Journal

OF THE

Patent Office Society

Published monthly by the Patent Office Society Office of Publication 3928 New Hampshire Ave., Washington, D. C. Subscription $2.50 a year Single copy 25 cents

EDITORIAL BOARD.

E. D. Sewall, Chairman, Publicity Committee.

G. P. Tucker, Editor-in-Chief.

J. Boyle.

E. S. Glascock.

W. J. Wesseler

W. I. Wyman.

M. L. Whitney, Business Manager, (Room 57, U. S. Patent Office.) 3928 New Hampshire Ave., Washington, D. C.

N. E. Eccleston, Circulation.

Entered as second class matter. September 17, 1918, at the post office at Washington, D C., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1919, by the Patent Office Society.

Publication of signed articles in this journal is not to be understood as an adoption by the Patent Office Society of the views expressed therein. The editors are glad to have pertinent articles submitted.

VOL. II.

SEPTEMBER, 1919.

EDITORIAL.

No. 1.

"But on the whole' continues our eloquent professor, 'man is a Tool-using Animal. Weak in himself and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest soled, of some half square-foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the Steer of the Meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use Tools, can devise Tools; with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron, as if it were

soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without Tools; without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is all.'"'

Will any challenge the professor's philosophy of human conquests? During the progress of the World's war it was a common thought that the side maintaining the supremacy in tools would be the winner. And in the friendly rivalry of Peace the nation will win that holds the lead in devising and using tools. Nothing has so improved the living conditions of the laborer and artisan, relieved them of the weight of crushing burdens, shortened the hours of labor, raised the standard of intelligence, and increased production for the common benefit, as the invention of new instruments and processes. The most promising outlook today for permanent relief from the high cost of living lies in augmented production through the invention and use of improved instruments and processes. Inasmuch as stimulation of this supreme capability of man depends upon the efficiency of patent systems and the machinery for their administration, there can be no period more timely than the present to make a vigorous attempt to elevate the efficiency of the United States Patent System and Patent Office to the highest possible degree. A realization of the supreme importance in human life of that unique ability to invent, to "devise tools," which has kept the human biped from becoming extinct, or from existing but as a furtive and hunted sharer of the forests with the beasts, has been the instigation of patent systems; and no institution of government is more worthy of thoughtful, cultivating

care.

Commissioner Thomas Ewbank, a sketch of whose life will be found in this number, believed that future inventions would ameliorate many of the hard conditions of human life. He was thought by some to be a visionary; doubtless he was; but his visions were the visions of a prophet, not of a fool.

THOMAS EWBANK,

Commissioner of Patents 1847 to 1852.

BY N. J. BRUMBAUGH.

Thomas Ewbank, third Commissioner of Patents, was born of humble parentage at Durham, England, March 11, 1792. He was apprenticed in boyhood to the trade of sheet metal working; and from 1812 to 1817 was employed as a tinsmith in London.

Of studious inclination the young tinsmith collected books and utilized his leisure in study and reading. His studies and observations led to the conviction that monarchical institutions did not permit men to achieve the measure of usefulness to each other of which they were capable. Seeing that God had made available incalculable stores of materials and forces, which those who can may use, he conceived that one of the noblest purposes to which man could supply his intellect was to discover those forces and materials and learn how to use them; that man should be free to study in God's great laboratory, undeterred by the ambitions and selfishness of classes with whose wars and oppressions past history was largely concerned. So, in 1819, he emigrated to the great western republic where, he felt, the individual had greater opportunity to develop.

After arrival in New York, Ewbank engaged in the manufacture of copper tubing, continuing in this industry until 1836. For a few years thereafter, having accumulated a modest competency from the business of tube making, he devoted his entire attention to travel, to science, literature, the history of invention, and speculations respecting its future development.

In 1845-1848 he visited South America, not merely as a pleasure seeking traveler, but with a mind alert to the lessons to be learned from a wider experience of natural phenomena and the industrial arts of remote races. He returned with a collection of objects from Brazil that became widely known as the Ewbank collection. The lessons of this voyage were subsequently published in a

volume entitled "Life in Brazil: A Journal of a Visit to the Land of the Cocoa and the Palm."

In 1849 President Taylor appointed him Commissioner of Patents. He assumed office under Secretary Thomas Ewing, May 4, 1849, and retained it until November 1, 1852. The Commissioner's long study of, and interest in, inventions and inventors is reflected in his reports. Immediately after assuming office he undertook with vast enthusiasm to promulgate his ideas upon invention. The first report issued by him contained, in addition to the interesting reviews by examiners, customary at that time, long enthusiastic essays upon his favorite theme. This report interested Horace Greeley, the famous editor of the New York Tribune, to such an extent that he wrote an introduction to it. At that time agricultural reports were collected by the Commissioner of Patents and constituted part II of the Patent Office Report. The agricultural part of the Report was the most popular publication ever issued by the Government up to that time, and Congress was annually called upon to print extra copies. During a debate in the Senate in 1850 on a bill to print 150,000 additional copies of the agricultural part of the Report, Senator Foote, of Mississippi, having perceived the introduction by Greeley, bitterly opposed the bill, saying that the very fact that Greeley was employed to write the introduction was sufficient to damn the work with him; that anything with which that "socialist, fanatic and abolitionist" was connected was utterly worthless in his estimation. Senator Foote also said that he distrusted the judgment of the Commissioner, regarding him as among the most visionary of men. He consumed considerable of the Senate's time reading and holding up to ridicule some rather grandiloquent passages of the Commissioner regarding, as the Senator said, "the origin of man and other animals, more poetically grand, more brilliant, more fanciful, more Byronic than any of the most fanciful poems that Lord Byron ever produced."

At the beginning of his administration the new Commissioner addressed letters to the governors of all the States requesting them to send to the Patent Office any historical data of early inventions preserved in State archives. This request brought forth some very interesting history of the industrial arts. Connecticut reported

having granted to one Samuel Higley, in May, 1728, an "exclusive right of practicing the business or trade of steel making," New York reported a warmly contested priority controversy between John Fitch and James Rumsey over the invention of the steamboat. On this contest William Thornton, the first superintendent of the Patent Office, contributed a paper written in 1810 (embodied in the Patent Office Report for 1850), entitled “A short account of the origin of steamboats," in which he supported the claim of John Fitch to priority in this epoch-making invention.

Mr. Ewbank was keen to utilize the Patent Office Report to arouse popular interest and enthusiasm in the industrial application of physical and chemical science. He gathered communications from persons in every part of the country regarding the infancy of various industries; such as dyeing, spinning, weaving, type founding, paper making, pin making and others. Historical notices of inventors and of early machinery, American and other were inserted. He described, for example, the saw mill and included an interesting print, published in 1650 of a water power mill. The following tribute to the saw mill is characteristic of his enthusiastic appreciation of invention:

"Whoever thinks of what this instrument has done for society-of the value of its services from the times of colonial struggles to those of independence and of empire! How few call to mind the part it now plays and the impetus it imparts in every upward movement! An invention almost contemporaneous with the infancy of civilization, it is among the favored few that in one form or another are ordained to accompany man throughout his destined career.

"The axe produces the log hut but not until the saw mill is introduced do framed dwellings and villages arise; it is civilization's pioneer machine, the precursor of the carpenter, wheel right and turner, the painter, the joiner and legions of other professions. Progress is unknown where it is not."

In the first report (the one ridiculed by Senator Foote), he wrote on the origin and progress of invention, the advent of the arts to primitive man. "A world without inventors would consist only of forest and swamp." Trib