Evening star., 1899-07-17
Annual Report of the Work of the
Office.
CLASSIFICATION Division ESTABLISHED
System Adopted That Will Be Of
Great Advantage.
N ED FOR MORE ROOM

The annual report Of the operations of
the patent office has been submitted to the
Secretary of the Interior by Commissioner
Charles H. Duell.
There were received in the last fiscal
year 35,352 applications for mechanical
patents, 1892 applications for designs. 81
applications for reissues, 1.610 caveats,
1851 applications for trade marks, 612 ap
pllcauons for labels and 112 applications
for prints. There were %, $50 patents
granted, including reissues and designs,
1,406 trade marks, 372 labels and rs prints
were registered. The number of patents
that expired was 1860. The number of
allowed applications which we're by opera
ton of law forfeited for non-payment of
the final fees was 4,021. The total receipts
of the office were 81 ,2O9, 554 49, the total ex
penditures were 81 .14S 663. As and the sur
plus of receipts over expenditures, being
the amount turned into the treasury, was
$6G, ,S91. 40
June u, 1893. every examiner had his new
work begin one month from date of filing
and his amended work within fifteen days
OF date. This is the first time since De-
cember. 1889, when the present form of
weekly reports was adopted, that such a
report has or could have been made.
The Classification Division.
The most notable advance of the year in
the work of the office has been the estab-
lishment of classification division and
its entry upon thorough revision and ex-
tension of the classification of patents and
printed publications, the examination of
which lies at the foundation of our patent
system. The necessity for this work, after
being repeatedly called to the attention of
Congress, was finally recognized and an
act entitled AN act for revising and per-
fecting the classification of letters patent
and printed publications in the patent Of
flee" was passed by Congress and received
the approval of the President June 10, 1885,
and went into force at the commencement
of the fiscal year. Before beginning the
work of classification the principal exam
iners and other members of the examining
corps were invited to give their views upon
the subject, and after giving careful con-
sideration to the same an order establishing
a classification division made Novem-
Der II, 1898 and the division placed in
charge of a principal examiner with the
title Of chief of the classification divi-
sion.''
AS a preliminary step it was considered
desirable to ascertain how much of the
material was available. and to that end it
was decided to rearrange the original draw
ings of all patents in numerical order and
to prepare list on which they could be
checked. These drawings were heretofore
arranged by snbclasses, and 1t was neces-
sary to know the classification of a patent
before it could be found, which often ne
cessitated long search. By the numerical
arrangement it is possible to find it at once
and at the same time much storage space
Is saved. The arrangement of these draw
ingS numerically was at once begun, and q 8
the first 10,OG0 patents had no numbers and
were identified by only name and date con-
siderable additional labor was involved to
find and properly arrange such earlier pat
ents. The entire work of arranging the
drawings of nearly 100000 patents and
trade marks has been substantially COM
pieted.