Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1901-05-20

issue, besides much other information,
! and this gazette the Patent Office
J mails at the rate Of five dollars a
year, or ten cents a single copy 1t
mails for ten cents full-sized printed
and engraved copy of the drawings
and description of any patent, new or
old. Bound volumes of these copies
may be examined in nearly every pub
lie library in the United States Sup
pose that a person is interested in
that class of machine known as a
typewriter, in which there is yet
much room for improvement. He
may deposit five dollars at the Patent
ONCE and receive by mail a printed
and engraved copy of every new pat
ent in that class, at the cost of ten
cents each, so long as his deposit lasts
or is renewed. This he may do with
any of the $4,000 or more subclasses
into which inventions are divided,
and list of these subclasses will be
sent for ten cents. Lastly, for two
dollars the Patent Office will send
him twenty tickets, each representing
ten cents, and or each of these he
can at any time put his name and adj
dress, and the particulars Of any pat
ent or issue of the weekly gazette he
desires, and mail it to the office, in
stead of sending a full written letter
with a dime inside. Some of the
bright and ambitious boys and girls
of the country have already found out
the ways and uses of the Patent Office,
and the rest are welcome there as fast
as they learn to come.
Among the nearly half a million pat
ents granted since 1890, there are all
sorts of devices, ranging from the sub
lime to the ridiculous. If a thing is
may be of some use, a patent is grant
ed for it. Should it prove to be i'm
portant, the country is the gamer
If it never comes into use, nobody is
hurt but the inventor, and even to him
it may be the steppingstone to some
thing valuable. The first patent on
barbed fencing-wire would have been
a dear bargain for 500, but upon that
patent and two others that quickly.
followed it one man made profits Of
not les sthan $5,0O0,OOO, and possibly a
great deal more. Patents on devices
for navigating the air have long been
a laughing-stock but lately copies of
them are more in demand, for great
scientists are experimenting in this
field
People laugh at the nearly $500
patents on churns, but intelligent
foreigners tell us that the American
appetite for butter is one of the won
ders of the modern world. This love
of butter accounts for the attention
given by inventors to churns. There
are some $500 patents on devices for
coupling and uncoupling railway cars;
but what school-child does not know
that the Americans are the greatest
builders and users of railways on
earth? The collections of the Patent
Office tell an interesting story of the
history and habits of the people of the
United States That story has been
written by persons whose chief pur-
pose was to better their own condition
by honest and useful exercise of their
talents.
| While many have succeeded in that
object, many more have failed; but if
the efforts that have ended in failure
had never been made, the young
readers of this article would today be
leading poorer lives, and would have
before them DINNER prospect for
their futures. None understands this
better than the prosperous inventor,
as he strides on to fortune over the
failures of those who have fallen by
the wayside.