American Bridge Patents

by Kemp, Emory L.

• ISBN13: 9781933202068
• ISBN10: 1933202068
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-08-10
• Publisher: West Virginia Univ Pr

Summary

"American Bridge Patents" is a collection of essays derived from thousands of pages of patents at the U.S. Patent Office. It focuses on the historic bridge work that culminated during the first century of the office's operation. The Institute of the History of Technology and Industrial Archaeology at West Virginia University, long interested in bridge engineering and its free-enterprise setting in the nineteenth century, compiled and analyzed these patterns. "American Bridge Patents" is the first publication of these records in a single collection. The essays in this volume range in subject from how early bridge patents helped shape modern bridge engineering to the history of the Patent Office itself. The second part of the book contains a list of over six hundred bridge patents and includes a section on how to conduct online searches through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Web site.

Author Biography

Emory L. Kemp, who writes and speaks actively on historic structures, is founder and first director of the Institute for the History of Technology and Industrial Archaeology at West Virginia University. Kemp edited American Bridge Patents with Shelly Birdsong-Maddex, who helped assemble patent records for this publication while pursuing her graduate studies. Eric N. DeLony has been at the forefront of efforts to document and preserve historic bridges under the auspices of the National Park Service. Larry N. Sypolt has been involved in numerous projects combining his expertise in archival work and historic preservation studies.

 

Table of Contents

Patents punctuate the history of nineteenth-century bridges	p. 3
The development of the U.S. patent system	p. 79
Discovering technological and engineering history through U.S. patent drawings : a personal view	p. 99
A gallery of patent drawings	p. 115
Researching bridge patents on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Website	p. 125
A list of over six hundred bridge patents	p. 135
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