CHSI
Former Exhibitions
May 1 - December 11, 2009
Patent Republic:
Materialities of
Intellectual Property
in 19th-Century America
From its foundation in 1790 to the early 1870s, the U.S. Patent Office required models (in addition to drawings and textual descriptions) to guarantee the understanding and replicability of inventions. The Patent Act of 1836 emphasized that: “Before any inventor shall receive a patent [s/he shall] furnish a model of his invention, in all cases which admit of a representation by model, of a convenient size to exhibit advantageously its several parts.” Models played a crucial role in the courtroom too. In patent infringement cases, judges and jury sometimes struggled to understand the workings of the invention and the claims of the patent by looking at the specifications alone. In those settings, models provided key “reality effects.”
Beginning in the 1870s, however, models ceased to be required for patent applications. Their disappearance from patent law was quickly followed by their physical disappearance when a large fire at the Patent Office destroyed forty percent of them in 1877. By the end of the 19th century, the materialities of inventions came to be limited to printed matter only: highly codified black-and-white drawings and textual descriptions.
This exhibit retraced more than 50 years of patent-model making in the United States, presenting common inventions such as washing machines, carpet sweepers, and ice skates as well as Thomas Edison’s carbonizer – a crucial piece of apparatus for the production of filaments in electric light bulbs. The exhibit highlighted more than the material ingenuity of a nation. It provided clues to the epistemic nature of models and their role in both technological innovation and the history of intellectual property law.
Read about Patent Republic in the Harvard Gazzette!
Resources
Former Exhibitions
GO ASK A.L.I.C.E.: Turing Tests, Parlor Games, & Chatterbots
X-Rays of the Soul: Rorschach & The Projective Test
Cold War in the Classroom
Tangible Things
Paper Worlds:
Printing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
Patent Republic: Materialities in Intellectual Property in 19th-Century America
Benjamin Franklin:
A How-to Guide
Gallery Hours
Putnam Gallery
Science Center 136
Hours:
Monday - Friday
11:00am - 4:00pm
Special Exhibitions Gallery
Hours:
Monday - Friday
9:00am - 5:00pm
Foyer Exhibition Space
Science Center 371
CLOSED FOR INSTALLATION
Free and open to the public.
Children must be escorted by an adult.
Both the Putnam Gallery and Special Exhibitions are closed on University Holidays.
Inquiries: 617-495-2779
Directions
The Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments is located inside the Science Center, 1 Oxford Street, on Harvard's Cambridge campus.
