

United States Patent number 1 - bhavin
http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=krA-AAAAEBAJ

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xbryanx
Just to be clear this isn't the first US patent, just the one assigned #1 in
the current numbering system (I think?).

More info on the "first" US Patent.
<http://www.uspto.gov/news/pr/2001/01-33.jsp>

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zedwill
According to wikipedia there were other almost ~10k patents before, but they
were destroyed in a fire and are known as X-Patents

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Patents>

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riemannzeta
Google has these too

<http://bit.ly/8X7Ydw>

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erydo
I don't mean to add to the noise floor, but is there a reason you generated a
bit.ly link for this? This isn't twitter with particularly restrictive
character constraints; all it serves is obfuscation as far as I can tell.

I'm genuinely curious what the reasoning is.

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prodigal_erik
I like James Ernest's version better, where a time machine gets patent #1.

<http://www.cheapass.com/products/boardgames/cag034.html>

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pavel_lishin
This looks like a ton of fun.

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raimondious
How long for OCR to become usable for something like this? Google's OCR
transforms the readable "Locomotive Steam-Engine for Rail and Other Roads" to
"BAIL AND OTHER ROADS"

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tybris
So far? About 3 decades.

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raimondious
According to Wikipedia, it's been much much longer than that, but this is my
point.

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edge17
looks way more readable than modern patents. Almost like it wasn't written by
a lawyer. Only 4 pages.

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riemannzeta
The number system came later. X series gives the earliest patents, including
the first issued: X1

<http://bit.ly/8X7Ydw>

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Rexxar
Please don't use URL shorteners.

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riemannzeta
Sorry. Here's the link:

<http://www.google.com/patents?id=nrxzAAAAEBAJ>

That's General Washington's signature in the middle, and Edmund Randolph's
(first Attorney General) on the bottom.

The cabinet was the PTO in 1790.

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nkassis
Man, the beginning of the patent makes this sound like the greatest invention
ever. Let trains brave mud,rain,ice and anything. Except I think the US postal
service has some prior art to the whole mud,rain and ice thing.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service_cr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service_creed)

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jganetsk
It appears that Herodotus has prior art on that.

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jheriko
I see... patents have always been ridiculous. Unsurprising.

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tzs
What is ridiculous about that patent?

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jacquesm
That to any engineer worth his/her (but mostly his in that time) salt that
must have been blindingly obvious.

After all, the 'rack and pinion' had been around for a while and the rack
really is just a gear rolled out.

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joubert
Like the line numbers in the margin.

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ComputerGuru
It's that way in almost all patents, I think. It may be a style requirement.

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Vivtek
It's so when your patent is disputed, you can cite things like "In column 9,
lines 34-36 of document E2, it is disclosed that..." (I'm translating just
such a dispute claim now. For a tampon applicator. I'd rather be learning
about railroads.)

