THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 27, 1911. AMERICA AND PATENTS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10434, 27 September 1911, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 27, 1911. AMERICA AND PATENTS.

Now that New Zealand \ is making needed amendments to its patent laws, it may be interesting to know to nvjhat extent the ipatent .system taa*y grown in other and older countries. ,During last month the miiilr Month patent was issued ifirom the United States. Patent-Office, ,and there Was quite a fair amount ,•'• of self-congnatulation over it. France oomes Nearest in the numlber of litv ©iiised dnv©njfion&, but dier record, as yet, wias on'iy 430,000. Gtreat Britain, at the same date, (had 416,000, and Germany 236,000, America, icoamopolitan though comparatively new, lias somehow (attracted inventive Ibrains, and now leads all the world in .the documentary evidence of their activity. The first patent issued "in the States was signed by George Washington, and is- described hy /tine "Scientific American" of to-day las "a queer document, quaintly worded, and with many a turn and twist of chiro- | grapliy peculiar to our forefathers." [ The invention was merely a device fo- making pot and ipearl ashes, submitted hy a certain iSamuel Hopkinsi; Unit so serious were those days, .that tihe (President and Cabinet met in isolemn conclave over- 'his claim,, and after deciding that tihe inventor should have isole augfots, hestowed the privilege with great iscenic effect. "Hopkins. Was warmly congratulated by President Washington, and the evient iwas irecorded in all the diarJes of those present." The numfber-

Ed patents, however, count only J from 1836, when the Patent Office j was established in its present form. j No.„l was awarded to John Ruggles, for >a locomotive engine. No. 1,000,000 is for an exdl/usive right to an improvement in inflated automobile ! tyres. Locomotion and labour-sav-ing devices are the two great divisions which) most (attract the' ambiI tious patentee. And the rage for j invention is rapidly spreading, i "From the •elergyman in has- study I to the convict in his. lonely cell, it I exerts its attractions, and. both, are found enrolled, in the list of patentees, 'although not so preisecly identified." It took fifty-iseven years for the United States to accumulate the first half-million patents, but only eighteen years snore 'have raised the number to a mililion. At the piresent time it is' not unusual to Bee from •five to iseven hundred issued during a single week. The dream of for-tune-making iaccounts for much inventiveness, but not all, for the millionaire 'is as strongly interested as

the very poor; A® the "Soientifie Amieirican" comments, "Someone has said that writing is like flirting. If you. cannot do it, no one can teadh you to do it; and if you can do it, no one can keep you fromt doing it. So it is with invention; no one can teach -you"to do it, and if you have the divine afrUatus, no one can prevent you from exercising it."