The Source

Digitized U.S. Patents

By Michael K. Shaffer · Originally published November 2020 · p. 32

Patent for the Pratt & Rosecrans Lamp, #6018772.

Search results from National Archives. Patent: “To secure the exclusive right of a thing to a person; as to patent an invention or an original work to the author;” as defined in Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language. Recently, the National Archives published online almost 3,000 patents, previously lost in an 1836 fire. In 1837, Congress authorized the restoration of many of these documents, so today’s researcher can view the various designs. Different sections of the National Archives website offer distinctive files and date ranges. For this exercise, let us use this link: https://catalog.archives.gov/search?q=*:*&f.parentNaId=305888&sort=naIdSort%20 asc&offset=40. As seen in the image above, in sorting with dates, one finds 66 files between 1860–1869, the preferred selection for our Civil War study. This writer reviewed each of these images and identified 28 patents from the war so explore! Users can establish a free account, which allows one to save research documents for future reference. The following offers a few examples from the collection. Stepping into the past through viewing designs of necessity, like this leg, from George Jewell, 4531650.

This writer’s favorite, a patent for an army combo cloak/mattress 4531655. One can visualize several officers, North and South, getting their money’s worth from this accouterment!

Digitized U.S. Patents experience worthy of a patent! Let Major General William S. Rosecrans shed a little light (see image at beginning of this article) on the path of researching the American Civil War!

Michael K. Shaffer is a Civil War historian, author, lecturer, instructor, and a member of the Society of Civil War Historians, the Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, and the Georgia Association of Historians. Readers may contact him at [email protected], or to request speaking engagements, via his website www.civilwarhistorian.net. Follow Michael on Facebook www.facebook.com/ michael.k.shaffer and Twitter @ michaelkshaffer.

Spencer patent for breech-loading rifle, 4531639.

Richard Gatling’s Improvements in Firearms, 102278480.