Febeuaey 4, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



119 



lamentable one, and one which there is not 

 the slightest justification for leaving unfilled. 

 This has to do with the invention — we use the 

 word though the law denies its propriety — of 

 printed forms for the keeping of accounts or 

 any other purpose. 



It goes without saying that much skill and 

 thought may be expended upon the formula- 

 tion of a set of forms which shall be the last 

 word in furnishing a framework for the proper 

 recording of a certain kind of data. Business 

 of many kinds is dependent upon tabular de- 

 vices of this sort under one head or another; 

 the invention of such a form may be of great 

 value to its users. It would seem that the man 

 who devotes his time and energy and ingenuity 

 to getting up a thing of the sort ought to be 

 rewarded to the same degree and in the same 

 manner as the man who invents a new safety 

 pin or a novel design for a perfumery bottle 

 or a clever trade-mark. But under the law 

 and the decisions as they now stand he is able 

 to get no protection of any description ; you or 

 I or anybody else may manufacture and sell 

 his form in direct competition with him and 

 he has no redress save to undersell us. 



The hitch lies in the fact that the law de- 

 fining invention is so worded that a blank form 

 to be filled in by the user is not an invention. 

 It has no mechanical features, and it is not a 

 process or a product. If the inventor be suffi- 

 ciently ingenious to design it in such fashion 

 that the user has to punch a hole as part of 

 the process of using it, or join two parts of it 

 in a certain predetermined relationship, or 

 fold the left fifth over upon the right fifth and 

 tear them half off and turn one of them over 

 again in order to bring into juxtaposition two 

 parts of the paper that were originally remote, 

 this constitutes the mechanical feature neces- 

 sary to make the form stand up under fire as 

 an " invention " entitled to patent protection. 

 But in the absence of such a feature the patent 

 examiners will have nothing to do with it; 

 and if the unhappy inventor turns to the 

 copyright division, he learns that whether his 

 device is an invention or not, it certainly is no 

 publication and he can not protect it by copy- 



right. Even the feeble solace of a design 

 patent seems denied him. 



The situation has long been familiar to us. 

 We are inspired to comment on it by a sub- 

 scriber who shows us a farmers' account book 

 which he has devised. This is an admirable 

 article, and at the same time it fills a want; 

 for the farmer, never an accountant, is re- 

 quired to keep accounts under penalty of pay- 

 ing an income tax on a lot of income that 

 isn't income. But our subscriber can't adver- 

 tise his little book decently, for if he does 

 some substitute that doesn't have to meet any 

 advertising expense will appear and wipe out 

 his market. We think he has a grievance 

 against the government that tells him that an 

 invention is sometimes an invention and some- 

 times isn't. — Scientific American. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



"The Airplane." By Frederick Bedell, Cor- 

 nell University. D. Van Nostrand Co. 

 Pp. 257. 



The theory of flight has more than kept pace 

 with the development of the airplane. It is 

 possible, on the basis of constants determined 

 in wind tunnels, to predict very closely the 

 performance of an existing airplane or to de- 

 sign a plane for some desired performance. 

 The fundamentals of this theory of flight are 

 embodied in a number of recent treatises and 

 are readily available to the student. In Be- 

 dell's work they are not only available but are 

 presented in so attractive and understandable 

 a form as to compel the interest of the reader. 

 The present reviewer has read the book through 

 twice, for the pleasure of following so mas- 

 terly a presentation. Everything is reduced 

 to its simplest terms; every idea is driven 

 home; the influence of each element is illus- 

 trated by a series of graphs; the whole subject 

 seems to develop itself. It is a book for the 

 amateur, but it is also the best of beginning 

 books for the serious student. And it ex- 

 plains so convincingly many things which are 

 troublesome to the beginner, as for example, 

 why can not speed be increased in level flight 



