Patents: Another way to publish
MAR 01, 1978
The four million patents issued since 1790 have helped “promote the progress of the useful arts,” benefitting not only the inventors but also the public, by allowing useful inventions to come into general use.
DOI: 10.1063/1.2994965
Some scientists, including physicists, think that there is something rather crassly materialistic about being interested in patents, and that patents are usually given for clever trivialities. Edwin Land, the founder and chairman of Polaroid, who recently received his 500th patent and was at the same time inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame, said on that occasion that “an inventor is thought of as an ingenious man who puts a date roller on the chicken so that each fresh egg will receive a date stamp.”
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© 1978 American Institute of Physics
