ExuiBiTioy Addresses. 185 



ADDRESS OF THE HON. SAMUEL S. FISHER, 



OF WASHINGTON, 



United Statjes Commissioner of Patents, at the Thirty-eighth 

 Annual Exhibition. 



Ladies and Gentlemen. — I left Washington with no other object 

 tlian to visit this exhibition, and extend the right hand of fellowship 

 to those who are endeavoring to secure its success. I had no thought 

 of speaking to you, and should have been glad if the managers had 

 been willing to accept the seeing of the eye for the hearing of tha ear. 

 I bring you, therefore, no well-considered oration, but desire only to 

 offer a few plain words of greeting, and a thought which it has occur- 

 red to me, this may be the proper time and place to express. Among 

 the earliest reminiscences of my boyhood, are the fairs of the Ameri- 

 can Institute, which were held many years ago — so many that I fear 

 to count them — in Niblo's and Castle Gardens. Of details I remember 

 very little, except that there were models of ships and steamboats, 

 and that two or three boys lost their fingers by injudiciously turning 

 the horse-powxrs, and that everything wound up with fireworks, and 

 a grand flight of rockets by Mr. Edge, of pyrotechnic fame. Once, 

 indeed, at Castle Garden, I believe, the closing exercises were varied 

 by omitting the fireworks, and substituting the bombardment of the 

 Castle of San Juan D'Ulloa by the French, which mimic seige we 

 converted into real earnest in a few years thereafter. From the char- 

 acter of these recollections you will see that I must have been very 

 young indeed. One thing, however, was noticeable, even by my young 

 eyes, and may be noticed now — that nearly every article in the fair 

 bore upon it the imprint of that magic adjective, " patented." Those 

 were the days just after the passage of the great patent act of 1836, 

 which established w4iat is now the distinctively American system in 

 regard to the grant of letters patent, and yet already the patent 

 office had become a power in the land, and was sheltering under its 

 wiuffs the little brood of new fledijed American inventions. I have 



