President Obama, a year ago, launched his Educate to Innovate campaign; a campaign dedicated to improving children’s knowledge of science, technology, engineering and math.  Also, in 2009, the National Inventors Hall of Fame merged with the United States Patent and Trademark Office Museum to become the National Inventors Hall of Fame and Museum.  The Alexandria Museum celebrates National Inventors Day – the country’s great technological advances – on February 11.  

President Ronald Reagan created National Inventors Day in 1983, the February date to coincide with inventor Thomas Alva Edison’s birthday.  Born in 1847, Edison was the first inventor inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.  Edison holds 1093 US patents.
 
     “Almost two hundred years ago, President George Washington recognized that invention and innovation were fundamental to the welfare and strength of the United States,” stated Reagan’s Proclamation 5013.  
    
Article I, Section 8:8 of the Constitution states that “The Congress shall have the power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”

    The original law, a 1790 act to promote the Progress of Useful Arts, authorized a three member Board to grant patents for a specific period of years.  Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson was the first Commissioner of the US Patent Office, and like Benjamin Franklin, he had a penchant for science.  

    Born of the enlightened tradition, Jefferson admired scientists especially Isaac Newton.  Jefferson endorsed the scientific method, shaped the US Patent Office, and later endorsed Lewis and Clark’s 1804 scientific exploration.

    “Stable ownership is the gift of social law,” Jefferson wrote in 1813.  

“Intellectual property is an idea put in tangible form, an idea made real or reduced to practice,” explained USPTO’s Ruth Nyblod.  Intellectual property is protected either by copyrights, patents, trademarks or trade secrets.  
    
The high tech, interactive Museum is, at times, nostalgic.  Did you know that Thomas Jefferson processed the first patent applications from a shoebox under his bed?  That Thomas Edison’s patents included the electrographic vote-recorder, incandescent electric lamp, phonograph; motion picture projector and rubber extraction from plants?  Or that singer Michael Jackson was granted a patent for his illusory anti-gravity shoes?

    Thomas Edison received his first patent for the electrographic vote-recorder in 1869 at the age of 22.  He tried to sell his invention to both the Massachusetts Legislature and the US Congress but neither felt procedural “efficiency was a virtue.”  Edison’s lesson: “never invent anything unless there is a need for, demand for the product.”  

The universal stock ticker, another Edison invention, proved more profitable.  Western Union bought the device for $40,000 and in 1870 he used the money to open a New Jersey factory.  Soon after, he constructed his first workshop.  

During his six years in Newark, Edison was granted more than 100 new telegraphy patents, invented the electric pen, and discovered electromagnetic waves.  However the business of inventing, that is manufacturing, left Edison dissatisfied and in 1876 he turned factory operations over to assistants.  He then opened a personal laboratory in nearby Menlo Park.

Edison discovered the phonograph while researching sound waves.  In 1877 he developed the tin foil cylinder phonograph, also known as a speaking-machine; then opted to ignore it.  It was competitor Alexandria Graham Bell who motivated Edison to establish the National Phonograph Company and perfect his design.  By 1903 the Company had sold more than a $1 million in product.  

Edison did not invent the first light bulb, he improved it.  Its workings held his attention for years.  In 1879 using lower current, a small carbonized filament and an improved vacuum inside the globe, Edison was able to produce a long-lasting light bulb.  In 1883 Edison discovered an incandescent light can also be used as a valve to admit negative, not positive electricity: the so-called “Edison Effect.”  

Technically, the “Edison Effect” is the phenomenon of the flow of electric current when an electrode sealed inside the bulb of an incandescent lamp is connected to the positive terminal of the lamp.  National Inventor Hall of Fame inductee Lee deForest utilized the “Edison Effect” when he invented the audion tube, a three-element vacuum tube which made radio possible.

In his final years Edison dedicated himself to developing an alternative rubber source. World War I demonstrated the vulnerability of supply so in 1927 Edison teamed with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone to develop a domestic source.  Edison had a botanical laboratory on his Ft. Myers, Florida winter estate and grew a type of goldenrod that had a 12% latex yield.  Edison died in 1931, before his research could be commercially exploited.

The US Patent and Trademark Office has issued more than 7 million patents, 3 million trademarks.  Basically, “any new and useful art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter and any new and useful improvement on any art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter” is eligible for patent.  “I know several thousand things that won’t work,” said Edison in 1900.

The USPTO National Inventors Hall of Fame and Museum is located at 600 Dulany Street in the Madison Building in Alexandria.  The Museum and gift shop are open Monday-Friday from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., Saturdays from noon until 5:00 p.m.  Admission is free.

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