100,000 sheets bond paper, per sheet                    8

    124 reams cap paper, best quality, per ream        20

     12 gross barrel pens, per gross                    3

     10 Dozen fine pencils, assorted colors, per dozen  3

                                                       __

Total                                                  34



Coyle & Towers' bid:



100,000 sheets bond paper, per sheet                   $0.02 1/2

    124 reams cap paper, best quality, per ream         4.44

     12 gross barrel pens, per gross                    4.28

     10 Dozen fine pencils, assorted colors, per dozen  1.05

                                                     _______

            Total                                       $9.79 1/2

Grant is making many judicious appointments, but none more fit and appropriate than that of Col. S.S. Fisher, of Cincinnati, as Commissioner of Patents. Col. Fisher is one of the most able and successful patent attorneys in the country. He is the author of "Fisher's Reports," the only compilation of reports upon patent causes in any language, and he has been occupied exclusively in patent practice for many years. He understands all the ins and outs of the Patent Office; its uses, abuses, and greatest needs; and he will make his administration illustrious by instating the Patent Department upon broader and higher grounds than it ever before occupied.

It should be stated that Col. Fisher did not seek nor desire the office, and is obliged to make very great pecuniary sacrifices in receiving it. In this case, like many others under the present administration, the office sought the man, and we have no hesitation in saying that it sought and has secured the best man that could be found on the continent.

[We copy the above from the Sorgo Journal, published at Cincinnati, the home of Col. Fisher. It fully confirms all that we have said respecting him, and inventors have reason to thank General Grant for his careful consideration of their interests in making this selection.

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Issue number 23, page 356, 5 June 1869

Patent Office Affairs

Commissioner Fisher has given his decision in the case of the Heck thread dressing patent, an extension of which was asked. The application was rejected on the ground that the invention was not new at the time the original patent was applied for, and that the patent should never have been issued.

Extensions have been granted in the following cases: Stevens, Crosby, and Pearson, of Boston, for a seed planter, Thomas J. Silsby, administrator of Arad Woodruff, of Boston, for an improvement in machinery for spinning; and to Thomas J. Knapp, for an adjustable tenoning tool.

The senior member of the Board of Examiners-in-chief, Mr. Hodges, who acts as Commissioner in the absence of that officer, has heard the argument and given his decision upon the following applications for extensions of patents: Jacob A. Connover, of New York, for a wood-splitting machine; George W. Brown, of Galesburg, Illinois, for a corn planter. Mr. Hodges in both cases granted the extensions prayed for. The Commissioner having been employed as counsel in lawsuits in which these parties were interested, left the office temporarily in the charge of Mr. Hodges, while these parties were before it. It was from parties interested in the latter case that the telegram was sent to Senator Trumbull to prevent Colonel Fisher's confirmation, stating that he was employed as counsel in five cases involving several millions of dollars.

F.W. Ritter has been promoted from a clerkship to Second Assistant Examiner, and assigned to Professor Hedrick's class of chemicals, and James Lupton, of Ohio, has been appointed second class clerk. Peter Nodine has been appointed machinist and superintendent of the model room, vice Cornelius Jacobs, removed.

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Issue number 24, page 375, 12 June 1869

"What rubbish!" is frequently in the minds, and not seldom on the lips, of those who daily throng the galleries of the United States Patent Office at Washington. A very little reflection will show to what a limited extent these but too carelessly conceived thoughts, and these equally carelessly uttered words, are just.

On the 15th of December, 1836, the General Postoffice Building at Washington was entirely destroyed by fire. In the upper portion of this edifice the United States Patent Office then had its home; its scanty rooms being filled to confusion and repletion with models, drawings, and specifications, coming from the inventive mind of the nation, and deposited there from the time patents were first issued by our Government. These models, drawings, and specifications were all destroyed with the postoffice building; ashes and melted or twisted fragments of copper, brass, iron, and steel being all that was left of that which had often been looked upon with a feeling akin to wonder by the thoughtful -- wonder that so much time, thought, and money had been spent in elucidating and preserving plans and schemes (many of them could not be called inventions), never heard of, noticed, or seen outside the rooms in which they had found a legal home.

Since the disaster of 1836, a new and spacious building, one of the striking ornaments of our national metropolis, has been erected for the use of the patent office; and this building, with a current issue of about three hundred new patents per week, is now filled almost to its utmost capacity with models of nearly every conceivable form and for almost every conceivable purpose.

How comes all this strange medley? this aggregation of odds and ends? and what are their uses? Man might be called a blundering animal, not guided by the unerring instinct that prevents the lower animals from making a mistake; not satisfied to follow the beaten track, he tries different modes of doing the same thing, often blundering most glaringly, but sometimes, in the result, reaping a full reward in fame and fortune by hitting upon and bringing out something invaluable to his fellow-man. Slow, and even obstinately unwilling as we are to change from old to new ways, "Let well enough alone," and, "It is good enough as it is," have been deeply fixed in our natures from the beginning. Hence, innovators have never met with favor, and instead of being helped and encouraged, they are but too often sneered at and hindered even by those who are most likely to be benefited by their labors. Many a really valuable invention or improvement has been persistently resisted and opposed at first by the very persons who, in the end, are to derive the most benefit therefrom; and ere a foothold could be gained, many a battle has been fought for years, against the most unfair odds, with those who should have been doing most to aid and assist in the advancement of the new idea. Even the workmen in charge of a dangerous apparatus, and whose lives hang sometimes upon a thread, not only do not seek or care for greater safety, but they often persistently and willfully set themselves against the very thing they should do their utmost to help on as a good to themselves. It is a strange anomaly that it is in cases where life and property are most in jeopardy by defective modes of using some needed but highly dangerous thing, that the greatest apathy is felt; and those who thoroughly understand the question often make great opposition toward even a fair trial of a proposed improvement.

On the contrary, most of what is seen at Washington is the work of men often with little or no experience in the particular branch they have taken in hand. It would seem from this that those most familiar with a subject, may not be best calculated to improve it, simply because they do not care to get out of the old ruts. Hence, the innovator, and sometimes improver, is most likely he who lacks almost all knowledge of what has preceded him. On the other hand, hundreds of patents are rejected upon application, simply because an idea has been hit upon by the applicant quite new to him, and apparently valuable, but which, from some good reason, only learned by experience, has proved fallacious, and consequently has long ago been discarded.

It would be well for those who profit by the real improvements that come from the teeming brains of those who fill the galleries of the Patent Office with their curious labors, to keep back their too ready shrug and sneer when new inventions are brought to their notice by some poor devil of a patentee, as innovators are but too often termed. Look at least with charity and consideration, upon a class to whom we owe so much. Help them when you can, and be not niggardly in kind words of encouragement, and with money, too, when you can do so out of your own excess. Remember that, since the time when man has needed anything, it is from just such men as those whom you but too often discard unthinkingly, have come all the comforts we enjoy in our homes, in our business, and in every walk of life. To this ever-restless band we owe all of improvement that so strongly marks this epoch in the world's history. The minds of but few in the grand total of humanity have thus worked incessantly for our good, in the long past as in the present, and they should be treated, individually, and as a class, not as half-witted visionaries, but as the benefactors of our race. They have ever battled on against every discouragement and every hindrance, each, like the soldier in a forlorn hope, trusting that he might be the one to plant the flag on the parapet and reap the wished-for reward.

The work of these men -- these martyrs as they may sometimes be called -- can never be really known. Its record would take in all the failures, and it would also take in that much larger aggregate of all the brain-worn hours, which have left no mark except that deep one on the weary mind of the thinker, who, after all his labor, finds that he has only succeeded perhaps in, as it were, proving a fallacy. But we can measure the value of the work done -- of the wheat winnowed from this large amount of chaff -- by what we see of success all around us; and by these fruits we should know them, and with this knowledge we should ever be willing to admit that those who have piled up the rubbish in the Patent Office at Washington, are worthy of more honor and more reward than they usually receive -- Lippincott's Magazine

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Issue number 26, page 406, 26 June 1869

Important Decision about Patents -- Rejected Cases

The Commissioner of Patents, Hon. S.S. Fisher, has made an important decision, involving a point of much interest to a large class of inventors, as well as to the public generally. Prior to the act of March 2, 1861, rejected applicants were permitted by law to withdraw their applications, and receive back two thirds of the fee. This practice was abolished by the act referred to. Many inventors now seek to revive these applications, claiming that the rejection was through the faulty or imperfect consideration of the Bureau, and hoping for better success under a changed administration. In many cases numerous patents touching these same inventions, or points therein, have since been granted, which could only be regarded as infringements, if the rejected application was to be reopened and granted as an original case. The Commissioner has heretofore decided that when an application is not renewed within two years after withdrawal, its continuity is broken. The decision, which is a very able one, is printed in full in another column.

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Issue number 26, page 407, 26 June 1869

Renewed Vigor at the Patent Office

Commissioner Fisher is infusing life and energy into the Patent Office, such as it has not experienced since the days of Mason and Holt. Applications which have been allowed to accumulate under recent Commissioners are being examined and disposed of very rapidly, and we hope soon to be able to announce that the files in the Examiners' rooms are clear of pending cases. On a single day -- Friday, June 11th -- we received circulars of allowance of Thirty-Nine patents, on applications made through our Home Office, exclusive of those prepared at our Washington Branch Office. If the new Commissioner continues thus energetic in his management, he will secure and deserve an enduring popularity.

Now that the Commissioner has his hands well hold of the plow, we trust that he will neither hesitate nor turn back.

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