In the chief building of the Department of the Interior, fronting on F Street, and extending from Seventh to Ninth, and from F to G Streets, may be found the Patent Office of the United States. No other department so well reveals the inventive genius of the most inventive people on earth.
Once at a table in Paris a Frenchman said to me: “The Americans are inventors because they are lazy.”
“Well,” I said, “I have heard many surprising charges against my countrymen, but that excels all. How do you make that out?”
“Well, I am a manufacturer. I set an American boy to keep a door open; before half an hour he has invented a machine which will open and shut it, and I find my boy playing marbles.”
Photo by Clinedinst
THE PATENT OFFICE
“Sensible boy! Yes, with that view of it, maybe we are; we certainly do not care to do by hand that which a machine can better perform.”
The Patent Office is one of the few departments which is more than self-supporting. In the year 1836 but one patent was taken out; during the year ending December 31, 1901, the total number of applications was 46,449. The total receipts for the year were $6,626,856.71; total expenditures, $1,297,385.64—leaving a balance far over five million dollars in favor of the government.
There are divisions for different classes of inventions. When a patent is applied for, examiners make all necessary investigations, and carefully look into the invention claimed to be new, comparing it, part by part, with patents already existing before determining whether a patent can be granted. They have a library with plates and descriptions of about everything under the sun. From this library inventors can have books and plates sent them in order to compare their work with inventions now existing.
The Secretary of the Interior is a member of the President’s Cabinet, and receives $8,000 per year. He has charge of the Capitol (through the architect), the Insane Asylum, and the College for Mutes—indeed, it would seem that his work is sufficient for ten Secretaries.