Abstract
History of technology in the post-medieval Western world has to be a history that deals with dynamic change, one that attempts to explain how positive feedback took place among increasingly integrated material and social systems, so that technological change became not an occasional, but an incessant, event. Since the concept of intellectual property protected by patents for invention emerged in history at the same time as this increasing dynamism of technology, it is tempting to assume there is some connection between the two.1 On that assumption, students of technological change have frequently viewed patents as incentives to invent or as a measure of invention. This chapter does not debate the validity of those views, but attempts to outline quite a different feature of a patent system in action: as an institution it elicits behaviour aimed at patent management, which in turn acts as an invisible college of technology, in which learning stimulates further technological change.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Borut, M. (1977) ‘The Scientific American in Nineteenth Century America’, unpublished PhD dissertation, New York University, pp. 89–151.
Bystryn, M.N. (1981) ‘Variation in artistic circles’, The Sociological Quarterly, 22 (Winter).
Chubin, D.E. (1983) Sociology of Sciences: An Annotated Bibliography on Invisible Colleges, 1972–1981 (New York: Garland).
Constant, E.W. II (1989) ‘The Social Locus of Technological Practice: Community, System, or Organization’, in W.E. Bijker, T.P. Hughes and T. Pinch (eds), The Social Construction of Technological Systems (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press).
Cooper, C.C. (1987a) ‘Thomas Blanchard’s Woodworking Machines: Tracking 19th-Century Technological Diffusion’, IA, The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology, 13.
Cooper, C.C. (1987b) ‘The Evolution of American Patent Management: The Blanchard Lathe as a Case Study’, Prologue, the Journal of the National Archives, 19, 4 (Winter).
Cooper, C.C. (1989) ‘A Patent Transformation: Woodworking Mechanization in Philadelphia before 1856’, paper presented 13 May, at ‘Early American Technology — A Mid-Atlantic Perspective: A Conference in Honor of Brooke Hindle’, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Cooper, C.C. (1991a) Shaping Invention: Thomas Blanchard’s Machinery and Patent Manage-ment in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Columbia University Press).
Cooper, C.C. (1991b) ‘Social Construction of Invention through Patent Management: The Case of Thomas Blanchard’s Woodworking Machinery’, Technology and Culture, 32 (October).
Cowan, R.S. (1989) ‘The Consumption Junction: A Proposal for Research Strategies in the Sociology of Technology’, in W.E. Bijker, T.P. Hughes and T. Pinch (eds), The Social Construction of Technological Systems (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press).
Crane, D. (1972) Invisible Colleges: Diffusion of Knowledge in Scientific Communities (University of Chicago Press).
Curti, M. (1950) ‘America at the World Fairs, 1851–1893’, American Historical Review, 55.
Dood, K.J. (1983) ‘Patent Models and the Patent Law 1790–1880’, Journal of the Patent Office Society, 65, 4 and 5 (April and May).
Dood, K.J. (1984) ‘Why Models?’, in American Enterprise: Nineteenth Century Patent Models (New York City: Cooper-Hewitt Museum, Smithsonian Institution).
Dood, K.J. (1990) ‘Patenting and Patent Models in Nineteenth-Century America’, in Barbara Suit Janssen (ed.), Icons of Invention: American Patent Models (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution), pp. 11–13.
Dood, K.J. (1991) ‘Pursuing the Essence of Inventions: Reissuing Patents in the 19th Century’, in Technology and Culture, 32 (October).
DuBois, H.M. (1878) ‘Bent Timber for Rims’, The Hub, 20 (2 November).
Dupree, A.H. (1986) Science in the Federal Government (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press; 1st edn, 1957).
Federico, P.J. (1960) ‘Records of Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin Patent’, Technology and Culture, 1 (Spring).
Ferguson, E.S. (1977) ‘The Mind’s Eye: Nonverbal Thought in Technology’, Science, 197 (26 August).
Ferguson, E.S. (1980) Oliver Evans, Inventive Genius of the American Industrial Revolution (Greenville, Del.: Hagley Museum).
Johnson, W.A. trans. (1963) Christopher Polhem, The Father of Swedish Technology (Hartford, Conn.: Trinity College). Journal of the Franklin Institute, vol. 3, first series (March 1829).
Kuhn, T. (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press).
Lodge, D. (1984) Small World (New York: Warner Books).
Malone, P.M. (1988) ‘Little Kinks and Devices at Springfield Armory, 1892–1918’, IA, The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology, 14, 1.
Meier, H.A. (1981) ‘Thomas Jefferson and a Democratic Technology’, in C.W. Pursell (ed.), Technology in America (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press).
Merton, R.K. (1988) ‘The Matthew Effect in Science, II’, Isis, 79 (December).
Mirsky, J. and Nevins, A. (1952) The World of Eli Whitney (New York: Macmillan).
Munn and Co. (1971) The United States Patent Law (New York).
Post, R.C. (1976) Physics, Patents, and Politics: A Biography of Charles Grafton Page (New York: Science History Publications).
Post, R.C. (1983) ‘Reflections of American Science and Technology at the New York Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1853’, Journal of American Studies, 17.
Price, D.J. de S. (1954) ‘Is Technology Historically Independent of Science? A Study in Statistical Historiography’, Technology and Culture, 6 (Autumn).
Post, R.C. (1971) ‘Some Remarks on Elitism in Information and the Invisible College Phenomenon in Science’, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 22 (March–April).
Post, R.C. (1975) Science Since Babylon, enlarged edition (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press)
Post, R.C. and Beaver, D. de B. (1966) ‘Collaboration in an Invisible College’, American Psychologist, 21 (November).
Ray, W. and M. (1974) The Art of Invention: Patent Models and Their Makers (Princeton, NJ: The Pyne Press).
Reingold, N. (1960) ‘U.S. Patent Office Records as Sources for the History of Invention and Technological Property’, Technology and Culture, 1.
Robinson, E. and Musson, A.E. (1969) James Watt and the Steam Revolution: A Documentary History (London: Adams and Dart).
Rosenberg, N. (1982) Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics (Cambridge University Press).
Sherwood, M. (1983) ‘The Origins and Development of the American Patent System’, American Scientist, 71 (Sept.–Oct.).
Sinclair, B. (1974) Philadelphia’s Philosopher Mechanics, A History of the Franklin Institute 1824–1865 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press).
Smith, M.R. (1977) Harpers Ferry Armory an the New Technology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).
Smith, M.R. (ed.) (1985) Military Enterprise and Technological Change: Perspectives on the American Experience (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press).
Thomson, R. (1987) ‘Learning by Selling and Invention: The Case of the Sewing Machine’, Journal of Economic History, 47 (June).
Thomson, R. (1989) The Path to Mechanized Shoe Production in the United States (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press).
(Waters, Asa H). Anon. (1881) ‘Thomas Blanchard, the Inventor’, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 63 (July).
Wilkinson, D. (1982) ‘Reminiscences (1846)’, in G. Kulik, R. Parks and T.Z. Penn (eds), The New England Mill Village, 1790–1860 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press), p. 88.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1993 Ross Thomson
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cooper, C.C. (1993). Nineteenth-Century American Patent Management as an Invisible College of Technology. In: Thomson, R. (eds) Learning and Technological Change. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22855-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22855-3_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-22857-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-22855-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Economics & Finance CollectionEconomics and Finance (R0)