affiliated with other technical societies for such mutual benefit as may under the circumstances be possible.

The society is interested in the promoting of mutual acquaintance within the office and with those who have business before it; in the elevating of standards of practice; in the dissemination of information; in the improvement of working conditions, methods and equipment within the office, and in assisting efforts for patent reform, to the end that better patents may thereby be granted.

It is the vision and hope of the founders of the society that it may occupy the place in applied science, invention and industrial progress that other scientific societies have attained in their respective fields. They hope by so doing to increase the service that the Patent Office and patent system is able to render the nation. As a means to this end they desire to do all that comports with a due sense of official propriety to better conditions in the Office both as to business methods and working conditions in complete coöperation with the Secretary of the Interior and the Commissioner of Patents.

The possibilities in the field to which the society has committed itself are large. The objects which it seeks to attain are worthy of the best efforts and the coöperation of those who come in contact with the patent system.

The officers of the society are as follows: President, M. H. Coulston, Vice President, B. N. Morris, Secretary, B. Russell, Treasurer, A. W. Cowles, Members of the Executive Committee, W. F. Avery, N. J. Jewett, J. H. Lightfoot, G. A. Lovett, T. L. Mead, Jr., M. E. Porter, E. D. Sewall, and W. L. Thurber

THOMAS JEFFERSON AND THE PATENT SYSTEM.

By Wm. I. Wyman.

The act of 1790 created the United States patent system. It provided for the filing of a specification and model with the Secretary of State. The patent was granted by a board composed of the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War and the Attorney General, who had discretionary power to allow or refuse the application,

from which action there was no appeal. The act of 1793 suspended the first law and provided a registration system, in which compliance with certain formalities was all that was necessary to obtain the grant. The Secretary of State received the petition therefor, the letters patent being first signed by the President and being approved as to form by the Attorney General. Jefferson was Secretary of State during the entire, but brief, lifetime of the act of 1790. It was also said that he examined personally every application filed during the existence of that act, and he may thus be credited with being the first Commissioner of Patents and the earliest patent examin

er.

Jefferson was probably the most accomplished public man of his time. He had a thorough knowledge of the classics, was completely abreast of contemporaneous scholarship, was intensely interested in scientific thought, and, of course, was an advanced thinker in political and social philosophy. His interests were extremely diverse, but in no department could it be said to be superficial. His grasp of scientific subjects was deep and no advance in the arts and invention escaped his intelligent scrutiny. He was by birth and training an aristocrat, but through feeling and conviction became the world's leading liberal. Without Washington and Franklin it may be questioned whether this country's independence could have been achieved or this government launched successfully, but Jefferson is mostly responsible for the trend political thought has taken in this country; his, more than any other single influence, has given direction and quality to the streams of American public policy. While in France, representing the interests of this country, between 1784 and 1789, he displayed a keen interest in all the advances in the arts and sciences, and his correspondence shows that he was especially alive to the importance of the invention of the steam engine and the impending industrial era that was to follow in its wake. He was remarkably apt in the practical application of mechanical principles, as is shown by the fact that he was the first discoverer of an exact formula for the construction of mould-boards of least resistance for plows. Thus Jefferson was thoroughly equipped, both from the economic and the technical sides, to appreciate and inau

gurate the patent system. Yet, so saturated was he with the principles of republicanism, so suspicious was he of monopoly and any aggrandizement of power, that he was led initially and almost instinctively to oppose the introduction of any system of awards to inventors. But a mind so flexible as his, so receptive to new ideas and so responsive to the value of facts, could not but help bear testimony to the beneficence of patent protection once its virtues were demonstrable. He gave to the duties of examining applications all his knowledge, and all the thought and energy that could possibly be spared from the arduous duties of piloting the ship of state. The effects of the act of 1790 came under his own direct observation. Only a few months after the law was passed he was led to write:

"An act of Congress authorizing the issue of patents for new discoveries has given a spring to invention beyond my conception. Being an instrument in granting the patents, I am acquainted with their discoveries. Many of them indeed are trifling, but there are some of great consequence, which have been proved of practice, and others which, if they stand the same proof, will produce great effect.

While President, in 1807, he wrote to Oliver Evans, famous as an early inventor, as follows:

"Nobody wishes more than I do that ingenuity should receive a liberal encouragement: nobody estimates higher the ability which society has derived from that displayed by yourself: and I assure you with truth, that I shall always be ready to manifest it by every service I can render you."

and in 1813 he wrote anent a patent of Evans which was the subject of considerable controversy, "My wish to see new inventions encouraged, and old ones brought again into useful notice, has made me regret the circumstances which have followed the expiration of his first patent."

Jefferson was apparently the most active member of the first patent board. His correspondence discloses the growth of the practice and the formulation of its principles, and gives a vivid appreciation of their details and effects. He enunciates while in a reminiscent mood cer

tain rules established by the board, such as that neither a mere change of material nor change of form should give title to an invention, and that (to use his own language) "it is the invention of the machine itself, which is to give a patent right, and not the application of it to any particular purpose, of which it is susceptible." These are now among the precepts of accepted practice and could only be uttered by one not merely learned in the law but vitally concerned in the progress of invention and in establishing a firm and philosophical basis for patent procedure.

Jefferson's concern in patent matters is exhibited in much of his correspondence, a particularly interesting example of which is his discussion of the philosophy of patent protection in one of his letters, which almost amounts to a treatise. After laying down what he considers the contribution in a patent to Oliver Evans for an Elevator, Conveyer, etc., he presents among other reasons for the invalidity of the patent the following anticipations in literature:-"Shaw's Travels", "Universal History", "Mortimer's Husbandry", "Ferguson's Mechanics", "Vitruvius" edition by Perrault, Bossuet's "Historie de Mathematiques", Wolf's "Cours de Mathematiques", Desagulier's 'Experimental Philosophy" in Diderot's Encyclopedie, etc., "L'Architecture Hidraulique de Belidor," and Prory's "Architecture Hidraulique."

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This formidable list of citations is a monument of research, a characteristic bit of work, and entitles the first examiner of patents to a place among the first of patent examiners.

THE RELATION OF THE EXAMINER TO THE INVENTOR AND HIS ATTORNEY.

By F. W. H. Clay, Assistant Commissioner.

(Delivered before the fourth assistant examiners.)

Let me first call your attention, gentlemen, to the fact that in your duties in this office you are in a very peculiar position, a very unusual position, which makes it

highly important that you have a correct conception of your proper mental attitude toward your work. In a word, you are in the anomalous position of being both the judge and the attorney for one of the parties in a controversy. You know that it is a fundamental principle of our system of government, that the judicial branch be entirely divorced from the legislative and the executive branches. It has from time immemorial been a settled principle that a judge should be uninterested in either of the parties to the contest. The face is that the patent law, by reason of the peculiar nature of the property with which it deals, is seemingly out of harmony with the democratic theory of government. And yet the condition is inevitable. What I wish most to impress upon you, is that the seeming inconsistent attitude of the examiner is one of seeming only, and that when looked at from the right point of view the interests of the inventor, his attorney, and the examiner are, or should be, substan- · tially one and the same.

Let me try to explain why this is so, and how it results from the nature of the property in inventions. The point will appear from a careful consideration of the reason for the patent law.

The Constitutional provision for patents is one of those pieces of literature like Milton's Paradise Lost, which everybody talks about and nobody reads with sufficient particularity. You will all remember that the Congress is given power to promote the progress of science and the useful arts; and that. the method by which this is to be done is set forth, not by saying directly that invention is to be encouraged, but by providing for it indirectly, saying that inventors are to be secured for a limited time in the exclusive right to their discoveries. A thing that is frequently overlooked is that the whole system has the single and sole object of promoting progress. You must particularly note the word "promote. If I leave but one impression on your minds today I would like that impression to be the thought that promoting progress necessitates a prompt disclosure of the invention, not to the Patent Office, but to the public.

To state it another way, it will not do to merely encourage inventors by securing them in their rights; another thing quite as important-and I think this is the