Patent Events

1809 May 5 Mary Kies Receives the First Patent by a Woman in US
Mary Dixon Kies (March 21, 1752 – 1837) was an early 19th-century American who was the first recipient of a patent granted to a woman by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, on ...
1849 May 22 Lincoln Receives a Patent
As a young man, Abraham Lincoln took a boatload of merchandise down the Mississippi River from New Salem to New Orleans. At one point the boat slid onto a dam and was set free only after ...
1882 Tesla Identifies Magnetic Induction Field Principle
In 1882, Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla identified the rotating magnetic induction field principle used in alternators and pioneered the use of this rotating and inducting electromagnetic ...
1885 Jul 14 Sarah Goode Becomes First African-American Woman to Receive a Patent
Sarah E. Goode (b.1850s-d. c. 1905) was the first African-American woman to receive a patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. However this claim is disputed by some tha...
1906 May 22 Wright Brothers Patent Granted
During their experiments of 1902 the Wrights succeeded in controlling their glider in all three axes of flight: pitch, roll and yaw. Their breakthrough discovery was the simultaneous use ...
1913 Tesla Patents Bladeless Turbine
Tesla's patents state that the device was intended for the use of fluids as motive agents, as distinguished from the application of the same for the propulsion or compression of fluids (t...
1915 Aug 4 Tesla Files Lawsuit Against Guglielmo Marconi
Tesla was embroiled in other problems at the time, but when Marconi won the Nobel Prize in 1911, Tesla was furious. He sued the Marconi Company for infringement in 1915, but was in no fin...
1970 Sep 30 Toll Booth Patent Issued
A series of two consecutive toll booths along a single lane of access and exit, with toll-due sign, the toll-receiving receptacle, the toll-booth treadle, information and direction signs,...