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
I don't think so at all. For one thing the device as eventually used may differ substantially from the patent application, particularly for a large machine. Patent descriptions are not informative in a way that makes them usable by the layman, by which I mean any human not seeking directly to profit off producing the patented item. In addition, it is, for the purposes of producing a Wikipedia article, rather like describing a scientist's work on elucidating a genetic novelty by going to her raw data tables. It's not only not necessary, it will work against you. The implementation of the patent is what succeeds or fails, and the interpretation of the data is what is published or not.
KP