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Show Thousands of Ideas for Inventions, but Few Get Through Patent Ofice Every minute of the day in these United States, thousands of persons are having productive brainstorms, bearing new ideas in the bathtub, or chewing pencil stubs as they struggle strug-gle through the final phases of their "invention." Of the hundreds of thousands of ideas produced, few of then get through the patent office, but this lot, relatively small as it is, appears large enough, judging from the rapidly filling shelves in the patent room of the Chicago public library, notes a writer in the Chicago Chi-cago Daily News. Here every month are added anywhere any-where from sixteen to twenty-one heavy volumes describing the patents pat-ents issued by the United States for the last month. Each patent is numbered num-bered and described in the inventor's inven-tor's application by drawing and text. The idea of the patent record is to give anyone who wishes a peek at the workings of any patent that catches his fancy or upon which he might want to improve. (Patented articles usually bear the number of the license.) The patents are issued at the rate of about 3,500 a month. In 1936 a total of 39.793 were issued; in 1935, 40,638; in 1934, 46,239. In 1932, when so many people were home thinking, there were 53,573 issued. Everything is listed in the patent books. Next to a description of a scientist's new method for the recovery re-covery of hydrocyanic acid from oil products might nestle the new vegetable vege-table sheer conceived by a resident of Harrisburg; the air-cooled shoe, with a spring bellows in the heel, by an Anguilla, Mass., man; the disappearing dis-appearing ink specially conceived for marking laundry; a machine to slice ham thinner; or a snugger, homier, leak-proof burial vault, the invention of a couple of Detroiters. |