Introduction

Abstract

In the last year of the nineteenth century, the commissioner of the United States Patent and Trademark Office president McKinley advising him to close the office. His rationale? Everything that could possibly be invented has already been invented. Imagine that: a top-level federal bureaucrat composes an effective suicide note in which he recommends sacking himself and his underlings in the name of reducing redundancy and trimming the budget.

I was not lying. I said things that later on seemed to be untrue.

Richard Milhous Nixon