Part of this firm’s motto is “honoring tradition and the spirit of innovation.”  Personally, I couldn’t think of a better way to honor tradition than to decorate this website with illustrations from long expired U.S. patents.  Some drawings you may recognize.  Others are more obscure.  Nevertheless, each illustration reflects back to a time when patent drawings were painstakingly hand drafted.

Many contemporaries consider this to be a lost art, as today’s patent drawings are by and large prepared through computer aided drafting (CAD) systems.  What used to take weeks or months to prepare can now be prepared in a matter of hours.  Today, one can only imagine how difficult it must have been to, say, mill a gear from a block of steel–working only from a set of drawings and the guidance of an engineer.  But that’s how many products were made at one point in history.

As I continue posting about all things related to patent law, I also hope to continue showcasing inventions from yesteryear.  In an age of high-speed computing and communication, it is nice to look back to a time when things were much more difficult to conceive, design and produce.