Patent Page 1
Welcome to the new Patent Page. We hope to bring you various patents issued over the years. Patents themselves are a very collectable item. In the early years they were signed by the President of the United States so just the autograph alone makes it a collectable item. Many of the earliest patents were destroyed by the Patent Office fire of December 15, 1836. Many of the copies were lost for all time from that fire. We know from the listings that the patents existed but we do not know what they looked like. Even the U.S. Patent office does not have copies of these lost drawings.
This month we will show the earliest known bayonet patent drawing. As you will note many of the early drawings were in color. Many beautiful water colors were used until the Patent Office Act which required black and white to make prints and copies of them. Patent number 2151X the earliest with the word Bayonet in the title is among the lost drawings. If anyone knows of a copy I would love to hear about it!
Patent's 1515X and 1516X. This patent started quite a controversy. It was among the last to include the Director of the Patent Office as a Co-Inventor. This is a Hall musket with bayonet but also named is Thornton, the Director. The reason for the two separate patents is due to a minor improvement we suspect. We really don't know the answer to that. But, there you have it, the earliest known bayonet patent in the U.S. Patent Office. Anyone have an interesting patent to share with us?