Stories from the patent record
Unusual, notable, and historically significant US patents — the inventions that changed everything, the ones that were never built, and a few that should never have been granted.
A Toilet for Automatically Exhausting Odious Air
An 1898 patent for a self-venting toilet seat that drew foul air directly into the chimney — a Victorian solution to a Victorian problem.
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Chester Carlson Invented the Photocopier. Twenty Companies Said No.
A patent attorney tired of copying documents by hand invented dry photocopying in his kitchen in 1938. IBM, Kodak, GE, RCA, and the US Navy all turned it down. The company that finally said yes became Xerox.
Read the story →Stephanie Kwolek Invented a Fiber Stronger Than Steel — and It Has Stopped Countless Bullets Since
In 1965, a DuPont chemist was working with a cloudy solution that her colleagues assumed was a mistake and wanted to throw out. She insisted on spinning it into fiber anyway. The result was Kevlar.
Read the story →Velcro Was Invented on a Dog Walk
In 1941, a Swiss engineer came home from a hunting trip covered in burrs. Instead of just picking them off, he put one under a microscope. It took him more than a decade to turn what he saw into a patent.
Read the story →The Patent for a Machine That Kicks You in the Rear
In 2001, the USPTO granted a patent for a coin-operated amusement device whose entire function is to let a user pay to have a rotating boot kick them in the buttocks. It is real, it is fully illustrated, and it is exactly what it sounds like.
Read the story →The Wright Brothers' Patent Nearly Grounded American Aviation
The 1906 patent on the 'Flying Machine' didn't just protect the Wright brothers' invention. The way they enforced it triggered a decade of litigation that left American aircraft design years behind Europe's by the time World War I began.
Read the story →A Nurse in Queens Invented Home Security in 1966
Marie Van Brittan Brown worked irregular nursing shifts in a high-crime neighborhood and didn't feel safe answering her door. So she and her husband designed — and patented — the first home security system with closed-circuit cameras, a remote door release, two-way audio, and a panic button. Decades before any of it was commercial.
Read the story →He Made the First Cell Phone Call to Gloat at His Rival
On a Manhattan sidewalk in April 1973, Motorola's Martin Cooper placed the first handheld cellular phone call. He dialed the head of the competing team at Bell Labs — specifically to tell him he'd lost the race. The patent was filed six months later.
Read the story →The Patent for Surviving a Fire by Breathing Through the Toilet
In 1982, an inventor received a US patent for a fresh-air breathing device intended for high-rise fires. The device was a snorkel. You inserted it past the water in the toilet bowl and breathed the fresh air drawn down the plumbing's vent stack.
Read the story →Cohen and Boyer Patented the Tools That Built Biotech
In 1980, Stanford University was granted a patent for a method of splicing DNA from one organism into another. The patent generated roughly $255 million in licensing fees before it expired — and made every recombinant drug in modern medicine legally possible.
Read the story →Spencer Silver Invented an Adhesive No One Wanted for Twelve Years
In 1968, a 3M chemist named Spencer Silver was trying to make a stronger adhesive. He accidentally made a weaker one that didn't stick permanently. The product it eventually became — Post-it Notes — did not ship for another twelve years.
Read the story →Smucker's Patented the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich
In 1999, the J.M. Smucker Company received a US patent on a 'Sealed Crustless Sandwich.' For seven years, the company sent cease-and-desist letters to small-town caterers, school lunch programs, and competing sandwich makers, before the patent was finally pulled apart on reexamination.
Read the story →Sarah Goode Patented a Bed That Hid Inside a Desk
Sarah E. Goode was born in slavery in 1855. By 1885 she owned a furniture store on Chicago's South Side and held the first US patent ever granted to an African-American woman — for a folding cabinet bed designed to make tenement apartments livable.
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