The charms of the patent office archives—and the hilariously insane inventions they contain—are well-known. But is it possible that a few of those failed entrepreneurs were actually onto something? New York lawyer Martin Galese thinks so—and he’s resurrecting the ghosts of patents past by offering 3D models of them online.
Galese, who works as a software patent lawyer when he’s not sifting through forgotten inventions, runs a Tumblr called Patent-able. There, he posts drawings and CAD models of objects that were once patented but now exist in the public domain. It turns out that expired patents make up most of the eight million patents registered by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. More than six million are now public domain, making up a vast but ignored trove of inventions ranging from the funny (a fancy hat holder from 1907) to the legitimately useful (learning chopsticks).
via Gizmodo
