Interesting Statistics from the Patent Office.
Page 38
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
On one of his numerous visits to the Patent Office, at 25, Southampton Buildings, W.C., a representative of our Editorial staff discovered a series of most interesting and instructive charts, and tables of data, relating to the increase in the number of patents granted during the period 1617-1904, and the number of applications for patents during the years 1855-1904. These charts bear evidence of much careful labour on the part of an energetic official of the Patent Office, but they were not intended for immediate publication in the official journal.
Following up a letter addressed to The Comptroller of the Patent Office, our representative had a long chat with the chief clerk, and the outcome of our correspondence, and our representative's interview, is that, by the courtesy of those officials, we are enabled to give our readers the benefit of the information uhich is contained, in such striking form, in the charts and diagrams which, up to the present, could only have been seen in London.
The centre one of the three charts, which we reproduce herewith, shows the increase in the number of British patents granted from 1617 to 1853, together with a brief historical table in which is given the first patent granted in each of a number of epoch-marking stages of the world's commerce. Having in mind the recent " coming of age" of the Dunlop pneumatic tire, it may interest our readers to note that in this table the honour of being the first
applicant for a British patent for a pneumatic tire belongs. to Mr. R. W. Thomson, who, in 1844, made his application, and received the patent in the following year. Mr. Thomson was the father of Mr. H. Thomson-Lyon, the ex-chairman of the Highway Committee of the Westminster City Council.
The number of British patents granted, each year, to both men and women, between the years 18,55 and 1904, together with the number of applications made in the United Kingdom, and the number granted to applicants in France, Germany, and the United States of America, during the same period, are plotted in. the third chart. Two of the charts show that, whilst the number of patents granted, in this country, increased from 4,664 per annum in 1850 to over 15,000 per annum in 1904, those in the U.S.A. rose from under 2,500 per annum in 1855 to over 30.000 per annum in 1904.
Going back to the first of the three eliarts, we find that the numbers of patents granted, for inventions relating to certain industries, between the years 1884 and 1907, are plotted. This chart shows a most striking increase, during 1905-6, in the number of inventions.---good, bad, and indifferent—relating to " Road and rail vehicles." The increase was due solely to the repeal of the "red flag Act, and the legalizing of mechanically-propelled vehicles. on our roads.