Celebrating 10 Million Patents

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Celebrating 10 Million Utility Patents

Our colleagues at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued the 10 millionth utility patent on Tuesday, June 19, 2018. This is a historic milestone for the agency and for inventors in the United States. Did you know the National Archives holds 1,000,000 Utility Patent Drawings and 138,388 boxes of Patent Case Files?

Utility Patent Drawings are 10” x 15” drawings with printed specifications that are sometimes in color, while the Patent Case Files include the jacket, printed specifications and drawings of the issued patent. The Case Files also include a wealth of information, including: petitions, the applicant's initial specifications, oath of invention, reports by patent attorneys, applicant's drawings, amendments to the petition, powers of attorney, notices of allowances and fee payments, receipts for fees, and correspondence with inventor(s) and their attorneys.

We love patent drawings. Some illustrate familiar objects and products, some may make us nostalgic, some are beautiful and incredibly detailed drawings, and sometimes they leave us scratching our heads. We’ve gathered a few interesting (and a few odd!) patents for this newsletter, but you can browse many more utility patent drawings in the Catalog.

The Civil War spawned many new patents to meet the demands of war. Patents were issued that tried to improve the weapons of war such as the Improved Breech Loading Cannon (above, left). There were also patents that advanced medicine and caring for wounded soldiers including an Improved Artificial Leg (above, right) and an Improved Ambulance Carriage (above, top) .

By today’s standards some patents seem bizarre and maybe even superfluous.
(Top, Left) G. Krichbaum's Device for Indicating Life in Buried Persons, 12/5/1882
(Top, Right) M. Goetze's Device for Producing Dimples, 5/18/1896
(Bottom, Left) P. Plant's Cork Swimming Suit, 11/21/1882
(Bottom, Right) J. C. Noyles' Saluting Device, 3/10/1869

Some iconic products and machines were patented within the first million utility patents and held at the National Archives. Do you recognize any of these?

(Top) Patent Case File No. 987,662, Flying Machine, Inventors Oriville and Wilbur Wright
(Middle, Left) G. Eastman Camera, 9/4/1888
(Middle, Right) Patent Drawing for K. C. Gillette's Razor, 11/15/1904
(Bottom, Left) Patent Drawing for T. A. Edison's Incandescing Electric Lamp, 11/28/1882
(Bottom, Right) C. L. Sholes Type Writing Machine

Can’t get enough patents? Check out intern Brooke Engerman’s Seven Patents to Delight Your Steampunk Friends. Thanks to Danielle Sklarew, an intern in the National Archives History Office for helping to gather this list of patents!

Ten for 10 million
As a celebration of this milestone, be sure to check out USPTO's “Ten for 10 million” campaign, which is featuring patent drawings that have transformed how we live, work, and play, while celebrating the history of American innovation. Use the hashtag #10MillionPatents on social media to join the celebration.

Citizen Archivist Road Trip Update!

We are cruising right along on our Citizen Archivist Road Trip! Since we began our virtual road trip on June 1, more than 1,969 pages of records have been enhanced in Atlanta, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Fort Worth. We’ve heard from many of you who have been enjoying transcribing the amazing records held in our field offices across the country.

Thanks to all our Citizen Archivists who have joined us for our Road Trip! Visit our Missions page tomorrow as we reach the west coast and make a stop in Riverside, CA. You can help us tag and transcribe American Indian records, bankruptcy and court records, Chinese immigration records, genealogical records and much more!

Get Started Tagging and Transcribing!

Tackling Tricky Transcriptions

Many of the documents at the National Archives are handwritten records such as letters, memos, and reports. We all know that transcribing these primary sources improves our ability to read these documents, search for them, and use the information they contain, but we also understand that sometimes these records are downright tricky to transcribe!

We want to give a special thanks to all of our citizen archivists who are helping unlock history and especially Citizen Archivist DonnaDP who did a beautiful job transcribing this Register of Indian Families recently.

DonnaDP’s method of using the vertical bar | to indicate a column break helps organize the information in an easy to read manner, while leaving a blank space indicates where there isn’t any data in the field. This simple method eliminates the need for lining up columns, while also making it easy to read. Thanks, DonnaDP!

July 4 Celebration!

Celebrate July 4 with us! Join us on the steps of the National Archives Building in Washington DC for a reading of the Declaration of Independence, musical performances, and more! You can also join us for celebrations at our Presidential Libraries around the nation, or join the online celebrations on our YouTube channel and Facebook page.

Learn more on our July 4 Celebration events page.

Questions or comments? Email us at catalog@nara.gov.

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