Have you heard of an X-Patent? I think you will find this information to be interesting. An X-Patent are all of the patents that are issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) from July 1790 to July 1836. The first patent was issued in 1790. The inventor was Samuel Hopkins of Pittsford, Vermont. He was the first person to be issued a patent in the United States. Advances in science and technology are strongly correlated with X-Patents. X-Patents are also linked to the rist of the American Industrial Revolution. The actual number of these patents is not known but the best estimate is around 9,957.
The only major government building that survived the British invasion of Washington, D.C., during the war of 1812 was the Patent office. Dr. William Thornton, who was building a musical instrument in the same building, persuaded British officers that shared intellectual records of mankind would be destroyed if these patents were burned.
In December 1836, these patent records were burned in a fire while being held in temporary storage while a new fireproof facility was being built. Nothing was maintained by the government at this time and in order for the collection to be reconstructed, inventor’s copies had to be used. The United States Congress immediately passed a law aiding to re-issue the missing patents after the fire. About 2,800 patents were recovered and about 1,989 are online.
Five months prior to the first, the U.S. patents had not been numbered but were identified by titles and dates. The first patent that used the serial numbering system that is still in use today was issued on July 13, 1836. The patents that were recovered by the fire are also numbered from 1 but these numbers have an X on them. The first patent had the X added to the beginning of the number but the X was generally added to the end after the first patents. This is why they are called X-Patents.
