Friday, July 31 was the last day this year that DuPont employees could get free admission to the Hagley Museum in Wilmington, Delaware. We walked around for an hour in the powder yards, then went specifically to the Patent Models exhibit.
Beginning in 1790, America's original patent law required a working model of a new invention as part of the patent application. This exhibit contains more than 120 of the original working models, covering the whole period up to 1880, after which models were no longer required. As these two cabinets' labels show, the display is arranged according to functional areas.
This Paddle Wheel – only a portion was shown, to display the innovative construction – and Life Boat were submitted in 1892 and 1873, respectively. The kayak behind them is of similar vintage.
The Screw Auger, the main feature of this little case, is a much earlier invention, submitted in 1809. It is identical to one I used to use with a brace-and-bit belonging to my father, in the 1950s. Some things are hard to improve on. Some time I'll get some decent photos of the Machine Shop, which contains lathes, shapers, mills, drill presses and other equipment from the early and middle 1800s. Again, when I worked as a machinist in the 1970s, I used equipment which was little different from a hundred years earlier, except it ran by electric motor power rather than off a water-wheel-driven leather belt.
Other inventions don't fare so well. You may know that Thomas Edison received more than 1,000 patents. Of all his inventions, the only one still in use is the incandescent bulb, and that will soon be extinct. There are proposed laws making them illegal (!) in favor of compact fluorescent lamps, and I expect those to be superseded in a few more years by high-power LED lamps. I already use LED night lights and flashlights, and plenty of my neighbors use LED Christmas lights.
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