United States patent history was made on June 19, when the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued U.S. Patent No. 10,000,000 for the invention “Coherent LADAR Using Intra-Pixel Quadrature Detection” by Joseph Marron.
In recognition of this milestone, the National Inventors Hall of Fame® Museum announces a new exhibit — “A History of Patent Designs: From 1x to 10 Million.” The exhibit opened on June 18.
More than two centuries of American innovation are celebrated in the exhibit, which features:
- A reproduction of the first U.S. patent, granted in 1790 to Samuel Hopkins for an improvement “in the making of Pot ash and Pearl ash” (fertilizer ingredients). This historic document was signed by President George Washington.
- Examples of patent cover design changes from throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, including a reproduction of an 1809 patent signed by President Thomas Jefferson.
- Examples of several original patents from the 1800s to the current day — including Patent No. 420,906 awarded to 2018 NIHF Inductee Warren Johnson for “Apparatus for charging and discharging secondary batteries.”
- The new patent cover design to be used beginning with the 10 millionth patent. The new design puts a gold-inlay script of the word “patent” at its center, expressing the value of a U.S. patent.
- Significant patent holders and patent drawings from the past 200 years, including innovators such as John Deere (improvement in plows, Patent No. 46,454), Steve Wozniak (personal computer, Patent No. 4,136,359), and Radia Perlman (Spanning-Tree Protocol, Patent No. 7,339,900).
“This milestone is an opportunity to celebrate our nation’s history of innovation and the critical role inventors and our intellectual property protection system have played in the growth and development of our economy and society,” said Andrei Iancu, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. “The USPTO is proud to partner with the National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum to celebrate the issuing of the 10 millionth U.S. patent, and the history of our remarkable patent system.”
For more information on the 10 millionth U.S. patent, visit https://10millionpatents.uspto.gov/.
The National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum is located at the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s Madison Building in Alexandria, Virginia. Open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., admission to the museum is free and open to the public. For more information visit invent.org/honor/hall-of-fame-museum.
