Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1914-03-06
Do We Need the Patent Office?

| From the American Machinist
The Patent Office at Washington
essays to supply some tangible assur-
ance of benefit to inventors, but ex-
perience has shown inventors reap
their reward, not through the patent
office but through those successful
promoters or capitalists, the trained
producers. whom they enlist on their
behalf and by whose aid alone they
are able to advertise and market their
product, writes A. H.. Ziegler in the
American Machinist.
The ease also with which the we'll
organized talent of any we'll ordered
corporation devises detail altera ton
which can successfully avoid any but
the absolutely basis patents. rem
ders heavy financial backing still
more essential
The granting of a seventeen-year
monopoly on a product, in these days
when five or six years may see the
ultimate development of an industry,
is surely a serious question of public
policy.
If inventors were granted, without
patent rights, only an assurance of
reward obtainable through the eX-
cellence of their product, other in
ventors and producers would be able
to participate in the development of
the subject
As evidence of these truths we may
quote the rise of the automobile in
dustry. after the Selden patents were
declared null and void by the United
States Supreme Court. The Selden
patents were as broadly basic as pos
sible, but proved to be progress OBJ
structing in the end and were over
turned.
] would suggest government de-
partment to supersede the Patent |
Office, which instead of issuing pat
ents, would grant, to those who in
vent or develop real and important |
improvements i'll any commodity or
service participation in government
controlled funds for investment in
their idea, under government super
vision.
This aid might be made dependent |
on a report on the prospects, com
mercial and marketable, of the new
product, by a board of engineering
and business examiners. Such an in
stitution would, | think, constitute
more efficient, economical and just
means for guaranteeing to inventors
and producers of marked ability,
their monetary reward, than the
present basis OF patent rights guar
anteeing no definite reward at all.
shooting Stars.
From St Nicholas.
Each so-called shooting star is
merely a cold little meteor which is
moving around the sun in its own
path, just as the immensely larger
and planets are doing.
On the average these particles are
moving about twenty-six miles sec
ond when they are at the distance
from the sun that the earth is, and,
as the earth itself is moving eighteen
and one-half miles a second, the two
bodies are sure to collide with high
If the earth runs into the particle
in such a way as to overtake it, 1t
will strike our air with a speed of
only about eight miles a second; if
they meet head on" so to speak,
they may come together with speed
Of forty miles a second.
In either case, the friction OF the
air on the cold particles, as this
ploys through the air, instantly heats
it up to a heat SO great that 1t Is |
vaporized and appears to liz shoot |
ing star.
The reason why the little meteoric |
particles are moving so very swiftly