Via tmn, we discover that from 1790 to 1880, the US Patent Office uniquely required filers to include with each application a model of their inventions, which were later curated and exhibited in the agency’s miniature gallery, established ahead of Washington, DC’s other museums as the top attraction of the capital city. Long ago deaccessioned and largely lost (as a form of crowd control), some artefacts have been collected and put on display, including the exquisitely impractical and unmarketable hull of Abraham Lincoln’s boat design with inflatable and evacuatable ballast to improve navigation (6469, the only patent granted to a US president—though I suspect that Trump has registered an unfashionable number of trademarks administered by the same authority) along with dozens of other ambitious artefacts of ingenuity.
synchronoptica
one year ago: the network effect
two years ago: assorted links to revisit plus Saint Ansovinus
three years ago: more links to enjoy, snowdrops plus a classic number from Brewer and Shipley
four years ago: a coup attempt in Germany (1920)
five years ago: the world wide web (1989), noise-cancelling, plant mobility plus more Olympic pictograms
