develop the invention, which was the 

 important thing as far as the public were concerned, and in doing 

 so have the opportunity of earning a proper compensation for the 



