The Opelousas courier., 1893-09-23
PRIZES ON PATENTS.
How to Get Twenty-Five Hun.
dred Dollars Nor Nothing

How TO Get twenty-five Hun
dred D'I|erl ler Nothing
The Winner has a Clear Gift of a
Small Fortune, and the Losers
Have Patents that may.
Bring them in Still
Would you like to make twenty-five hun
dollars? If you would, read carefully what
follows and you may see ii way to do it.
The Press Claims Company devotes much
attention to patents. 1t has handled thous-
ands of applications for Inventions, but it
would like to handle thousands more. There
is plenty of Inventive talent at large in TINS
country, needing nothing but encouragement
to produce practical results. That encourage
ment the Press Claims Company proposes to
give.
NOT so HARD AS 1T SEEMS.
A patent strikes most people as an APP
| palIingly formidable thing. The idea is that
an inventor must be Il natural genius, like
Edison or Bell that he must devote years to
deIving in complicated mechanical problems
and that he must spend a fortune on delicate
| experiments before he can get a new device
to a patentable degree of perfection. This
delusion the company desires to dlspel. 1t
desires to get into the head of the public a
clear comprehension of the fact that it is not
the great, complex, and expensive inventions
| that bring the best returns to their authors,
but the little, simple and cheap ones-the
things that seem so abSurdly trivial that the
average citizen would feel somewhat ashamed
of bringing them to the attention OF the
Patent Office.
Edison says that the profits he has received
from the patents on all his marvellous inven
tons have not been sufficient to pay the cost
of his experiments. But the man VIII" con
ceived the idea Of fastening a bit of rubber
cord to a child's ball, so that it would come
back to the hand when thrown, made 81 for
tune out of his scheme. The modern ewing.
machine is a miracle of ingennity-thc pro
duct Of the toll of hundreds of busy brains
through a hundred and fifty years, but the
whole brilliant result rest upon the simple
device of putting the eye of the needle at the
point instead of ut the other end.
THE LITTLE THINGS THE MOST VALU-
ABLE.
Comparatively few people regard them
selves as inventors, but almost everybody has
been struck, at one time or another, with
IDEAS that seemed calculated to reduce some
of the little ~frictions of life. Usually such
ideas are dismissed without further thought.
"Why don't the railroad company make its
car windows so that they can be slid up and
down without breaking the passengers
backs?1 exclaims the Traveller. of | were
running the road | would make them in such
a way"
"What was the man that made this sauce
pan thinking Off" grumbles the cook. He
never had to work over Il stove, or he would
have known how it onght to have been
| fixed"
Hang such IL collar button = growls the
man who is late for breakfast. "If | were in
the business I'd make buttons that wouldn't
slip out, or break off, or gonge out the back
of my neck"
And then the various sufferers forget about
their grievances and begin to think of some
thing else. If they would sit down at the
next convenient opportunity, put their. ideas
about car windows, sancepans, and collar
buttons into practical shape, and then apply
for patents, they might find themselves as
independently wealthy as the man who in
vented the iron umbrella ring, or the one
who patented the fifteen puzzle.
A TEMPTING OFFER.
To induce people to keep track OF their
bright ideas and see what there is in them,
the Press Claims Company has resolved to
offer IL prize.
To the person who submits to it the
simplest and most promising inven-
ton, from a commercial point of view,
the company will give twenty-five
hundred dollars in cash, in addition to
refunding the fees for securing the
patent.
1t will also sdvertise the invention
free of charge.
This offer is subject to the following cond'
tons
Every competitor must obtain Il patent for
his invention through the company. He must
first apply for preliminary search, the cost OF
which will be five dollars. Should this search
show his invention to be unpatentable, he can
withdraw without further expense. Other.
wise he will be expected TO complete his APP
plication and take ont a patent in the regular
way. The total expense, including Govern
ment and Bureau fees, will be seventy dol,
lars. For this, whether he secures the prize
or not, the inventor will rave a patent that
ought to be a valuable property to him. The
prize will be awarded by a jury consisting OF
three reputable attorneys Of Washington,
Intending competitors should fill out the fol-
lowing blank, and forward it with their appli
cation
49, -, -, 1875.