X-Patent
On July 31, 1790 inventor Samuel Hopkins of Pittsford, Vermont became the first person to be issued a patent in the United States. His patented invention was an improvement in the "making of Pot Ash by a new apparatus & process." The earliest patent law required that a working model of each invention be produced in miniature.
Patent Act of 1790
Fifty-seven patents were granted during the three years the 1790 Patent Act existed. Three of these patents were granted in 1790, thirty-three in 1791, eleven in 1792, and ten in 1793 before February, which is when the following patent act was adopted. There is little available information regarding the subject matter of these patents, because all of these records along with other documents of the Patent Office were destroyed in the Patent Office Fire of 1836. The first patent was granted on July 31, 1790, to Samuel Hopkins for his invention of "Making Pot and Pearl Ashes." Potash was used as an ingredient in several fields of manufacturing, such as making glass and soap, dying cloth, and producing both saltpeter and gunpowder. Samuel Hopkins of Pittsford, Vermont is generally misunderstood to be the recipient of this first patent, but the actual recipient was a different Samuel Hopkins from a town north of Baltimore, Maryland. Hopkins left behind a series of manuscripts describing the utility of his discovery of Potash, which is derived from a crude form of potassium carbonate and may be deemed as one of America's first chemicals to become widely used in industrial fields. The third patent was granted to a man named Oliver Evans on December 18, 1790. This patent involved about five individual inventions all related to the manufacture of flour. The fourth patent was granted on January 29, 1791, to Francis Bailey for inventing punches for types; it is the first patent whose existing copy remains in the Patent Office archives. The document is signed by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Edmund Randolph. It contains only the grant and does not detail any specific aspects of the invention and its usage.