Patents?

[littlealison]

Is there another online source of information about patents and their authors than the European Patent Office (EPO) and their online site http://www.epo.org/searching/free/espacenet.html ?

I have been trying to find the patents that Frederic Siemens obtained in about 1870 for the tank system of melting glass - new technology for a continuous system. They don't seem to be there although the site goes back to 1859.

I have copies of 4 patents, one of Siemens for 1856 found on another site, can't find the later ones: and three authored by my ancestor John Little in 1868, 1875 and 1881. They aren't there.

I am thinking that John (and/or his father John) were possibly instrumental in introducing the tank system to Newton-le-Willows and Dublin after they left Glasgow, but I need to find out when the system was first patented and could have been used.

Can anyone help? - Alison

[Anne H]

Hi Alison,

Have you tried searching using ''Frederic Siemens, Patent for melting glass''?

Not sure if it's your Frederic but there are several mentions that come up using the above search. I didn't actually check through them to see if the actual patent was there.

Regards,
Anne H

[littlealison]

Anne, I have had a quick look but no actual patent dates so far.

All I have found before are two refs to '1870 and 1872', the rest are very vague, I am wondering if there is something earlier - I know he started in glass in 1867 when his brother died and he took over the works in Dresden.

Thanks though. I will look again later but have to go to Oxford! - Alison

[Currie]

This US Government publication from 1880 on manufacture of glass has info on tank furnaces from page 37. According to it the first Siemens tank furnace was in 1861, with the dividing into compartments with ‘floating bridges” in 1872, and later replacing those with a “floating refining vessel”. http://archive.org/stream/reportonmanuf ... 6/mode/2up

A couple of interesting books I found in my travels:

“Glass and Glass Manufacture”, 1918.
http://archive.org/stream/glassglassman ... 6/mode/2up

Popular Science magazine, 1893, pages 577-599.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=cCA ... &q&f=false

Alan

[Alan SHARP]

Is there another online source of information about patents and their authors than the European Patent Office (EPO) and their online site http://www.epo.org/searching/free/espacenet.html ?

.......Edit......Can anyone help? - Alison

Greetings Alison.

Quite a number of years ago I did extensive searches [some 200] for early patents to do with milking systems. The EPO site was one of the best for results, once you got into the system, and learned way of doing things back then. I see the site has been upgraded since I did my searches, and I needed quite a bit of help in the beginning, finding my way around the site.

The American patent applications were the best for finding associated [field] patents because they listed the previous patent numbers, around the world, that had been researched in the process of filing for a new patent. Once you have a number, then you can look that number up, to see if it is significant to your research.

Often the patents were not filed by the inventor, but by the backer [company, person, corporate etc] who proposed entering the market place with the product. In some cases the “inventor’s name” did not make as far as the indexes to the patents. Because the systems in many cases were totally new, words to describe the process had to be borrowed from other applications. Names attributed to / associated with, the process only developed over time.

Often when I would be thinking / researching “milking machine” I would find the patent title would be along the lines of “Mechanical apparatus for extracting bovine milk” etc.

All the best with your research.

Alan SHARP.

[littlealison]

Alan (Currie) - I can't access the US govt publication - it just says no file metadata!
Can you give some details? I haven't found anything on tanks as early as this. Only the regenerative furnace.
The others esp the first are 'must reads' I think!

Alan (Sharp) Yes, I have had some difficulty in getting into the way of the site. Since the other Alan is referring me to a US publication, your hints on the US patents should be useful.
A difficulty - here I am with three (British) patents with numbers by John Little - but they just say No. 5285 (1868), 3154 (1875), 3050 (1881)....they should relate to the long numbers the EPO use, but I can't make out how!

[littlealison]

A P.S. - the first patent is definitely about pots, the other two are refinements of tanks.

[littlealison]

PPS - Thanks, both!

[SarahND]

Hi Alison,
Here are two of many from the U.S. patent office:

United States Patent Office
Charles W. Siemens, of Westminster, England and Frederick Siemens, of Dresden, Saxony
Improvement in Glass-furnaces
Letters Patent No. 127,806, dated June 11, 1872

United States Patent Office
Frederick Siemens, of Dresden, German Empire
Improvement in the Manufacture of Glass
Letters Patent No. 189,800, dated April 17, 1877

There are lots of patents by Siemens in a Google patent search. http://www.google.com/patents The search isn't perfect and it does help if you have the number, but I have found quite a few of my grandfather's patents and also some of my father's this way.

The earliest I can find for the Siemens is 1864, No. 41,788 Improved Regenerator-Furnace March 1, 1864, but it doesn't refer specifically to glass.

I can't find any for John Little.

All the best,
Sarah

[Currie]

Hello Alison,

Here’s the US book again with download options. Let me know if it still doesn’t work.
http://archive.org/details/reportonmanufact00unitrich

Same book, different edition.
http://archive.org/details/reportonmanufact00unit

This is a link to a pdf document about researching British patents. The document is dated May 2011. http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j ... GY&cad=rja

“Patent Specifications
The esp@cenet database, (http://gb.espacenet.com), contains many old British patents. Officially, they are supposed to be available back to 1900, but you will find some dating back to 1892. It had appeared that the intention was to add all the old British patents to this database, but nothing has been added in the last five or six years, so it now looks unlikely this will happen.”

According to that publication there were 3991 British patents in 1868, 4561 in 1875, 5751 in 1881, 18225 in 1915, and 33019 (or 226571) in 1925. On the new Espacenet advanced search, if you type GB in the publication number and the year in the publication date and nothing else, you get less than ten results for each of the earlier years, over 12000 for 1915, and over 17000 for 1925.

If I’ve done that correctly it is possibly an indication of the usefulness of the site for early patent years. Also for most of the few early results there is no inventors name and no title shown.

If you look at some of the early ones you’ll see that the long number they use is the year plus five numbers.

All the best,
Alan