The Kootenai herald. [volume] (Kootenai, Idaho) 1891-1904, 1893-10-28
PRIZES ON PATENTS
The Winner Has a Clear Gift of
$4,000. and the Losers Have
Patents That May Bring
Them In Still More.

| ""uu you IKE TO make twenty-five hun
bred dollars? II you would, read carefully
what follows and you may see a way to
80 it,
The Press Claims Company devotes much
attention to patents. 1t has handled thous-
ands OF applications for inventions, but
1t would like to handle thousands more
There is plenty of inventive talent at largo
m this country, needing nothing but encour-
agement to produce practical results. That
encouragement the Press claims Company
proposes to give.
NOT so HARD AS 1T SEEMS.
a patent strikes most people as an appalI
ing formidable thing The idea is that an
inventor must be a natural genius. ike
! Edison or Bell; that he must devote years to
delving in complicated mechanical problems
and that he must spend fortune on delicate
experiments before he can get a new device
to patantable degree OF perfection. This
delusionthe company desires to dispell. 1t
desires to get into the public a clear com
prehension OF the fact that it is not the
great complex, and expensive inventions
chat bring the best returns to their authors
but the little, simple and cheap ones-the
things that seem so abruptly 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 invens
tions have not been sufficient to paw the
cost of his experiments. But the man
who conceived the idea OF fastening a bit of
rubber cord to a child's ball. SO that IN
would come back to the hand when thrown.
made fortune out OF his scheme The
modern sewing machine is a merical OF in
genulty-the product, toll OF hundreds OF
busy brains through a hundred and fftv
years, but the whole brilliant result rests
upon the simple device of putting the eve Of
the needle at the point instead of at the
other end
THE LITTLE THING THE MOST VALUABLE
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
It's car windows so that they can be slid IN
and down without breaking the passengers
baeks?" exclaims the traveller "If were
running the road would make them in such
a way"
What was the man that made this sauce
! pan thinking OF! grumbles the cook ''He
never had to work over a stove or he would
have known how it ought to have been fixed"
Hang such collar button" growls the
man who is late for breakfast. eff were in
the business I'd make buttons that wouldn't
slip out, break OF, or gouge out the back of
my neck"
And then the various sufferers forget about
their grievances and begin to think of some
thing else. Ii they would sit down at the
next convenient opportunity, put their ideas
about the car windows, saucepans and collar
buttons into practical shape, and then apply
tor 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 a prize
To the person who submits to it the sim
plest and most promising invention, from a
commercial point of view, the company will
give twenty-five hundred dollars in cash. in
addition to rounding the fees for securing
the patent
1t will also advertise the invention free of
charge.
This offer is subject to the following condi-
tions:
Every competitor must obtain a patent for
his invention through the company. He
musu nrsu apply Tor preliminary search, the
cost of which will be five dollars SbouId
this search show his invention to be unnat-
entable, he can withdraw without further
expense. Otherwise he will be expected to
complete his application and take out a pat
emit III the regular way. The total expense.
including Government and Bureau fees, will
be seventy dollars. For this. whether he
secures the prize or not, the inventor will
have patent that ought to be valuable
property to him. The prize will be awarded
by jury consisting OF three reputable pat
ent attorneys of Washington. Intending
competitors should fill out the following
blank and forward it with their application:
-----, -, 1898.
Il submit the within described invention
in competition for the Twenty-Five hundred
Dollar Prize offered by the Press Claims Conn
pany."
NO BLANK IN THIS COMPETITION.
This is q competition of rather an unusual
nature. 1t is common to offer prizes for the