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c h a p t e r ฀ t h r e e Ongoing Mechanization, 1836–1865 Processes of technological change, once begun, need not continue. Changes could level off, maintaining gains but not extending them, much as the printing press retained the form Johannes Gutenberg gave it through the eighteenth century.Before the Industrial Revolution such episodic change had been the norm. In the United States as well as Britain the Industrial Revolution broke the pattern,forming an ongoing innovational dynamic at the core of modern economic development. The momentum of early-industrializing sectors,in a context of demand growth, contributed to continuing innovation. Communication networks specific to each sector had diffused new knowledge among practitioners before 1835 and continued to do so afterward, expanding the ranks of potential inventors. But two factors may have modified network-based dynamics.First,each path faced limits in production and design capabilities that practitioners were not well positioned to overcome. Outside factors might have contributed from above, through the evolution of applied science and government policy, from abroad via diffusion, and from below, through spillovers from other innovation paths. Second, communication modes outside networks,including publications,education,and patent assignment,might have reduced the importance of practitioners’ learning, enabling many more to invent. Both factors might have accelerated innovation by broadening the institutions that contributed to it. This chapter begins to address the issue by examining ongoing innovation in the six sectors that began to mechanize before 1835. Continuing Invention Innovation in early-industrializing sectors continued after 1835 along established paths, though growing in scope and changing in form. A study of 3,900 patents identifies the trends. Invention grew in each sector. Few patents were issued before 1806 (table 3.1). Average annual patents in the next decade surged in each of the six Ongoing Mechanization, 1790–1835 67 sectors. From the 1806–15 levels annual patents quadrupled by the end of the period in textiles and grew over tenfold in every other sector. As a result, each sector received over two-thirds of its patents from 1836 through 1865. If unused, patents did little to advance innovation, and the analytical importance of patent data might be questioned.1 Many, perhaps most, patents failed to increase productivity or improve quality, but others were widely used. As patent assignments indicate, many patents were considered valuable enough that others purchased them.Assignments transferred ownership rights to the assignee,varying from the full right to the patent, a percentage of patent rights, or rights to certain locations or uses. Using Patent Office assignment records available from 1836, assignments through 1864 were determined for about 200 inventors with known occupations .2 Their patents received about 1,300 assignments, led by 151 for a steam engine and carpet inventor. About two-thirds of all surveyed inventors assigned at least one patent from 1836 through 1864 (table 3.2). Inventors assigned patents to others who might use them but also assigned them to their own firms, assigned powers of attorney, assigned patents to groups including themselves or to other family members with whom they might have worked, and even used patents as collateral for loans. Excluding Table 3.1. Patenting Trends in Early-Industrializing Sectors, 1790–1865 Steam Printing WoodTextiles Engines Press Clocks working Firearms Totals All patents 1,270 812 267 226 474 863 3,912 Annual patents 1791–1805 0.8 0.8 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 2.1 1806–15 11.7 3.4 0.6 1.1 1.0 0.8 18.6 1816–25 8.9 4.1 0.6 0.9 0.4 1.5 16.4 1826–35 17.2 9.7 2.8 2.8 7.4 3.0 42.9 1836–45 13.9 9.1 2.1 1.4 5.8 4.5 36.8 1846–55 27.2 9.6 7.4 2.0 13.2 11.5 70.9 1856–65 46.9 44.1 13.1 14.2 19.4 64.8 202.5 Patent shares 1791–1835 30.7% 22.7% 15.4% 22.1% 19.0% 6.4% 20.7% 1836–65 69.3% 77.3% 84.6% 77.9% 81.0% 93.6% 79.3% Sources: Edmund Burke, List of Patents for Inventions and Designs, Issued by the United States, from 1790 to 1847 (Washington, D.C.: J. & G. S. Gideon, 1847); U.S. Patent Office, Subject Matter Index of Patents for Inventions Issued by the United States Patent Office...

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