Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? Okay? So to really understand this episode, you
Speaker 1: should really listen to yesterday's episode and get up the speed.
Speaker 1: But justin brief to cover what I talked about yesterday,
Speaker 1: I explained what patents are for, and I gave a
Speaker 1: short explanation of how patents and patent law got started
Speaker 1: in the United States, keeping in mind that other countries
Speaker 1: had already had their own patent laws at that time.
Speaker 1: It's not like the United States invented patent law. And
Speaker 1: I talked about how in seventeen ninety the young government
Speaker 1: of the young United States established patent law, which initially
Speaker 1: was incredibly strict, and then it did a one to
Speaker 1: eighty and became the opposite. I mean, like, the first
Speaker 1: year of issuing patents, the US only granted three patents total,
Speaker 1: and then in seventeen ninety three, a big revision to
Speaker 1: the law meant that the office was technically supposed to
Speaker 1: approve any and all patents as long as they had
Speaker 1: the proper application fee, So just from one extreme to
Speaker 1: the other. I concluded yesterday's episode by talking about the
Speaker 1: first superintendent of the US Patent Office, a doctor named
Speaker 1: William Thornton, and now we're going to pick up with
Speaker 1: his successor, Thomas Jones, another physician. So Jones changed how
Speaker 1: some things worked at the Patent Office, including a change
Speaker 1: that carries through to modern patents today, that being that
Speaker 1: he started the specification of the invention was allowed to
Speaker 1: reference the accompanying sketches of that invention. It's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to even imagine that there was a time where
Speaker 1: this wasn't a case where you would have a sketch
Speaker 1: and or a model, almost definitely a model, but probably
Speaker 1: a sketch too, and a set of specifications, but they
Speaker 1: didn't reference one another. That changed with Jones's tenure as superintendent.
Speaker 1: If you read over a modern patent, you'll often see
Speaker 1: that there will be a sketch that's frequently labeled with
Speaker 1: several parts that are called out like part A or
Speaker 1: Part B or sometimes their numbered or whatever, and then
Speaker 1: the actual specification will reference those parts and explain how
Speaker 1: they work within the grander functionality of the invention. So Jones,
Speaker 1: like doctor Thornton before m felt that patent applications definitely
Speaker 1: needed to meet a threshold of usefulness and inventiveness. So
Speaker 1: both of them had expressed concern that stripping that power
Speaker 1: away from the Patent Office meant that folks with file
Speaker 1: patents for stuff that was already in existence or that
Speaker 1: they just plane didn't work. So both Jones and Thornton
Speaker 1: ignored that revision to the patent law that dated back
Speaker 1: to seventeen ninety three, that bit saying hey, you don't
Speaker 1: have the right to reject patents. They both said, you
Speaker 1: know what, I kind of do. I know the government
Speaker 1: says I don't, but I disagree with that. So they
Speaker 1: took a much harder stance on pattens that you know,
Speaker 1: either failed to describe a new invention or were deemed
Speaker 1: to not meet the threshold of usefulness or both. William Elliott,
Speaker 1: who was doctor Thornton's chief assistant, he had felt that
Speaker 1: he should have been promoted to superintendent and he was
Speaker 1: deeply upset when it's instead went to Thomas Jones. So
Speaker 1: he then accused Jones of having opened all the mail
Speaker 1: that was being sent to the Patent office himself Now
Speaker 1: you might say, well, what's the big deal with that,
Speaker 1: Why shouldn't the superintendent open the mail that's sent to
Speaker 1: the patent Office. Well, according to Elliott, his accusation was
Speaker 1: that sometimes people would stuff application envelopes with filthy lucre.
Speaker 1: That is, you know, they would put cash in their
Speaker 1: application in an effort to grease the wheels of bureaucracy. Essentially,
Speaker 1: they would include a bribe with their application. So Elliot
Speaker 1: said that before Thomas Jones took over as superintendent, the
Speaker 1: Patent Office had it as a matter of fact that
Speaker 1: any money that was sent in this way would be
Speaker 1: returned to Cinder and that way you avoid impropriety, right,
Speaker 1: you're not taking bribes. But since Thomas Jones was demanding
Speaker 1: that he be allowed to open all the mail personally,
Speaker 1: the implication was that he was possibly pocketing this money,
Speaker 1: that he was essentially taking bribes. Now, whether that accusation
Speaker 1: had any merit or not, or whether the fact that
Speaker 1: Jones had a dispute with Elliott because his sons were
Speaker 1: running a business out of the Patent office. One of
Speaker 1: Elliott's sons was a freelance draftsman and was working out
Speaker 1: of the Patent office. And so there's the possibility that
Speaker 1: the Thomas Jones was having words with his chief clerk
Speaker 1: because he felt it was inappropriate for the clerk's sons
Speaker 1: to be able to run a business out of the
Speaker 1: patent office. That's not what the patent office was for.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if that's the reason why this
Speaker 1: all blew up. I do know that ultimately Thomas Jones
Speaker 1: received a reassignment. He moved on to work in a
Speaker 1: different office within the US government. However, William Elliott didn't
Speaker 1: like get to do a victory lap because he was
Speaker 1: also told he had to vacate his position. However, his
Speaker 1: son was able to retain his freelance draftsman job at
Speaker 1: the Patent Office. That son was named William Parker Elliot.
Speaker 1: So he had William Elliott and William Parker Elliott. And
Speaker 1: as a draftsman, he would work with inventors to create
Speaker 1: the sketches of their invention as part of their patent application,
Speaker 1: and he would charge the inventors a fee for doing this.
Speaker 1: So that was how he was making his living as
Speaker 1: part of this process for patents. He'll figure more in
Speaker 1: our tail as we continue this journey through the history
Speaker 1: of the Patent Office, which, y'all, if you read over
Speaker 1: histories of the patent office, it sounds like it would
Speaker 1: be the most boring thing in the world, right, But
Speaker 1: as you read about these interpersonal conflicts, you start to think, like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is more Game of Thrones than I expected it
Speaker 1: to be. Well, anyway, our next superintendent was John D. Craig.
Speaker 1: He would serve as the superintendent from eighteen twenty nine
Speaker 1: to eighteen thirty five. Craig was, let's call him a
Speaker 1: divisive figure. So, according to historian Kenneth Dobbins, Craig was
Speaker 1: quote arrogant, subject to rages, disagreeable to patent applicants and
Speaker 1: their agents, and a domineering tyrant towards the subordinate employees
Speaker 1: of the Patent Office end quote. So Craig inherited an
Speaker 1: office that was really short on cash, Like according to
Speaker 1: Craigzone calculations, the Patent Office was short to the tune
Speaker 1: of around four thousand dollars. And keep in mind, this
Speaker 1: is eighteen twenty nine. He suspected hanky and or panky
Speaker 1: had been going on, but he didn't find any evidence
Speaker 1: of it, Like he thought maybe one of his predecessors
Speaker 1: perhaps doctor Thornton had been embezzling money from the Patent Office,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't find any evidence supporting that hypothesis. Now,
Speaker 1: it's also true that during his tenure, when doctor Thornton
Speaker 1: was the first Superintendent, he would often request that Congress
Speaker 1: increase funding to the Patent Office, but Congress kind of
Speaker 1: ignored him for the most part. This would become something
Speaker 1: of a time honored tradition for many years. The Patent
Speaker 1: Office would argue it needed more funding, and no one
Speaker 1: would seem to care that much at that point. So
Speaker 1: Craig had a different approach to granting patents than Thornton
Speaker 1: and Jones did. So his predecessors had felt like a
Speaker 1: patent review was a vital part of the process that
Speaker 1: it really needed to happen. Craig felt the most important
Speaker 1: part was that the applicant paid their application fee, and
Speaker 1: if that happened, well, then we're good to go. It
Speaker 1: just you know, stamp approved on those patent applications if
Speaker 1: the fee comes in. So Craig wasn't so fussed about
Speaker 1: patent specifications and rarely, if ever, even bothered to read them.
Speaker 1: According to contemporary reports, he was adhering to that change
Speaker 1: in patent law, the one that dated all the way
Speaker 1: back to seventeen ninety three. And if any disputes arose
Speaker 1: due to a patent being say a copy of another
Speaker 1: invention that had already received a patent, or any other
Speaker 1: problem like that, well that was a matter for the courts.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a matter for the patent office. So he
Speaker 1: was like, Nope, we're going to follow the law and
Speaker 1: get all those fees and not worry whether or not
Speaker 1: the thing where granting a patent for actually works or
Speaker 1: if it's new. He did, however, find the lack of
Speaker 1: organization in the office appalling, so he created a system
Speaker 1: in which he classified inventions according to subject matter, specifically
Speaker 1: for all the models of the invention, so like models
Speaker 1: that were designed to do things like farm work would
Speaker 1: be grouped together that sort of thing. So he did
Speaker 1: bring a certain kind of organization system to the patent process. Remember,
Speaker 1: at this stage, the patents that were being granted and
Speaker 1: the applications that were being submitted, none of them were
Speaker 1: being numbered. There was no numbering system with patents at
Speaker 1: this point, so as they were starting to mount up
Speaker 1: in the thousands, it was getting more and more difficult
Speaker 1: to keep everything sorted and organized. In a little bit
Speaker 1: of foreshadowing, Craig also sought a sizeable grant for the
Speaker 1: office for the purposes of constructing a fireproof building into
Speaker 1: which the Patent Office would then move, because he said,
Speaker 1: you know, it would be disastrous if there were a fire,
Speaker 1: because we have all these models and stuff. We don't
Speaker 1: have copies of these patents. It would be a huge loss.
Speaker 1: So Congress surprisingly actually voted to fund the project. But
Speaker 1: before that could happen, Before the building could be built,
Speaker 1: Craig found himself at the center of an investigation. An
Speaker 1: employee at the Patent Office had argued that Craig was
Speaker 1: ill suited for his position and that he should be
Speaker 1: dismissed from it. That employee was the son of William Elliott,
Speaker 1: also named William Elliott. You know William Parker Elliott. So
Speaker 1: why did Billy junior take aim at Craig? Well, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, Elliot the younger was a freelance draftsman
Speaker 1: for the Patent Office, and Craig had ended up hiring
Speaker 1: one of his former students. He had been a teacher
Speaker 1: in the past, and one of the students had become
Speaker 1: a draftsman. So Craig hired this former student to come
Speaker 1: and work at the Patent Office as essentially another freelance draftsman.
Speaker 1: But that meant that this student was a compet editor
Speaker 1: to Elliott Junior, and so, like his father before him,
Speaker 1: Elliot the second filed a complaint against his boss and
Speaker 1: it worked so allegedly, President Andrew Jackson himself signed the
Speaker 1: dismissal papers in eighteen thirty five and JD. Craig had
Speaker 1: to leave as Superintendent of the Patent Office. The Elliots
Speaker 1: continued in their role as kingmakers, or at the very least,
Speaker 1: as superintendent destroyers. Okay, we're going to take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsors and we'll pick up with
Speaker 1: the next Superintendent of the Patent Office. Okay, So JD.
Speaker 1: Craig is out. He's been dismissed from his position as
Speaker 1: Superintendent of the Patent Office. So who next leads the office?
Speaker 1: That would be James Chamberlain Picket. What a fantastic name.
Speaker 1: He was a veteran of the War of eighteen twelve
Speaker 1: and he would become the penultimate superintendent for the Patent
Speaker 1: Office in February of eighteen thirty five, but he only
Speaker 1: stuck around for three months. He was not the superintendent
Speaker 1: for very long at all. He actually resigned his position
Speaker 1: because an opportunity opened up in the Department of Treasury
Speaker 1: and he thought that looks like it's better worked for me.
Speaker 1: So I don't have very much to say about him
Speaker 1: as leader of the Office because he wasn't around very
Speaker 1: long in that capacity. But then we get to our
Speaker 1: final superintendent of the US Patent Office, a guy named
Speaker 1: Henry L. Ellsworth, another great name. He was said to
Speaker 1: be methodical and meticulous. He whipped the office into shape
Speaker 1: where there had been chaos. He instituted order, and he
Speaker 1: would serve as superintendent until eighteen thirty six. But he
Speaker 1: remained the leader of the Patent Office until eighteen forty five.
Speaker 1: So how is that possible? How could he be superintendent
Speaker 1: until eighteen thirty six but lead the office till eighteen
Speaker 1: forty five. Well, it's because in eighteen thirty six, the
Speaker 1: US government changed its approach to patent law again. Actually,
Speaker 1: this time, the government essentially scrapped all existing patent law
Speaker 1: and started over. So once more, clerks had the legal
Speaker 1: authority to screen patent applications, and to deny applications that
Speaker 1: were for an obvious invention or a copy of something
Speaker 1: that already existed, or otherwise failed to qualify for a patent.
Speaker 1: Since seventeen ninety three, they technically didn't have the right
Speaker 1: to do that. Eighteen thirty six they get the right
Speaker 1: to do it again. The length of protection for a
Speaker 1: patent expanded from fourteen years to twenty one years at
Speaker 1: that point. Now, this would change several times over the years.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go over every single change of
Speaker 1: patent law. That would just be exhausting and and not
Speaker 1: really that interesting. I will say that currently patent law
Speaker 1: allows for twenty years of protection from the date that
Speaker 1: the patent is issued, and then you are also able
Speaker 1: to file for an extension of up to five more years. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the eighteen thirty six Act officially established a Patent Office
Speaker 1: as a division of the State Department. No longer would
Speaker 1: there be a superintendent in charge. Instead, the head of
Speaker 1: the Patent Office would now hold the title of commissioner.
Speaker 1: So you might say, well, that's a kind of fine point.
Speaker 1: But it's true that Ellsworth was the last superintendent, but
Speaker 1: he was also the first Commissioner of the Patent Office,
Speaker 1: because the title changed while he was holding that position,
Speaker 1: and he took his duties really seriously. One of those
Speaker 1: was that for all new incoming patents, the office would
Speaker 1: assign a number to that patent. Finally, we get to
Speaker 1: patent numbering, where we actually can see the chronological sequence
Speaker 1: of patents that were granted. The very first patent, in
Speaker 1: case you're curious, Patent number one was for a new
Speaker 1: design for locomotive wheels, as filed by one John Ruggles.
Speaker 1: The changes to patent law happened in the summer of
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty six, but it was the winter of eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty six where we would see another massive change happen
Speaker 1: to patents, this time not because of legislative maneuvers, but
Speaker 1: because of a disaster. So on December fifteenth, eighteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario for the Patent Office happened. There
Speaker 1: was a fire in the Patent Office, and it was
Speaker 1: a massive fire that essentially wiped out all the patents,
Speaker 1: the models, and the drafts that had been made since
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety. Now at this time, the Patent Office occupied
Speaker 1: US section of the Blodget Hotel, which also had a
Speaker 1: couple of other tenants in it. Right, you had the
Speaker 1: US post Office. But ironically, the other big organization that
Speaker 1: had a space in the Blodget Hotel was a fire department.
Speaker 1: And as Steve Martin would say in the documentary Roxanne,
Speaker 1: we're supposed to be putting them out, But seriously, the
Speaker 1: cause of the fire was due to a really dumb
Speaker 1: practice that the US Post Office workers were following. All right,
Speaker 1: so let's set the scene. It's December, it's Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: Things can get really cold. So to keep warm, some
Speaker 1: of the offices had wood burning stoves where you would,
Speaker 1: you know, put some wood in the stove and burn
Speaker 1: it in order to generate heat and keep the office comfortable.
Speaker 1: So at the end of the workday, the Postal Office
Speaker 1: workers would collect the ashes from their wood stove and
Speaker 1: then they would bring those ashes down into the basement
Speaker 1: and they would store them in a box at the
Speaker 1: basement of the hotel. And the box was made out
Speaker 1: of wood. And I think you can probably see where
Speaker 1: this is going. So on that night in December of
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty six, the ashes that they dumped in this
Speaker 1: wooden box were still hot. There still had some coals
Speaker 1: inside those ashes, those coals ultimately set fire to the
Speaker 1: wooden box, and the wooden box happened to be right
Speaker 1: next to the post offices supply of firewood in the
Speaker 1: basement really convenient, right. So the fire grew and in
Speaker 1: the wee hours of the morning, people began to notice
Speaker 1: that something was a miss at the Blodget Hotel. As
Speaker 1: for the fire department, it had equipment, but it didn't
Speaker 1: have any firefighters because the firefighter force was a volunteer
Speaker 1: force and for reasons I'm not aware of, I'd need
Speaker 1: to look into it further, but apparently early they had
Speaker 1: faced such a discouraging experience that they disbanded, so there
Speaker 1: was no actual firefighting force in that fire department. So
Speaker 1: the fire ended up spreading mainly to the areas that
Speaker 1: were inhabited by the Patent Office, and they destroyed thousands
Speaker 1: of documents and models and sketches. The Post Office actually
Speaker 1: got off pretty lightly. Their documents were in a separate
Speaker 1: section of the Blodget Hotel, and so Post Office workers
Speaker 1: were actually able to get in there and rescue important
Speaker 1: stuff from the Post Office before the flames could spread there. Now,
Speaker 1: early on, some folks suspected that the fire was actually arson,
Speaker 1: that someone had said it on purpose, and the reason
Speaker 1: was that the US government was currently in the middle
Speaker 1: of an investigation into the Post Office itself. There were
Speaker 1: various charges of corruption that were playing out with the
Speaker 1: US Post Office, so rumors began to spread that may
Speaker 1: this was actually an effort to remove evidence by burning it,
Speaker 1: that someone working at the Post Office, perhaps a leader,
Speaker 1: had decided to try and do this in an effort
Speaker 1: to confound the investigation. But since the actual fire ended
Speaker 1: up impacting the Patent Office but not really the Post Office,
Speaker 1: that hypothesis was ultimately rejected, and later investigations showed it
Speaker 1: was more likely this carelessness and bad practice of storing
Speaker 1: ashes in a wooden box in the basement that actually
Speaker 1: led to the fire, not intentional arson. Now, former Superintendent
Speaker 1: Craig's requests to build a flame resistant Patent office really
Speaker 1: became a top priority. If you remember JD. Craig had,
Speaker 1: while he had some really controversial opinions about patents and
Speaker 1: it was apparently a terrible boss, he did really believe
Speaker 1: that the Patent Office needed to move into a more
Speaker 1: fire resistant building, and so he had petitioned Congress to
Speaker 1: fund that, and in fact Congress did, but it would
Speaker 1: take a while for that to get built. Most of
Speaker 1: the old patents that had been stored in the Blodget
Speaker 1: hotel were lost, and that would also prompt changes to
Speaker 1: how the Patent Office would store patent sentiment that the
Speaker 1: office would require copies of patents to protect against another
Speaker 1: catastrophic loss in the future, so that you're not storing
Speaker 1: the one and only copy of a patent in a
Speaker 1: single place. It's a bit hard to believe that no
Speaker 1: one bothered with copies up to that point, but I
Speaker 1: guess until there's a disaster, there's not much incentive to
Speaker 1: protect yourself. Also, making a copy was not the easiest
Speaker 1: thing in the world necessarily at the time, so it
Speaker 1: could be a pretty time consuming process if you don't
Speaker 1: have access to the like a printing press or something,
Speaker 1: and so maybe that was part of it as well. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the Office was able to restore around two thy eight
Speaker 1: hundred old patents, designating them with a number that was
Speaker 1: preceded by the letter X. This distinguished them from new
Speaker 1: patents that were being filed with the office under the
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty six Revised Law, so we do have a
Speaker 1: record of some of the patents between seventeen ninety and
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty six, and like I said, they're designated as
Speaker 1: X and then a number. But again it's just a
Speaker 1: fraction of all the patents that were received by the
Speaker 1: office leading up to eighteen thirty six. I think there
Speaker 1: was something like more than ten thousand patents total, so
Speaker 1: you know, between a fifth and a fourth of them
Speaker 1: survived and all the rest were destroyed. By the way,
Speaker 1: the office was actually able to restore patents mostly by
Speaker 1: talking to the inventors or patent holders who had filed
Speaker 1: for the patent in the first place, to to recreate
Speaker 1: their initial patent and their sketches and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: They had to remake them, so it wasn't like there
Speaker 1: was just a copy hanging around for most of these.
Speaker 1: It would take four years before the Patent Office's new
Speaker 1: digs would actually be ready. Most of the new building
Speaker 1: was made of stone and marble, and it was thought
Speaker 1: to be far safer than the Blodget Hotel had been,
Speaker 1: at least with regard to fires, and for nearly four
Speaker 1: decades it served as a decent but not perfect place
Speaker 1: for the Patent Office. As I mentioned, you know, the
Speaker 1: early practice with patents was that inventors were to include
Speaker 1: a model of their invention if possible, and models take
Speaker 1: up a lot of space. So it wasn't a perfect
Speaker 1: place for the Patent office because there was no such
Speaker 1: thing as an office that was accepting models, physical models.
Speaker 1: It took up a lot of space. They would rapidly
Speaker 1: start to run out of storage space and they would
Speaker 1: have to request things like an extension to the building
Speaker 1: or something along those lines. So if you review the
Speaker 1: work of the commissioners who held the office from say
Speaker 1: eighteen forty onward to like eighteen seventy seven, you see
Speaker 1: a lot of requests for new construction work so that
Speaker 1: they can have more space to store things like models.
Speaker 1: But things would change in eighteen seventy seven. The office
Speaker 1: made sure to make copies of stuff. With the introduction
Speaker 1: of photography, that included actually making photographs of the models.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously, it's a much harder thing to make
Speaker 1: a copy of a model than it is a copy
Speaker 1: of a document, so photographs are largely used as instead
Speaker 1: of creating a copy. Obviously, if you made a copy
Speaker 1: of every single model, well now you've just doubled the
Speaker 1: challenge of storing everything, so they would photograph the models
Speaker 1: rather than ask for a replica of a model. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they really changed their approach and made sure they had
Speaker 1: copies stored in different places, so that should something like
Speaker 1: this happen again, it would not result in as big
Speaker 1: a disaster as the eighteen thirty six fire did. And
Speaker 1: this sets us up for the second big fire, which
Speaker 1: would happen on September twenty fourth, eighteen seventy seven. We're
Speaker 1: coming up to the anniversary of that major fire of
Speaker 1: the US Post Office, the second major fire. Before we
Speaker 1: get into any of that, let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsors. Okay, we're back. So obviously, between
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty six and eighteen seventy seven, there were a
Speaker 1: ton of different commissioners who led the Patent Office. Most
Speaker 1: of them only held the position for like a couple
Speaker 1: of years at most. But in eighteen seventy seven, the
Speaker 1: Commissi was a guy named Ellis Spear. He was a
Speaker 1: veteran of the Civil War on the Union side, I
Speaker 1: should add he had also been a farmer, and he
Speaker 1: loved classical literature. He had joined the Patent Office in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five, right after the end of the Civil War,
Speaker 1: and by eighteen seventy seven he found himself promoted to commissioner.
Speaker 1: And while his time as leader overall has sort of
Speaker 1: a positive aspect to it, the eighteen seventy seven fire
Speaker 1: is an obvious exception to that. Right, it's not that
Speaker 1: it was his fault, but that was a big, expensive catastrophe.
Speaker 1: So the fire seemingly started in the room that they
Speaker 1: were using to store the models. How it got started
Speaker 1: remains a mystery, so there are various hypotheses suggesting how
Speaker 1: the fire might have started. One suggests that some chemicals
Speaker 1: that were being stored in that room perhaps created really
Speaker 1: flamm fumes, and maybe there was even a case of
Speaker 1: spontaneous combustion, which is possible that can happen. Others suggested
Speaker 1: that maybe one of the models had like a lens,
Speaker 1: an optical lens that perhaps focused some sunlight onto a
Speaker 1: flammable surface, and that's how the fire got started. So
Speaker 1: essentially like having a magnifying lens position just right so
Speaker 1: that when sunlight is coming through, uh, it's focused on
Speaker 1: a point that heats up and then bursts into flame.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's how it happened. Others said that, well, it
Speaker 1: was probably closer to what happened in eighteen thirty six.
Speaker 1: That maybe it was that the day was unseasonably chilly,
Speaker 1: because again this happened in September, not in December, and
Speaker 1: that because it was unseasonably chilly, some office workers, you know,
Speaker 1: set a fire in their office, like a in a
Speaker 1: grate in order to keep the heat up, and that
Speaker 1: this ended up creating barks that set the fire. It's
Speaker 1: hard to say what it was. No one really knows,
Speaker 1: but whatever the cause, the fire quickly engulfed those models.
Speaker 1: Among them was a model of Eli Whitney's cotton Gin,
Speaker 1: the only model that was produced for that patent, and
Speaker 1: that was completely destroyed by the fire. The fire claimed
Speaker 1: far more individual pieces than the fire that happened in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty six because there had been more than forty
Speaker 1: years of additional patents granted since then. So while the
Speaker 1: fire didn't destroy the whole building or anything like that,
Speaker 1: there had been a lot of patents granted between eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty six and eighteen seventy seven. I mean, the pace
Speaker 1: of innovation had picked up considerably as the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: went on. All told. Estimates put the fire's tally at
Speaker 1: consuming around eighty thousand models and six hundred thousand drawings
Speaker 1: attached to patent applications. But and this is a key element,
Speaker 1: no patents were completely lost, not a single one. There
Speaker 1: were some partial losses, but nothing was lost completely. So
Speaker 1: that meant the new processes were protecting those patents. The
Speaker 1: patent office did not find itself starting from nothing. Again,
Speaker 1: the preventive measures actually worked. The copies helped mitigate some
Speaker 1: of the problems that would follow. So back in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, when all of those patents were destroyed, it
Speaker 1: meant that inventors, patent holders and their lawyers were able
Speaker 1: to argue that no, really they held the rights to
Speaker 1: a particular invention. And because the patents were gone, there
Speaker 1: was nothing to refer to, right. You couldn't go and
Speaker 1: see like, oh, did you actually file that patent because
Speaker 1: the patents didn't exist, So people could make false claims left,
Speaker 1: right and center, and people with the real claim found
Speaker 1: themselves fighting for their rights court, but they lacked the
Speaker 1: documentation to show that they actually had the authority to
Speaker 1: make that claim. So it was a really messy legal situation.
Speaker 1: A similar thing happened in eighteen seventy seven, but the
Speaker 1: copies and documentation were able to mitigate that a bit,
Speaker 1: not totally, but a little bit. The monetary cost of
Speaker 1: the eighteen seventy seven fire was by far much greater
Speaker 1: than the one that happened in eighteen thirty six. However,
Speaker 1: the fact that the office lost none of the patents
Speaker 1: was a huge deal. So one change that ended up
Speaker 1: being the result of this fire is that the Patent
Speaker 1: Office deemed it was no longer necessary for inventors to
Speaker 1: include a model of their invention with their patent application.
Speaker 1: So until eighteen seventy seven that had still been the custom,
Speaker 1: but the challenges of storing and caring for the models
Speaker 1: had just become too great as more applications were pouring
Speaker 1: in from inventors in the United States, so the Patent
Speaker 1: Office would no longer accept models of inventions from eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven on. That's understandable, it's also kind of a bummer.
Speaker 1: It also meant that sometimes it was difficult to determine
Speaker 1: if a particular invention would work or not. Like with
Speaker 1: a model, you could at least take a slightly more
Speaker 1: educated guess as to whether or not the underlying functions
Speaker 1: of the invention would work without the model. When you're
Speaker 1: just looking at a two dimensional sketch and then a
Speaker 1: list of specifications, it's a little more challenging. As I've
Speaker 1: mentioned in this show, patent law has changed a few
Speaker 1: times since the nineteenth century, but the intent largely remains
Speaker 1: the same. It's meant to provide protection and incentive for inventors,
Speaker 1: and in return, inventors share their work so that future
Speaker 1: generations can continue to benefit from their innovation and then
Speaker 1: build upon it further. And while it doesn't always work
Speaker 1: out that way, and issues like patent trolls can still
Speaker 1: become a real headache, in general, I think it's been
Speaker 1: a pretty good idea. Someone should probably patent it now.
Speaker 1: Before I sign off, I want to remind y'all that
Speaker 1: I'm going to be at this year's iHeartRadio Music Festival
Speaker 1: at the House of Music that's happening this weekend on
Speaker 1: Friday and Saturday. I'll be recording in the iHeart Podcasts
Speaker 1: Studio powered by Bose. Come by on Friday at six
Speaker 1: pm to the Free House of Music outside T Mobile Arena.
Speaker 1: I will see you there and you can look out
Speaker 1: for my episode that I record there next week. It
Speaker 1: should be live on Monday. Also to remind you of
Speaker 1: what the House of Music actually is. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to see this in person. I've been reading about it
Speaker 1: and I'm really intrigued. So it's a selection of interactive
Speaker 1: exhibits and these experiences that are in the House of
Speaker 1: Music are modeled after some of the artists that are
Speaker 1: performing at the Music Festival, and they include people like
Speaker 1: Kelly Clarkson on one side and Public Enemy on the other.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a big spectrum. Fallow Boy has a
Speaker 1: room in there. TLC has a room in there. Not
Speaker 1: all of them are necessarily mixed reality experiences, but they're
Speaker 1: all interactive and they're meant to kind of encourage the
Speaker 1: joy of music and the sharing of joy in music.
Speaker 1: So I'm really looking forward to seeing it for myself
Speaker 1: and to record in this special studio that Bose has
Speaker 1: worked with iHeartRadio to create. So again this Friday at
Speaker 1: six pm in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the T Mobile Arena.
Speaker 1: Outside the T Mobile Arena, you'll find the House of Music.
Speaker 1: That's where you're gonna find me, the bald guy talking
Speaker 1: about technology and Yeah, I hope to see y'all out there,
Speaker 1: and I hope you're well, and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.