Rumor has it...
that a Patent Office official resigned and recommended that the Patent Office be closed
because he thought that everything that could possibly be invented had already been
invented!
While that statement makes good fun of predictions that do not come to pass, it is none
the less just a myth. Researchers have found no evidence that any official or employee of
the U.S. Patent Office had ever resigned because there was nothing left to invent. A clue
to the origin of the myth may be found in Patent Office Commissioner Henry
Ellsworth’s 1843 report to Congress. In it he states, "The advancement of the
arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that
period when human improvement must end." But Commissioner Ellsworth was simply using
a bit of rhetorical flourish to emphasize the growing number of patents as presented in
the rest of the report. He even outlined specific areas in which he expected patent
activity to increase in the future.
Taken out of context, such remarks take on a life of their own and are perpetuated in
publication after publication whose authors, rather than check facts, copy and quote each
other. For example, recent publications have attributed the "everything that has been
invented..." quote to a later commissioner, Charles H. Duell, who held that office in
1899. Unlike Ellsworth, who may have been merely misquoted, there is absolutely no basis
to support Duell’s alleged statement. Just the opposite is
true.
Duell’s 1899 report documents an increase of about 3,000 patents over the previous
year, and nearly 60 times the number granted in 1837. Further, Duell quotes President
McKinley’s annual message saying, "Our future progress and prosperity depend
upon our ability to equal, if not surpass, other nations in the enlargement and advance of
science, industry and commerce. To invention we must turn as one of the most powerful aids
to the accomplishment of such a result." Duell adds, "May not our inventors
hopefully look to the Fifty-sixth Congress for aid and effectual encouragement in
improving the American patent system?" These are unlikely words of someone who thinks
that everything has been invented.
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