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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



f ApKir,, 



Tlie men who are authors of valuable inventions, in the great 

 nvijonty of cases, from the poor bein^ in tlie fjreater number, do 

 n')t necessarily possess 200/. or 300/., and cannot rendily fjet it. 

 One man is a barber, anotlier a postilion, and a third an eiifjine- 

 tenter, and so on; the l)etter taufflit may be a poor scliidar or 

 parson, 'i'lu-se men are called u])on to i)ay the tax, and they liave 

 it not. Tlioy Iiave several courses open to them. To work the 

 invention without fee or reward; if practical>le to work it secretly 

 for profit; to get some one to advance the money and to take part 

 of the profits; to register the invention ijistead of patenting it; 

 to keep the invention secret in the liopes that tlie means may 

 come for taking out a patent. The great majority of inventors 

 tliere can be no question are reduced to one of these several 

 courses; of the patents taken out, the majority are on similar 

 conditions. 



If a working-man is very lucky, he may get some one to ad- 

 vance the money to take out a patent for him; but in most cases 

 he cannot, and the in\ention slumbers for many years, or is per- 

 haps lost. This, it is evident^ is to the very serious injury of the 

 people at large. 



^V'e will not take a remote case, nor an obscure one; but we have 

 one which has been pointed out by a writer in Ihis. Jounui/ — that of 

 George Stejjlienson. In 181 1, little more than thirty years ago, 

 George Stephenson was a working-man, and invented a locomotive 

 engine and a safety-lamp; for neither was he able to take out a 

 ])atent, being too poor, and was forced to publish them without 

 any protection. For tlje safety-lamp he got no direct return, but 

 was fortunate enough to get a public subscription: we say fortu- 

 nate, for Dr. Clanny only got a small subscription a few years 

 ago, and Mr. Robert A^^illiam Brandling, the inventor of another 

 safct.v-lamp, died last year without having received any reward. 

 For the locomotive, Stephenson got no return; and it was perhaps 

 fortunate for him tliat he had no patent, for he would have been 

 300/. out of pocket, as the only engine constructed suggested im- 

 provements, which led to its being superseded. Had the engine 

 been perfect, Stephenson would have had no protection, and the 

 great manufacturers would have got the profits from such a valu- 

 able invention. 



In the next year, Stephenson fell in with that great schemer, 

 AVilliam Henry James, and he introduced him to another great 

 schemer, Ralph Dodd; which latter found the money for taking 

 out a patent, receiving a considerable share in the patent, and 

 M'illiam Henry James receiving a sliare for bringing the parties 

 togetlier. Ral])h Dodd had not the recpiisite capital for working 

 tlie patent, so tliat the sliare given up was for obtaining the patent 

 or title to the jiroperty, and nothing else. This is the usual case 

 witli patents; and tliere are very few in which the inventor has not 

 given up a share for obtaining the patent. 



^Vc may here stop for a while, and examine a little at our leisure 

 the case before us. The author of Paradise Lost was not obliged 

 to take out a patent before he could offer his inunortal Paradise 

 Lost to a bookseller for five pounds. Tlie late Sir Walter Scott did 

 not have to pay out of his large earnings 300/. per work, or 

 above 10,000/. for patents. ^Ve know of many men who have paid 

 tlumsands for patents. At the time we are speaking of, Stephen- 

 son was maintaining his aged parents out of his earnings, was 

 mending clocks and watches in what he called his spare time, to 

 provide the means for educating his son, and was jeopardising his 

 life in the fire-damp in experiments on tlie safety-lamp, as wit- 

 nesses now living have stated. Yet, before this poor man could 

 be in the position to reap any reward from one of his inventions, 

 he liad to assign away a great share. 



Our readers will not feel astonished if we take them one step 

 further. So far from an ade<|uate return being got from the 

 I'atent with Dodd, in the next year Stephenson had to take out 

 another ]iatent for the locomotive, into which he crammed sundry 

 other inventions for rails and chairs. For getting this patent anil 

 working it, the means were found by Mr. Losh, a manufacturer of 

 Newcastle, who of course had a share in the jiatent. It is not 

 wonderful that Stejihenson had contemplated leaving a country so 

 very unpropitious to poor inventors, and emigrating to the United 

 States. If he died a rich man, no thanks to the patent laws. 



AVc do not think it necessary to accumulate examples, for one 

 practical example is liettcr than a hundred theories as to how tlie 

 patent laws might work, and the case of George Stephenson never 

 ought to have occurred in a country claiming to be civilised. In- 

 stead of taking other cases, we shall make some further remarks 

 suggested by the case of Stephenson. 



In looking at the history of the locomotive, it seems very clear 

 that the patent laws were the great obstacle to the practicaf intro- 

 duction of the locomotive fifty years before it took place. In 



17S8 or 1759, Dr. Robison conceived the jilan of a locomotive 

 engine, but did not think it wortli his while to take out a patent. 

 In 178t, it was named by \\'att, in a patent, so that tlie idea of a 

 locomotive carriage was then made public. About that time, Wil- 

 liam .Murdoch, then at Redrutli, made a working nmrlel of a steam- 

 carriage, but could not take out a patent. iMurdoch was likewise 

 one of the inventors of gas lighting, in which he had the same 

 hindrance. In 1802, Trevithick, hel|)ed by Captain Andrew 

 ^'ivian, took out a patent for a locomotive; but it never paid the 

 patent fees. Oliver Evans wanted to take out a jiatent for a 

 steam-wagon, but could not. Before 1818, at least 1,000/. were paid 

 for patent fees for locomotive*, without one penny of )irofit lieing 

 earned; and the said patents proving utterly worthless and un- 

 profitable, except in prejiaring tlie way for others. The history of 

 the steamboat, as lately published by Mr. Bennet Woodcroft, is 

 only another tale of the same kind. 



In the course of his life, Stephenson must have paid 2,000/. or 

 3,000/. for patent fees. Of course Watt, Trevithick, Sir Mark 

 Brunei, and other great inventors have paid similar sums. Many 

 men have paid such sums, who have not earned anything, and have 

 died in a state of beggary. A special tax of this enormity upon 

 men of genius, it is left to the English government to levy. Other 

 governments, as unprincipled, but not so extortionate, give time 

 for the patentee to earn the money, or levy their tax upon his 

 earnings. 'They too, at least, put the fees into their own coffers; 

 but of the yearly tax of 100,000/. levied <m the mechanical genius 

 of England, very little goes into the Consolidated Fund, but is in- 

 tercepted by the Attoi-nies and Solicitors-General of England and 

 Ireland, the Lord Advocate of Scotland, and a number of ofiicers 

 appointed for the sole purpose of getting incomes out of inven- 

 tors. A more gratuitous system of wickedness and 0|ipression is 

 seldom found out of England: eastern tyrants get paid for their 

 villanies. 



If tlie mischief limited itself to levying a ta.x of thousands 

 upon Watt, Trevithick, and Stephenson, and of hundreds upon 

 smaller men, it would not be so bad; but it is a prohibitive tax, 

 by which the mechanical skill of the country is kept down. There 

 is no profession so heavily or injudiciously taxed as that of the 

 patentee; no ti'ade pays such heavy license dues for its exercise. 

 The attorney pays a heavy stamp duty for a special monopoly, but 

 he can only be once articled; the banker pays only thirty pounds 

 a-year for coining paper money. The attorney and the banker 

 have especial immunities; the mechanical inventor has none, and 

 yet we question whether for utility the priest or the physician can 

 claim a superiority over the inventor, who finds bread for thou- 

 sands, perhaps for hundreds of thousands. 



We are not now about to complain that honours and rewards are 

 not given to patentees, in order to stimulate them, though we have 

 a right to do so; for if the honours and rewards of literature and 

 science are small, yet the professors of either of these get more 

 baronetcies and knighthoods, and figure in greater numbers on the 

 pension list, than patentees do. The list of patentee-pensioners on 

 the civil-list must be very small; and Sir Alark Brunei, Sir Samuel 

 Brown, and Sir Joseph Iluddart, form the meagre list of patentees 

 who have received tlie title of knighthood, and even these rather 

 as civil engineers than as patentees. So little is tlie merit of the 

 patentee valued in this country, that he has no claim to be put on 

 the civil-list pensions, and there is no public subscription to relieve 

 him, his widow, or his orphans. Other workers with tlie brain 

 have their Literary Fund, or their Artists' Fund; even the player 

 receives liberal contributions from the public: Init there is nothing 

 for the patentee, though a Scientific Fund, as it might tie called, 

 is well worthy of public support, and would relieve many deserv- 

 ing persons, who, after spending thousands in the public service, 

 are left penniless. 



The true picture we have painted shows that the position of 

 the patentee is more beset with difficulties than the proverbially 

 poor one of the poet and the painter; but we have not yet done 

 with the career of the working-man who has the good hap to get 

 a patent by the sacrifice of a large part of his property, for a 

 copyright which others get for nothing. He has got this pa- 

 tent to work. 



There are very few inventions, liowcver inconsiderable the object 

 to be efi'ected, which do not require costly machinery; nay, they 

 may entail the outlay of many thousands to produce an article, 

 the sale price of which may be a fartliing, or even less. In many 

 cases the invention can only be cai-ried out by the association of a 

 great number of persons. In very few cases can a patent be 

 worked by licenses granted by the inventor, involving no outlay of 

 capital on his part. 



\l^e have heard it stated by some persons experienced in such 



