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.
Wright brothers patent war
There are conflicting claims over who first invented the aileron as a method for lateral flight control. In 1868, before the advent of powered, heavier-than-air aircraft — and within eleven years distant in time from the birth of all three of the involved parties in the American lawsuit — English inventor Matthew Piers Watt Boulton first patented ailerons. Boulton's patent, No. 392, awarded in 1868 some 40 years before ailerons were 'reinvented', became forgotten until the aileron was in general use. Aviation historian Charles Gibbs-Smith stated that if Boulton's ailerons had been revealed at the time of the Wright Brothers' patent filings, the brothers might not have been able to claim priority of invention for lateral control of flying machines. U.S. District Judge John R. Hazel, who heard the Wright lawsuit against Curtiss, found to the contrary, ruling in 1913 that Boulton's "assertions and suggestions were altogether too conjectural to teach others how to reduce them to practice, and therefore his patent is not anticipatory."