K P wrote:
On 3/24/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
There *would* be a problem, however, if Wikipedia were to treat every patent application filed and accepted at the U.S. Patent Office as sufficient documentation to warrant mention in Wikipedia. All kinds of crackpot scientific theories get patented. (They probably have a whole wing just for storing blueprints of perpetual motion machines.)
Reasoning back to the lawsuits that we're discussing here, I would say that the existence of a lawsuit and court decision is akin to issuance of a patent by the U.S. Patent Office. It's an undeniable fact that the patent was issued, but until said patent is deemed noteworthy enough to be mentioned in a scientific journal, it's not significant or noteworthy or credible enough for mention in Wikipedia.
The Sept. 25, 1920 issue of "Scientific American" at page 310 included one paragraph articles for recently patented inventions of
- A shawl muffler
- A gun camera
- An apparatus for measuring ohmic resistance of liquids and solutions
- An incandescent lamp protecting device
- A seat for agricultural implements
- A clod breaking agricultural implement
- A stepladder
- A hydrant
- A sponge rubber article and method of making same
- A pressure bar mechanism
- A price marking system
- A copy holder
- A grinding tool
- A combination socket wrench
- A newspaper vending machine
- A bearing puller
- A speed operated circuit closer
- A cushio9n support for large musical devices
- A vaporizer
- An internal combustion engine
- An automatic gas controller
- A railway car door
- A toy book
- A headlight dimmer
- A cushion tire
- A design for a calendar mounting
- A design for a spool holder
- A design for a doll
We have a lot of notable patents to write about
They weren't notable when the patents were issued though, but later.
My comments were, of course, in response to the notion that notability depends on being included in a secondary source
There are many such patents, too, that fall in such general listings. Was the agricultural clod breaking tool the ripper which mechanized and revolutionized farming in some areas of the Central Valley, or was it some non-functional, go nowhere version of a plough for limited applications?
The invention in question was by J. W. Scott of Falcon, CO. The description: "The invention relates more particularly to clod breakers for use in connection with potato diggers and plows. An object is to provide a clod-breaking machine having a positive crushing, rolling and breaking mechanism, resiliently carried on the implement and being power-driven to effectually crush and pulverize earth being plowed up by the implement. A further object is to provide adjustable means for carrying the resilient tension." It would take further research to find out what happened with the patent later.
I don't know, and having reviewed patents (for toupee devices for historical reasons) at least once, there seemed to be to be no way that anyone could from the context of the patent application alone could tell how successful any such device became or would become (the latter being speculative original research, what I call SPOR).
In many cases these patents never went beyond the stage of being a great idea. Bringing the idea to manufacture could be an insurmountable task for many of these individuals, no matter how good the idea.
Interesting how important the ripper is to agriculture today, made it possible to farm some of the premium land of the Central Valley, yet it's not in Wikipedia. Is it notable? Yup. No tandem offset plow, harrows yes, but no ripper. Oh, I see it's called a chisel plow, on the plough page, which redirects itself to the plough page, and no redirect for ripper, and it is not listed on its disambiguation page. Clod breaking tillage equipment is of major importance to agriculture, but that doesn't mean I can tell the history of the ripper or chiseler from its patent application or anything about it that should be in Wikipedia that isn't in secondary sources.
There are many, many such inventions that drove the industrial age. Many of them are now taken for granted, and many more got absolutely nowhere. Descriptions, such as those in Scientific American, should satisfy those concerned with notability, but a fair description of these devices will still require reference to the originall documents.
Ec