ute was paid to Fitch, Fulton, Whitney, and Morse; it was asserted that the prospects before inventors were brightening. He wrote on motors, "the chief levers of civilization"; on the shape of steamboat propellers. He recommended to Congress the offering of prizes by the Government for "new prime movers" and other discoveries; suggested the internal combustion engine; the utilization of atmospheric pressure, gunpowder and the ocean, as sources of energy for "prime movers."

On electric motors his comment in 1849 is prophetic: "The belief is a growing one that electricity in one or more of its manifestations is ordained to effect the mightiest of revolutions in human affairs. Several years ago the discovery of electro-magnetism awakened sanguine expectations that in it would be found a prime mover so compact and energetic as to be adapted to general purposes.

During his first year as Commissioner 1955 applications were filed. The examiners were C. G. Page, W. P. N. Fitzgerald, H. B. Fenwick, and L. D. Gale. In that year four assistant examiners were added to his force; they were J. H. Lane, Samuel Cooper, T. R. Peale, and Thomas J. Everett. He had the uniform experience of Commissioners in the matter of pressure of work owing to insufficient help. The following quotation from the report of Examiner L. D. Gale in 1850 is consoling to his modern successors:

"It might seem singular without explanations, that 643 applications should have been examined by me in 1849 and only 497 in 1850, and I am the more anxious to give this explanation because it illustrates an important principle. It will be remembered that the Hon. Commissioner of Patents toward the close of 1849 expressed great anxiety that the arrears of cases on the desks of examiners should be disposed of if possible at the close of the year. To meet this desire an unusual amount of labor both mental and physical was accomplished by all the examiners on the work before them and most of them brought up the business at the close of the year so that there were but few cases in arrears. But as it generally happens in work done hastily, so it was here. Much of the business had to be reviewed and re-examined and the correspondence growing out of it and the delays resulting from it

showed conclusively that hasty examinations of applications for patents like hasty legislation are productive of great evils and of little or no good."

The beginnings of our present Rules of Practice were published in the Report for 1851. The following headings have a familiar appearance:

For what Patents may be granted.

To whom.

Of applications for patents.
Form of Petition.

Form of Specification.

Form of Oath.

Proceedings during examination.

Results of an examination.

Appeal.

Interfering applications.

Disclaimer.

Re-issue.

Designs.

Commissioner Ewbank advocated the separation of the Patent Office from the Department of the Interior, saying:

There is in the business of the Patent Office nothing congenial with or allied to that which is transacted in the departments, while its very nature is such as to render exterior control often embarrassing. To vest a controlling power over its administration in heads of departments who have no time to devote to it and who from education, habits, profession, and feelings can have little or no active sympathies with interests represented in it or with the class of citizens with whom it has most to do, can hardly prove otherwise than prejudicial.”

In 1851, Examiner's resumés, a theretofore annual feature of the Patent Office Report, were omitted on account of the pressure of business and complaints of partiality in the comparison of inventions patented. This feature was never resumed. In that year the World's Exposition was held at London. The United States Patent Office was represented there and American inventions displayed. A detailed account of this exposition was included in the Report for that year.

Mr. Ewbank's library comprised books on Astrology, Church History, Natural Science, Philosophy, Secret

Cures, Magic, Chemistry, Medicine, Greek and Latin Classics, Agriculture, Gardening, Universal History, Biography, Travels, Technics and Mechanics, Commerce, and Architecture, the collection indicating the wide range of his mental activities. Upwards of 2000 volumes from this library were sold at auction in Washington in 1856. A catalogue of them is preserved in the Library of Congress.

As an author he made a considerable contribution to literature. His first book, "Hydraulics," was published in 1841. "World a Work Shop," appeared in 1855; "Life in Brazil," in 1857; "Thoughts on Matter and Force,' in 1858, and "Reminiscences of the Patent Office," in 1859. To these books are to be added some pamphlets among which are "Indian Relics" and "Inorganic Forces to Supersede Human Slavery," 1860; "The Position of our Species in the Path of its Destiny," 1860; "North American Rock Writing," 1866.

His first published work was the result of a thorough investigation of devices used for raising water from the earliest times including every form of pump. It was abundantly illustrated. The introduction shows the author's motive for writing the book, his judgment of the relative value of human activities recorded in history, and his appreciation of the products of genius in the industrial arts:

"It is a cruel mortification in searching for what is instructive in the history of past times to find the exploits of conquerors, who have desolated the earth, and the freaks of tyrants who have rendered nations unhappy, are recorded with minute and often disgusting accuracy while the discovery of useful arts and the progress of the most beneficial branches of commerce are passed over in silence and suffered to sink into oblivion."

"No fame is more certain or more durable than that which arises from useful inventions."

"Science and the arts are renovating the constitution of society,"

*

"Does an author wish to introduce characters who have left permanent impressions of their genius upon the world? Where can he find them in such variety as in the race of inventors Is he desirous of enriching his pages with singular coincidences, curious facts, sur

prising results, to fascinate his readers and cause them to anticipate the end of his pages with regret? Let him detail the circumstances that led to the conception and accompanied the improvement of those inventions and discoveries that have elevated civilized man above the savage."

Regretting the neglect of the country of his birth in failing to recognize Watt and make him a peer, he says: "An infinitely higher honor awaits him; for Watt is destined to occupy a distinguished station in that Pantheon which is yet to be erected, whose doors will be opened only to the Benefactors of Mankind."

In "Inorganic Forces to Supersede Human Slavery," (1860), the author's faith is shown in the capabilities of inventive genius:

"If the growth of society requires other agents of labor to take the place of human slavery, beyond all controversy, there are such. Whatever that calls for is attainable no matter how novel or startling or even impossible, it might seem. Only make it fairly known and the immense mass of talent, energy, learning and genius slumbering in the great chaos of human society, when quickened by the breath of high occasion, starts up and is ready, to carry to its accomplishment every mortal enterprise."

With reference to slavery he remarks that "Living motors are poorest: insensible ones artificially exerted, the last and the best."

"Life in Brazil" is one of his most interesting books. The preface contains the following reference to his appointment to the office of Commissioner of Patents:

"This volume was in preparation when the late President Taylor honored the writer with an official appointment in Washington: the sheets were then laid aside, but as they relate to matters that are all but unchangeable, there is nothing to regret in the delayed publication."

The trip was started December 2, 1845, from New York. "After a short stay in Philadelphia, we rushed on through Baltimore to Washington, where I spent a day, and left for Richmond. We descended the Potomac in a small steamer some forty miles to Aquia Creek, whence the cars ran us in a few hours to the capital of Virginia."

The following notes on the cost of living at Richmond are interesting: "The market is well supplied and prices are moderate. Beef and mutton are 42 to 6 cents per pound; pork 6 cents; turkeys 75 cents each and ducks the same per pair. Fish average 3 cents per pound." At Richmond the lottery business was evidently at its height. He remarks: 'Lotteries expelled from the Northern States still flourish here.

66

At best, lotteries are crusades against public morals, legislative schemes to convert men to blacklegs-making worthy citizens worthless in every sense. For every lottery gambler enriched, a score have been made insane and a thousand beggared. But inconsistencies and their vindication are natural to men, else these devices for improving public lands by impairing public morals and debauching a people's virtue to endow schools for their children had not been so long tolerated."

In the same work the author characteristically points to a lesson from the Gulf Stream:

"A fine lesson in Mechanical Science might long ago have been learned from it. If the reader has kept up with modern progress of the arts he is aware of a system recently introduced for heating public and private buildings by hot water. It is indeed a fact, and ever will be one, that in every operation of nature, magnificent or minute, simple or complicated, an important invention is anticipated or suggested. There is no valuable device but what may be found in God's Museum of Machines Thus in the warm channels we are rushing through, we behold one of these hot-water circulators by which the coldest latitudes are tempered with heat drawn from the hottest. The furnace and boiler are on the equatorial belt, equidistant from the regions to be warmed. Mains proceed toward the poles, sending out branches as they proceed, and after yielding up their warmth, return circuitously for a fresh supply precisely as do their artificial imitations. The principle of action-the diminished gravity of a fluid or portions of a fluid by heat in both is one. But how different is Nature's mode of carrying it out. She uses no metallic or other stiff tubing as we do, but conveys the hot liquid through channels formed in the cold, the most flexible and lasting and yielding of conduits. The one we are floating in varies in width from 20 to 200 leagues."