Word: patents
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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With the thorough and painstaking development of scientific discovery, few basic inventions are now made, although a patent covering a slight improvement may often be of equal commercial importance...
Great fun has Patent Commissioner Coe when he assembles his assistants-Professor Richard Spencer, Bryan M. Battey and Leslie Frazer-and they go over such patents as these: Balloon Propelled by Eagles, Vultures, Condors. The birds wore harnesses which could be pulled in any direction by the operator. Birds had "merely to fly." They could also be pointed up or down. The drawing for the patent showed a balloon like a big inverted umbrella, with a bird cage mushrooming above...
...Perpetual motion" machines are the patent examiner's biggest annoyance. A popular bicycle idea was one in which, besides the usual chain, there was a second chain connecting the rear wheel with the front wheel. Thus when the bicycle was fairly going, the rear wheel drove the front wheel, which pulled the bicycle, which turned the rear wheel. One inventor of such a bike was pretty persistent. He would not go away until an examiner asked him how he would stop the bicycle...
...biggest perpetual-motion men of recent years turned up his nose at the Patent Office. Garabed T. K. Giragossian went directly to Congress and enthralled Congressmen for seven years (1917-24) with stories of how the Garabed Free Energy Generator would save the U.S. a $30,000,000,000 annual power bill, win the War, redeem the Sahara, rescue Mankind from the curse of the steam engine, crime and insanity. Mr. Giragossian asked for a special Act of Congress to protect his discovery-"not a perpetual motion machine"-and got such an act (1917). President Wilson vetoed the bill, Congress...
...Patent No. 1,000,000, granted in 1911 to Francis H. Holton of Akron, Ohio, was for "an improvement in [rubber] vehicle tires...