New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1877-09-25
TIE p1rENr nEEiCr-

The country has narrowly escaped an ire
parable disaster. In the destruction of the
Patent Office at Washington it would have lost
that one of the public buildings of Wash
ington which, perhaps, it could least
spare-a national monument which neither
time nor money could ever replace. If
the Capitol should fall in ruins we might
take comfort in the disappearance of certain
specimens of modern statuary, and console
ourselves for the loss of Trumbulrs canvas
by surveying the crumblng remains Of
Leutze's fresco. The long colonnades of the
Treasury could easily be reproduced. The
White House has no great value apart from
its associations But the Patent Office is unique.
1t is one of the few American institutions which
were not made but grew; and we could no
more rebuild it than England could make a
new London or Italy new Rome. There is
nothing in Washington comparable to thar cx-
traordinary collection of dusty traps which re-
poses in ITS intermnable glass cases. The visitor
may spend weeks in the vain attempt to ex-
plore this teeming wilderness, and he will come
away overpowered and bewildered, cOnfessing
that nowhere else In the world could such a
museum have been brought together.
Nowhere else i'll the world, certainly, is there
such an exhibition at once of the progress
of the useful arts, and the steady adj
vance of people in wealth and civilization.
From the primitive apple-parer to the Wal
than watch and Hoes latest perfecting print
ing press is a Tremendous march but the sue
cessive steps are all illustrated in the long
series of Patent Office models. We might
trace there the development of the country,
nay, the development of each separate
State, i'll the chronology of inventions,
and watch the growth of culture depicted in
the change of peoples wants, as they come
to think gradually less of stump-eradicators,
and more of patent bustles. And yet it is a
popularity of American inventive genius that
it does not abandon one art when it takes up
another; it is never tired of celebrating the
tools of the farmer and the pioneer,
even when it is polishing the latest luxury for
the rich mans parlor or the fine lady's tot
let. From forty to fifty patents are granted
or renewed every day, and there is hardly n
conceivable department of useful industry to
which the skill and ingenuity of the inventor
does not lend hourly aid.
1t is Il queer illustration of the American
character, also, that the inventors are recruited
in large numbers from all classes Of persons.
and that the same inventor applies his
mind to bewdcring multiplicity of OBJ
jects. Here is gentle and soft-spoken plant
er's daughter who, being ruined by the war,
has made living for her family by discovering
better plan of building a bedstead. Here
is learned clergyman who has created a new
gridde. A cigar-box model of an apparatus
to lift a Mississippi steamboat over Obstruc-
tons is the work of Abraham Lincoln. A
school-boy has patent for foding-tabe, and
an editor goes down TO pOsterity as the author of
cothes-pin. The same intellect which
puts together the complex and beautiful works
OF the mammoth steam-engine buses itself
also with sharpening the point of a cambria
needle, pegging heavy boot, and planning a
rat-trap, a paper-knife, pop-gun and n pair
of garters. 1t is melancholy, perhaps,
to think how small proportion of
the hundred thousand models in this
huge collection have been of any practical