How to Look It Up Yourself.—Whatever the nature of the invention you are working on you should read up its history from its earliest beginnings and in this age of papers, books and public libraries this is an easy, entertaining and profitable thing to do.
As an illustration take the art of flying and let’s suppose you are working on a new wing, or main-plane, for an aëroplane; if you will go over the list of books sold by book publishers, or consult the catalogue of a public library you will find books on flying, or aviation as it is called, that will give you a full account of the development of flying machines; and if you will get the right book it will picture and describe all the forms of wings that have been invented and patented up to the time the book went to press. Then there are weekly and monthly papers published which are devoted entirely to the theory and practice of flying and by reading these you will be able to keep right up to the entering edge of the art.
Now what I have said about flying is just as true of whatever else you may happen to be working on, for books and papers are printed and published about nearly every subject you can think of, from aviation to wireless telegraphy; by reading up on the subject of and allied to your invention you will soon have the history of it by heart and this makes up a large part of the state of the art.
Another and fortunate thing when you look up the state of the art a lot of other ideas will surge helter-skelter through your mind and if you are careful to write them down many of them will be of much value to you in the furtherance of your invention.
If you live in a large city it is an easy matter to look up the patents that have been granted for inventions in your class, for you will find an Index of the Patent Office in the public library which gives the number and date of the patent you want and the patentee’s name. The Index is published every year by the Unites States patent office and it gives the alphabetical list of the patentees and of the inventors to whom patents were granted for that year.
Fig. 34. THE OFFICIAL GAZETTE
Fig. 35. PATENT SPECIFICATIONS
Fig. 36. INDEX TO PATENTS
Having found the patent you want to look into, get the Official Gazette of the patent office for the same year and by looking up the number, or patentee, or invention, or all of them, you can easily locate an excerpt of the patent and then you can take a look at the drawing and read the principal claims.
The Official Gazette is published every week by the patent office and it contains a picture and a brief description of each patent issued for that week, together with the number and date of the patent, the name of the patentee and of the invention.
Should you require more information about a patent than is given in the Gazette you can look up a copy of the patent, or full specification as it is called, and these are bound in handsome volumes of 100 patents each, or at least, this is the practice of the New York Public Library.