July 31: Samuel Hopkins Receives the First U.S. Patent
Prayer Idea
Pray for people who are working on new inventions to make life better for others.
History Note
Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution says that Congress has the power “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
Congress has created laws for copyrights, which applied to books and maps and, as technology developed, to photographs, recorded music, films, and other creative pursuits. Congress has also created laws for patents, which apply to inventions or specific ways of doing things. Copyrights and patents are designed to give the original creator the exclusive right to make money from that creation for a limited period of time.
Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph were the first committee given the job of evaluating patent applications in 1790. Samuel Hopkins received the first U.S. patent on July 31 of that year. President George Washington signed the official paperwork.
Hopkins had developed an improved method for making potash and pearl ash. Both substances were created by burning wood, mixing the ashes with water, and boiling off the liquid. Potash was used to fertilize fields, to clean fibers for making cloth, and for making soap. Pearl ash was used in glassmaking, to make gunpowder, and as a leavening agent in baking.
After receiving his patent, Hopkins published a pamphlet called An Address to the Manufacturers of Pot and Pearl Ash with an Explanation of Samuel Hopkins’s Patent Method of Making the Same. He offered to grant other people permission to use his manufacturing method and pay him either in cash or in casks of potash.
As many other inventors have since discovered, developing a great idea does not automatically mean financial success. Though a few people licensed his technology, Hopkins did not become wealthy. Hopkins received two other patents in 1813 and 1817, both for improved methods of making “flour of mustard,” ground mustard seeds.
Here is the 1790 paperwork granting Samuel Hopkins the first U.S. patent. Image courtesy Mount Vernon and the Smithsonian Institution.
Learn More
Watch this video about the first U.S. patent.
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