Wright Brothers’ Patent Application, Missing for 36 Years, Turns Up Underground; Air & Space Magazine, 4/4/16

Tony Reichhardt, Air & Space Magazine; Wright Brothers’ Patent Application, Missing for 36 Years, Turns Up Underground:

"The Wright brothers’ original patent application for a “flying machine,” which had been missing for 36 years, has turned up in an underground storage center in Kansas. The find, reported in detail in The Washington Post and The Kansas City Star over the weekend, came 113 years, almost to the day, after the brothers filed their patent on March 23, 1903.

They were turned down at the time (the first powered flight was still months away), and the patent wasn’t granted until 1906. Selected pages from the patent application will go on display at the National Archives in Washington D.C. on May 20."

Wright Brothers’ Long-Lost Patent Gets a Private Family Viewing; Air & Space Magazine, 7/8/16

Paul Glenshaw, Air & Space Magazine; Wright Brothers’ Long-Lost Patent Gets a Private Family Viewing:

"On July 2, a pair of visitors to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. came face-to-face with a vital part of their family’s history for the first time—documents that also mark the beginning of the age of flight. The Wright brothers’ great-grandniece Janette Davis and her son Keith Yoerg were ushered into a room used for preparing exhibits, where they were greeted by Debra Wall, the Deputy Archivist of the United States, and Senior Registrar Jim Zeender. On a long table were three folders containing the once lost, recently rediscovered patent application of the Wright brothers—the airplane’s birth certificate...

Yoerg is working toward a career in spaceflight, which he sees entering an era of great innovation. He appreciates why his famous ancestors went to the trouble to get a patent. “They realized how essential it was in order to protect their invention,” he says, “And obtaining it before they had flown [the powered airplane] shows how holistically they approached the problem.” When the last folder was opened, there were quiet gasps. Anyone who has studied the Wright brothers in detail has seen the famous patent drawing based on the 1902 glider. Davis and Yoerg found themselves staring at an original. They took a very long look."

THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES RELEASED A FREE COLORING BOOK OF WEIRD PATENTS; Popular Science, 2/5/16

Kelsey D. Atherton, Popular Science; THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES RELEASED A FREE COLORING BOOK OF WEIRD PATENTS:

"The National Archives of the United States just released a coloring book full of strange patents. It’s all available now as a free PDF, and it’s 17 glorious pages of sheer inventive weirdness. The patents range for chicken goggles to a hat that automatically salutes to the landing craft used in D-Day. It’s an utter delight.

Why the coloring book? Coloring books for adults are having something of a cultural moment not seen since the sarirical coloring books of the 1960s, with the task heralded for its mindfulness and derided as something merely for children."