From Print to Patents: Living on Instruments in Early Modern Europe

Among the exceptions: Iliffe Rob , ‘“In the warehouse’: Privacy, property, and priority in the early Royal Society”, History of science, xxx (1992), 29–67; Sorrenson Richard , “Dollond & Son's pursuit of achromaticity”, History of science, xxxix (2001), 31–55; Bertucci Paola , “A philosophical business: Edward Nairne and the patent medical electrical machine (1782)”, History of technology, xxiii (2001), 41–58; and Bryden David J. , “Patents for scientific instruments in Georgian England”, in preparation.

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/∼hsdept/facultyftiagioli/instrumentdatabase.doc. This essay is part of a two-article project. The second part — “Galilei v. Capra: Intellectual property between paper and brass” — Is forthcoming in this journal.

Warner Deborah , “What is a scientific instrument, when did it become one, and why?”, The British journal for the history of science, xxiii (1990), 83–93.

The relationship between instrument-makers and guilds in London has been discussed in Crawforth Michael , “Instrument makers in the London guilds”, Annals of science, xliv (1987), 319–77; Brown Joyce , Mathematical instrument-makers in the Grocers' Company, 1668–1800 (London, 1978); Brown Joyce , “Guild organization and the instrument-making trade, 1550–1830: The Grocers' and Clockmakers' Companies”, Annals of science, xxxvi (1979), 1–34; Clifton Gloria , “The Spectaclemakers' Company and the origins of the optical instrument-making trade in London”, in Anderson R. G. W. Bennett J. A. Ryan W. F. (eds), Making instruments count (Aldershot, 1993), 341–64; and Stewart Larry , “Science, instruments, and guilds in early modern Britain”, Early science and medicine, x (2005), 392–410. Also relevant are Crawforth Michael , “Evidence from trade cards for the scientific instrument industry”, Annals of science, xlii (1985), 453–554; Bryden D. J. , “Evidence from advertising for mathematical instrument making in London, 1556–1714”, Annals of science, xlix (1992), 301–36; Bryden D. J. Simms D. L. , “Spectacles improved to perfection and approved of by the Royal Society”, Annals of science, 1 (1993), 1–32; and Berlin Michael , ‘“Broken in all pieces’: Artisans and the regulation of workmanship in early modern London”, in Crossick Geoffrey (ed.), The artisan and the European town, 1500–1900 (Aldershot, 1997), 75–91. On Paris and other Continental contexts see Augarde Jean-Dominique , “La fabrication des instruments scientifiques du XVIIIe siècle et la corporation des fondeurs”, Blondel Christine (eds), Studies in the history of scientific instruments (London, 1989), 53–72; Daumas Maurice , Scientific instruments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and their makers (London, 1989), 90–106; Turner A. J. , From pleasure and profit to science and security: Etienne Lenoir and the transformation of precision instrument-making in France, 1760–1830 (Cambridge, 1989), esp. pp. 6–13; and Gouk Penelope , The ivory sundials of Nurenberg, 1500–1700 (Cambridge, 1988), 77–81.

On Tycho's strong proprietary attitude about his instruments, see Thoren Victor , The Lord of Uraniborg (Cambridge, 1990), 150, 267. On Galileo's comparable stances see Biagioli Mario , Galileo's instruments of credit: Telescopes, images, secrecy (Chicago, 2006), 77–134.

See for instance, Sorrenson Richard , “Scientific instrument makers at the Royal Society of London, 1720–1780”, Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University, 1993.

Woodcroft Bennet , Alphabetical index of patentees of inventions from March 2, 1617 to October 1, 1852 (London, 1854; hereafter cited as AIPI), 273. The patent is reproduced and discussed in Huygens Christiaan , Oeuvres complètes (La Haye, 1888–; hereafter cited as HOC), xvii, 176–7. The clock mentioned in the patent was a modification of Huygens's pendulum clock by Bruce Alexander , an English nobleman and founding fellow of the Royal Society. On the institutional context of this patent see Hunter Michael , Establishing the new science: The experience of the early Royal Society (Woodbridge, 1989), 87–89.

Sustained discussions of these issues are in Long Pamela , Openness, secrecy, authorship: Technical arts and the culture of knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore, 2001); David Paul “From keeping ‘Nature's secrets’ to the institutionalization of ‘open science’”, University of Oxford, Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History, no. 23, July 2001 (www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/Economics/History/); David Paul , “Intellectual property institutions and the panda's thumb: Patents, copyrights, and trade secrets in economic theory and history”, in Wallerstein Michael (eds), Global dimensions of intellectual property rights in science and technology (Washington, DC, 1993), 19–62; and Eamon William , “From the secrets of nature to public knowledge: The origins of the concept of openness in science”, Minerva, xxiii (1985), 321–47.

On the protection of invention in Venice see Mandich Giulio , “Venetian origins of inventors' rights”, Journal of the Patent Office Society, xlii (1960), 378–82, and Mandich Giulio , “Venetian patents (1450–1550)”, Journal of the Patent Office Society, xxx (1948), 166–224. The original Italian versions of Mandich's articles are more extensive and reliable. For later Venetian patents: Berveglieri Roberto Poni Carlo , “Three centuries of Venetian patents: 1474–1796 (résumé)”, Acta historiae rerum naturalium necnon technicarum, xvii (1982), 381–93; Berveglieri Roberto Rossetto Andrea , “Tre secoli di privilegi industriali veneziani (1474–1788): I casi polesani”, Studi polesani, xx (1988), 81–153; Berveglieri Roberto , Le vie di Venezia: Inventori, brevetti, tecnologia e legislazione nei secoli XIII-XVII (Sommacampagna, 1999); and Berveglieri Roberto , Inventori stranieri a Venezia (1474–1788): Importazione di tecnologia e circolazione di tecnici artigiani inventori (Venice, 1995). On the protection of printed books in Venice see Gerulaitis Leonardas Vytautas , Printing and publishing in fifteenth-century Venice (Chicago, 1976), and especially Brown Horatio , The Venetian printing press (New York, 1891), which includes many documents.

Sixteenth-century Spanish patents (and some information about how they were awarded) are discussed in Tapia Nicolas García , Patentes de invención españolas en el siglo de oro (Madrid, 1990), 39–52; and Pérez Pablo , “Los inventos llevados de España a las Indias en la segunda mitad del siglo XVI”, Cuadernos de investigación histórica, vii (1983), 35–54. On England see Hulme Wyndham , “The history of the patent system under the Prerogative and at Common Law”, Law quarterly review, xii (1896), 141–54; Hulme Wyndham , “The history of the patent system under the Prerogative and at Common Law: A sequel”, Law quarterly review, xvi (1900), 44–56; Gomme Allan , Patents of invention: Origin and growth of the patent system in Britain (London, 1946); MacLeod Christine , Inventing the Industrial Revolution: The English patent system, 1660–1800 (Cambridge, 1988); Dutton Harold , The patent system and inventive activity during the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1852 (Manchester, 1984); and AIPI. On the Netherlands see Doorman Gerard , Patents for inventions in the Netherlands during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries (The Hague, 1942); and Davids Karel , “Patents and patentees in the Dutch Republic between c. 1580 and 1720”, History and technology, xvi (2000), 263–83. Hapsburg patents are discussed in Pohlmann Hansjörg , “The inventor's rights in early German law”, Journal of the Patent Office Society, xliii (1961), 121–39.

On Genoa see Calegari Manlio , La società patria delle arti e manifatture (Florence, 1969); and Bulferetti Luigi Costantini Claudio , Industria e commercio in Liguria nell'età del Risorgimento (1700–1861) (Milan, 1966), 84–100. On Lucca see Sabbatini Renzo , L'innovazione prudente (Florence, 1996). On Florence and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany see Prager Frank , “Brunelleschi's patent”, Journal of the Patent Office Society, xxviii (1946), 109–35; Prager Frank Scaglia Gustina , Brunelleschi: Studies of his technology and inventions (Cambridge, MA, 1970), 111–23; Malanima Paolo , La decadenza di un'economia cittadina (Bologna, 1982), 148–54; and Molà Luca , “Artigiani e brevetti nella Firenze del Cinquecento”, in Franceschi Franco Fossi Gloria (eds), La grande storia dell'artigianato (Florence, 2000), iii, 57–79. On Piedmont see Dolza Luisa Hilaire-Pérez Liliane , “Inventions and privileges in the eighteenth century: Norms and practices. A comparison between France and Piedmont”, History of technology, xxiv (2002), 21–44. On early modern Italy in general see Molà Luca , “Il mercato delle innovazioni nell' Italia del Rinascimento”, in Arnoux Mathieu Monnet Pierre (eds), Le technicien dans la cité en Europe occidentale, 1250–1650 (Rome, 2004), 215–50. Silberstein Marcel , Erfindungsschutz und merkantilistische Gewerbeprivilegien (Zurich, 1961) provides an overall discussion of early European privileges, with special emphasis on German-speaking countries. Patenting in Saxony is discussed in Creutz Hans-Jürgen , “Die Herausbildung des Erfindungsschutzes in Sachsen im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert”, Jahrbuch fuer Wirtschafts-geschichte, ii (1983), 91–110.

On Russia see Aer Anneli , “Patents in Imperial Russia: History of the Russian Institution of Invention Privileges under the Old Regime”, Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae: Dissertationes humanarum litterarum, 76 (Helsinki, 1995). For an overview of French privileges in the eighteenth century see Parker Harold T. , The Bureau of Commerce in 1781 and its policies with respect to French industry (Durham, 1979), 47–69; and McCloy Shelby T. , French inventions of the eighteenth century (Lexington, 1952), 170–85. A much more extensive and subtle treatment of eighteenth-century French patenting activities is Hilaire-Pérez Liliane , L'invention technique au Siècle des Lumières (Paris, 2000). Her “Invention and the state in 18th-century France”, Technology and culture, xxxii (1991), 91–31, provides an overview of the changing role of the Académie des Sciences in the examination and awarding of patents, but see also Hahn Roger , Anatomy of a scientific institution (Berkeley, 1971), 65–68. Also informative are: Bondois Paul , “L'organization industrielle et commerciale sous l'ancien régime: Le privilège exclusif au XVIIIe siècle”, Revue d'histoire économique et sociale, xxi (1933), 140–89; and Isoré Jacques , “De l'existence des brevets d'invention en droit français avant 1791”, Revue historique de droit français et étranger, ser. 4, xvi (1937), 94–130; Hachette Alfred , “La Maison du Roi et les inventeurs”, Revue de l'histoire de Versailles et de Seine-et-Oise, xxxiv (1932), 20–36; Boissonade P. , Le socialisme d'Etat: L'industrie et les classes industrielles en France pendant les deux premiers siècles de l'ère moderne (1453–1661) (Paris, 1927); and Gillispie Charles , Science and polity in France at the end of the Old Regime (Princeton, 1981), 459–78.

Brown , The Venetian printing press (ref. 9), 52.

On the Venetian case see Brown , The Venetian printing press (ref. 9), 50–72, 92–95. The farming out of the licensing process to the Printers' Guild (or equivalent bodies such as the Stationers' Company in London) is found in France and England as well.

See the charts and globes by Harris Senex Wilson patented on 7 July 1721 (AIPI, 252, 508, 625) and Haywood's and Jefferys's 17 November 1775 patent for non-cartaceous globes (ibid., 260, 302).

Cases in which the fit between legal categories of intellectual property and techno-scientific products has been either unclear or problematic include Kevles Daniel , “Of mice & money”, Daedalus, cxxxi (2002), 78–88; Halpern Sheldon Nard Craig Allen Port Kenneth , Fundamentals of United States intellectual property law: Copyright, patent, and trademark (The Hague, 1999), 11–16, 229–31; Boyle James , Shamans, software, spleens (Cambridge, MA, 1996), 97–107; Bugos Glenn Kevles Daniel , “Plants as intellectual property: American practice, law, and policy in world context”, Osiris, vii (1992), 75–104; Kloppenburg Jack , First the seed: The political economy of plant biotechnology, 1492–2000 (Cambridge, 1988); Boyle James , “Enclosing the genome: What the squabbles over genetic patenting can teach us”, http://www.law.duke.edu/boylesite/low/genome.pdf; Bugos Glenn , “Intellectual property protection in the American chicken-breeding industry”, Business history review, lxvi (1992), 127–68; Fountain Henry , “DNA ditties”, New York Times, 31 March 2002, “Week in review” Section (my thanks to Michael Papish for this reference).

Berveglieri , Inventori stranieri a Venezia (ref. 9), 90. Of the few known instrument makers in Italy in the seventeenth century, several of them operated in Venice ( Daumas , Scientific instruments (ref. 4), 63–67).

Trivellato Francesca , “Scienziati, artefici, corporazioni e privilegi nella Venezia di tardo Settecento”, in Massa Paola Moioli Angelo (eds), Dalla corporazione al mutuo soccorso: Organizzazione e tutela del lavoro tra XVI e XX secolo (Bologna, 2004), 381–8. Part of Trivellato's argument is that, by that time, the economic importance of glass production — Especially of a technical kind like this — Was not sufficiently important to the Venetian economy to justify a patent. On Selva see Lualdi Alberto , “La famiglia Selva, ottici del ′700 veneziano”, Nuncius, xvi (2001), 531–46. Lualdi does not focus on the issue of the patent, but indicates that Selva did not actually made flintglass, but managed to produce excellent achromatic telescopes with flintglass imported from England.

Pascal Blaise , 1649, “Arithmetical machine” Guern Michel (ed.), Pascal, Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1998), ii, 346–8); Huygens Christiaan , 1665, “Seagoing clocks” (HOC, xvii, 177, note 6); Huygens Christiaan , 1675, “Spring watch” (HOC, vii, 419–20); Cherubin Père , 1670 (c.), “Binoculars” (Daumas, Scientific instruments (ref. 4), 74; D'Orleans Cherubin , Effets de la force de la contiguité des corps … (Paris, 1688), 413–14). Early modern French patents were issued by different administrative bodies and no comprehensive patent rolls have been published for the ancien régime. Archival research may uncover several more instrument patents than those listed here.

Pérez Pablo , “Los inventos llevados de España a las Indias en la segunda mitad del siglo XVI”, Cuadernos de investigación histórica, vii (1983), 35–54, pp. 46–47. On Spanish longitude prizes see Howse Derek , Greenwich time and the discovery of the longitude (Oxford, 1980), 10–12. By contrast, Spain had substantial patenting activity in other areas of technology during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries ( Tapia Nicolas García , Patentes de invención españolas en el Siglo de Oro (Madrid, 1990)).

van Houtte Hubert , Histoire économique de la Belgique à la fin de l'ancien régime (Gand, 1920). Rolls from the 1515–80 period are in Doorman , Patents for inventions in the Netherlands (ref. 10), 81–89.

Creutz , “Die Herausbildung des Erfindungsschutzes in Sachsen im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert” (ref. 11), 109.

Hulme , “The history of the patent system under the Prerogative and at Common Law: A sequel” (ref. 10), 51. The grant's title suggests that the patent concerns mathematical instruments, but its description indicates otherwise; “Another water-rising device, obtained by ‘long and painful study of the mathematical sciences’ by the petitioner, a Cambridge Master of Arts.” The term “mathematical instrument” is found in an April 1706 patent concerning a gearbox, thus indicating its broad semantic range (AIPI, 379).

Worcester Edward , Marquis of, # 131, 8th February 1661, “Making a watch or clock to go for several weeks without spring, chain, or other method of winding-up” (AIPI, 637).

Smethwick Francis , #149, 14th May 1666, “Grinding optical glasses in figures which are not spherical”, and Quare, Daniel, #342, 2nd August 1695, “Making a portable weather-glass or barometer” (AIPI, 523, 463). Smethwick's and Quare's instruments were submitted to the Royal Society for approval ( Bryden Simms , “Spectacles improved to perfection and approved of by the Royal Society” (ref. 4), 2–3, 31–32). Contrary to what we find in eighteenth-century France, such submissions had no direct legal relevance to the patent application process.

Hunter Michael , The Royal Society and its Fellows, 1660–1700 (Chalfont St Giles, 1985), 70, 200.

Landes David , Revolution in time (Cambridge, MA, 1983), 147–8; AIPI, 155, 184.

AIPI, 572. This is what became known as the “cylinder escapement” perfected by Tompion's assistant and successor, George Graham ( Symonds R. W. , Thomas Tompion: His life and work (London, 1951), 242).

Pohlmann , “The inventor's rights in early German law” (ref. 10), 135–9.

On Josua Habermehl see Zinner Ernst , Deutsche und Niederlandische astronomische Instrumente des 11. – 18. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1967), 346–6.

The patent might relate to Bürgi's instrument reproduced in Bennett J. A. , The divided circle (Oxford, 1987) at p. 46. On Rueckert see Zinner , Deutsche und Niederlandische astronomische Instrumente (ref. 30), 239, 331, 604.

I have not been able to find any information about Elias Huetter or Melchior and Caspar Strobel. The Imperial rolls list Huetter as having received three patents from 1582 to 1595 for a hydraulic device, a gun-lock, and a planetarium (Pohlmann, “The inventor's rights in early German law” (ref. 10), 137–8). The range of these inventions suggests that he might have been an investor rather than a maker.

By the time he received the patent in 1602, Bürgi was not yet in Rudolph's employ but he was well known to the Emperor for the work he had done for Duke Wilhelm IV of Hesse-Kassel. Bürgi moved to Prague in 1603. On Markgraf see von Bertele H. Neumann E. , “Der kaiserliche Kammeruhrmacher Christoph Margraf und die Erfindung der Kugellaufuhr”, Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, lix (1963), 39–98, which reproduces the privilege at pp. 94–96, and various images of his clock-based automata. More images are in Kunsthistorisches Wien Museum , Prag un 1600: Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Kaiser Rudolfs II (Vienna, 1988), ii, 262–4. Some of Markgraf's instruments owned by Rudolph are listed in Bukovinska Beket , “Scientifica in der Kunstkammer Rudolphs II”, in Christianson John Robert (eds), Tycho Brahe and Prague (Frankfurt, 2002), 270–5. On Schissler see Bobinger Maximilian , Christoph Schissler der Ältere und der Jüngere (Augsburg, 1954). The patent concerns Schissler senior.

MacLeod , Inventing the Industrial Revolution (ref. 10), 28–30. Ash Eric , Power, knowledge, and expertise in Elizabethan England (Baltimore, 2004), 33–34.

Tapia Nicolas García Castillo Jesús Carrillo , Tecnología e imperio (Madrid, 2002), 79–112.

d'Orleans Père , Effets de la force de la contiguité des corps … (ref. 19), 413–14. The privilege was awarded gratis.

Christiaan's father — Constantijn Huygens — Was one of the most influential politicians in the Netherlands at that time. In the documents related to the clock and watch patents, Christiaan is often referred to as Constantijn's son. Pascal's case is comparable. The text of Louis XIV's letter patent makes apparent the King's respect for Blaise's intellectual qualities and mathematical skills, but it is also quite emphatic about Louis's friendship with his father — A royal official.

“Privilège pour la machine d'arithmétique de M. Pascal”, in Guern (ed.), Pascal, Oeuvres complètes (ref. 19), ii, 346–8. The best discussion of the “Pascaline” is Mourlevat Guy , Les machines arithmétiques de Blaise Pascal (Clermont-Ferrand, 1988). Pascal's path to the patent is sketched out in Lafuma Louis , Controverses Pascaliennes (Paris, 1952), 105–20.

The privilege mentions that Pascal has already produced fifty somewhat different prototypes. It does so, I believe, to imply that the Pascaline comes in many shapes and forms — All of which, however, instantiated the claim covered by the privilege. Pascal's strategy, ratified by the text of the privilege, is to put forward a very general central claim that can be reduced to practice in many different ways — Several of which have already been actualized in prototypes prior to the privilege application. By mentioning so many Pascalines already in circulation, Pascal also maximizes his chances of winning later infringement cases. With so many different prototypes in circulation, it would have been relatively easy to argue that many competitors had been inspired by them. Furthermore, that all of Pascal's prototypes were covered by the privilege would have given him the opportunity to argue that calculating machines by other people (whatever they might have been) resembled some aspect of one of his many Pascalines, and thus infringed on his privilege.

HOC, v, 254, 256–7, 264, 279.

Iliffe , ‘“In the warehouse’” (ref. 1), 45–46.

Examples of such strategies are in De Rubertis Achille , “Bernardo Buontalenti inventore di strumenti per mulini”, Rivista d'arte, xii (1930), 555–63; Molà , “Artigiani e brevetti nella Firenze del Cinquecento” (ref. 11), 68. Galileo's attempts to enlist the Medici's help to secure printing privileges for the books published by the Accademia dei Lincei from other princes falls in the same category.

See ref. 7 above.

Huygens applied for a privilege on 5 February and obtained it on 15 February (HOC, vii, 401, 419–20). English patents took about one to two months to issue ( MacLeod , Inventing the Industrial Revolution (ref. 10), 76).

On English inventors who pursued titles or employment in the royal service see MacLeod , Inventing the Industrial Revolution (ref. 10), 34. An example is Joseph Moxon whose newly designed globes earned him the title of “Royal Hydrographer”. Moxon's inventions are not listed in the English patent rolls. Similarly, Thomas Bedwell did not patent his carpenter's rule and gunner's rule but managed to become the “Keeper of the Ordnance Store” at the Tower of London in 1589 ( Johnston Stephen , “Mathematical practitioners and instruments in Elizabethan England”, Annals of science, xlviii (1991), 319–44). Johnston analyses Bedwell's creative alternatives to secure his intellectual property in his instruments at pp. 327–8.

Crawforth, “Evidence from trade cards for the scientific instrument industry” (ref. 4) argues that patents were used as “badges of honour” in advertisement (p. 455), but lists only a few examples (Fenn (p. 505), Ould (p. 521), and McCulloch (p. 516)). Later in the article the author acknowledges that such use was, in fact, relatively rare (p. 460). We also need to notice that only few of the patented instruments were advertised as such. A discussion of patents' double role as business protection and advertisement later in the century is in Bertucci , “A philosophical business” (ref. 1), 47–49.

Sorrenson , “Dollond & Son's pursuit of achromaticity” (ref. 1), 36–38.

Steadman Christopher , quoted in Sorrenson , “Dollond & Son's pursuit of achromaticity” (ref. 1), 52, note 31.

On the price increases see Sorrenson , “Dollond & Son's pursuit of achromaticity” (ref. 1), 39. Danjon André Couderc André , Lunettes et télescopes (Paris, 1935), 658 reports that in 1772 the price of achromatic telescopes went from 21 to 16 shillings/foot.

The historiography on trademarks is quite limited but see Schechter Frank J. , The historical foundations of the law relating to trade-marks (New York, 1925).

It seems that the vast majority of the instruments submitted to the Académie for approval — An early step in the patent application process — Were actually never patented, suggesting that they were pursued as endorsements and badges of honour rather than as legal intellectual property titles. In a tightly controlled mercantilistic economy, titles issued by a royal institution like the Académie (and the connections they enabled) seemed more valuable than intellectual property. Examples are in Hahn, Anatomy of a scientific institution (ref. 12), 69–72, esp. p. 70; and Cardinal Catherine , “Ferdinand Berthoud and Pierre Le Roy”, in Andrewes William (ed.), The quest for longitude (Cambridge, MA, 1996), 282–92. Several of Berthoud's and Le Roy's instruments were submitted to the Académie's approval, but were not patented. See also ref. 66 below.

Turner A. J. , From pleasure and profit to science and security (ref. 4); and Daumas Maurice , “Le corps des ingénieurs brevetés en instrument scientifiques (1787)”, Archives internationales d'histoires des sciences, v (1952), 86–96.

Two patents (one by the States General and one by States of Holland) were granted to Salomon Coster for Huygens's first pendulum watch in 1657. Huygens took a patent (from the States General) in 1664 for his remontoir seagoing clock and two more (from the States General and States Holland) for the spring watch in 1675. Simon Douw took out two patents (from the States General and States Holland) for an improvement on Huygens's 1657 clock. Douw's patents were strenuously opposed by Coster Huygens ( Doorman , Patents for inventions in the Netherlands (ref. 10), 146, 147, 150, 153, 179, 180, 184).

de Clercq Peter , At the Sign of the Oriental Lamp: The Musschenbroek workshop in Leiden, 1660–1750 (Rotterdam, 1997), 39.

Clock patents are also mentioned in the secondary literature about the patent system in Florence and Venice: Molà , “Artigiani e brevetti nella Firenze del Cinquecento” (ref. 11), 72; and Berveglieri , Inventori stranieri a Venezia (ref. 9), 21.

The absence of philosophical instruments from Dutch patent rolls is remarkable given the production of those instruments in the Netherlands.

Quare, Daniel, 2nd August 1695, “Making a portable weather-glass or barometer”, in AIPI, 463. The dispute between Quare and the London's Clockmakers' Guild over this patent is discussed in Brown Joyce , “Guild organisation and the instrument-making trade” (ref. 4), 32. On Quare's interaction with the Royal Society see Bryden Simms , “Spectacles improved to perfection” (ref. 4), 31–32.

Millburn John R. , “The Office of Ordnance and the instrument-making trade in the mid-eighteenth century”, Annals of science, xlv (1988), 221–93.

Crawforth , “Evidence from trade cards for the scientific instrument industry” (ref. 4), 474.

Heilbron John , Elements of early modern physics (Berkeley, 1982), 70; Daumas , Scientific instruments (ref. 4), 228–45; McConnell Anita , “From craft workshop to big business: The London scientific instrument trade's response to increasing demand, 1750–1820”, The London journal, xix (1994), 36–53; Bennett Jim , “Shopping for instruments in Paris and London”, in Smith Pamela Findlen Paula (eds). Merchants and marvels: Commerce, science, and art in early modern Europe (New York, 2002), 370–98; Turner Gerard L'E. , “The London trade in scientific instrument-making in the eighteenth century” in Scientific instruments and experimental philosophy, 1550–1850 (Aldershot, 1990), 1–21; Bryden , “Evidence from advertising for mathematical instrument making in London, 1556–1714” (ref. 4), esp. pp. 322–36; Crawforth , “Evidence from trade cards for the scientific instrument industry” (ref. 4), 453–554. On the turn toward ‘industrial’ instrument making in eighteenth-century England, see Chapman Allan , “Scientific instruments and industrial innovation: The achievement of Jesse Ramsden”, in Anderson R. G. W. Bennett J. A. Ryan W. F. (eds), Making instruments count (Aldershot, 1993), 418–30.

John Hadley was awarded a patent on 22 November 1734 for a “Quadrant for taking at sea the altitude of the sun, moon, or stars, and also any other angles; level to be fixed to a quadrant, for taking meridional altitudes at sea” (AIPI, 238).

See Culpeper's plea to clients not to show his instruments to other London makers in Crawforth , “Evidence from trade cards for the scientific instrument industry” (ref. 4), 463.

It may be interesting to map the distribution of patents between the London ‘west-end’ makers of philosophical instruments and the ‘east-end’ mathematical instrument makers to compare patenting patterns in different branches of the business.

Stewart , “Science, instruments, and guilds in early modern Britain” (ref. 4), 392–410, and MacLeod , Inventing the Industrial Revolution (ref. 10), 137. Michael Berlin's work supports such positions by showing that, since the seventeenth century, the London guilds relaxed their power to search the shops for ‘quality control’ purposes. The clockmakers (which included many instrument makers) dropped it altogether in 1750 (Berlin, ‘“Broken in all pieces’” (ref. 4), espec. p. 87). The guilds' declining ability to enforce their rules could be a factor behind the increased patenting of instruments (often by guild members) in England after 1700. These readings, like those by Daumas on instrument making in eighteenth-century France ( Daumas , Scientific instruments (ref. 4), 90–106) and by Karel Davids on the relationship between thriving patent activity in the Netherlands and permissive or weak local guilds (“Technological change and the economic expansion of the Dutch Republic, 1580–1680”, in Davids Karel Noordegraaf Leo (eds), The Dutch economy in the Golden Age (Amsterdam, 1993), 79–104, pp. 94–95) indicate that most studies of early modern patenting (including those related to instruments) do not participate in the recent historiography that tries to revise the received consensus about the guilds' technological conservatism. Despite the available literature (see ref. 4 above) too much is still unknown about the relationship between instrument makers and guilds (especially outside of London) and how that may have impacted instrument patenting. But even the evidence from England is not so clear cut. A few instrument patents were opposed (Quare's, De Duillier's, Dollond's), but many more were not, even when the patentees belonged to the guilds. And in Dollond's case, the litigation resulted from the unusually large market potential of achromatic lenses, not from an anti-patent policy by the guilds. The same applies to the guilds' successful attempt to void the patent granted to Fatio de Duillier et al. on rubies as clock bearings. Like Dollond's, that patent seemed to impact too many clockmakers for the guild not to react.

A reading of the brief descriptions of patents in AIPI indicates that as differences among instruments of the same kind began to make a bigger difference, the language of English eighteenth-century instrument patents began to sound like modern ‘patentese’, with a more careful wording of the specificity of patent claims.

The Académie des Sciences of Paris was charged with the examination of patent applications, but its role was neither exclusive — The Crown could chose other examiners — Nor conclusive — A positive report from the Académie did not imply the issuance of the patent ( Hahn , Anatomy of a scientific institution (ref. 12), 60–65). Inventors, however, submitted their work to the Académie not only to pursue a patent, but also in the hope of receiving a positive endorsement. The Académie published many of the approved inventions in Gallon M. (ed.), Machines et inventions approuvées par l'Académie Royale des Sciences, depuis son établissement … (Paris, 1735–77), in seven volumes covering the 1666–1754 period.

“Chambre obscure de nouvelle construction”, and “Machine pour tailler les verres de lunettes”, in Gallon (ed.), Machines et inventions approuvées (ref. 66), vi, 125–8.

AIPI, 152, 395, 236; Bertucci , “A philosophical business” (ref. 1), 41–58. De Magellan, was not an instrument maker but an agent, purchasing instruments in London for Van Marum in the 1780s ( Turner Gerard L'E. , “The London trade” (ref. 60), 13). His role in this patent, therefore, may have been that of the financial backer.

Adams George in 1750; Blair Robert in 1785 and 1791; Dixon Hugh in 1785; Irwin Christopher in 1758; Pyefinch Henry in 1770; Rand Cater in 1792; Short Thomas in 1774; and Storer William in 1780 (AIPI, 2, 51, 162, 297, 463, 466, 515, 547).

By Lindsay George in 1743, Storer William in 1780, and Dixon Hugh in 1785 (AIPI, 340, 547, 162).

Hilaire-Pérez , “Invention and the state in 18th-century France” (ref. 12), 915.

Mandich , “Venetian patents” (ref. 9), 167, note 1A.

Supplica is the Italian term found in Venice and elsewhere to designate the request of a privilege.

France introduced the notion of the author as holder of intellectual property rights with the Revolution. Article 1 of the 7 January 1991 law states: “Toute découverte ou nouvelle invention, dans tous les genres d'industrie, est la propriété de son auteur; en conséquence, la loi lui en garantir la pleine et entière juissance, suivant le mode et pour le temps qui seront ci-après déterminés” (quoted in Plasseraud Yves Savignon François , L'état et l'invention (Paris, 1986), 186). Other European countries took longer to pass similar legal codifications, while Britain started moving earlier in that direction, prodded along by industrial and commercial developments rather than political revolutions. In the Kingdom of Piedmont and Sardinia (soon to become the Kingdom of Italy), the shift from “royal favour” to “inventor's rights” happened only in 1855 ( Marchis Vittorio Dolza Luisa Vasta Michelangelo , I privilegi industriali come specchio dell'innovazione nel Piemonte preunitario (Turin, 1992), 118). Switzerland and the Netherlands, however, chose to go without a national patent system until the twentieth century ( Schiff Eric , Industrialization without national patents: The Netherlands, 1869–1912; Switzerland, 1850–1907 (Princeton, 1971)).

Parker , The Bureau of Commerce in 1781 (ref. 12), 59; Berveglieri Roberto Poni Carlo , “L'innovazione nel settore serico”, in Molà Luca Mueller Reinhold Zanier Claudio (eds), La seta in Italia dal Medioevo al Seicento (Venice, 2000), 478, 481–2; Belfanti Carlo Marco , “Guilds, patents, and the circulation of technical knowledge: Northern Italy during the early modern age”, Technology and culture, xlv (2004), 569–89; Ehmer Josef , “Worlds of mobility: Migration patterns of Viennese artisans in the eighteenth century”, in Crossick Geoffrey (ed.), The artisan and the European town, 1500–1900 (Aldershot, 1997), 172–99; Berveglieri , Inventori stranieri a Venezia (ref. 9), 33–34; Belfanti Carlo Marco , “Fashion and innovation: The origins of the Italian hosiery industry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries”, Textile industry, xxvii (1996), 132–47, esp. p. 142; Cavaciocchi Simonetta (ed.), Le migrazioni in Europa, secoli XIII–XVIII (Florence, 1994). Although the trend tapered off, the use of patents for the importation of technology remained visible throughout the eighteenth century.

“El sono in questa Cita, et anche ala zornada, per la grandeza et bontà soa concorre homeni da diverse bande, et acutissimi ingegni, apti ad excogitar et trovar varij ingegnosi artificij …”, cited in Mandich Giulio , “Le privative industriali Veneziane (1450–1550)”, Rivista di diritto commerciale e del diritto generale delle obbligazioni, xxxiv (1936), Part One, p. 518.

Sprat Thomas , History of the Royal Society (London, 1667), 398–401.

Sonenscher Michael , Work and wages (Cambridge, 1989), 216. On Court clockmakers' exemption from guild regulations in Paris and Augsburg see Landes , Revolution in time (ref. 27), 225–6.

On the awarding of patents to foreigners see Berveglieri , Inventori stranieri a Venezia (ref. 9); Davids , “Patents and patentees in the Dutch Republic” (ref. 10), 269; Thirsk Joan , Economic policy and projects (Oxford, 1978), 24–77; Heal Felicity Holmes Clive , “The economic patronage of William Cecil”, in Croft Pauline (ed.), Patronage, culture, and power: The early Cecils (New Haven, 2002), 199–229; Frumkin Maximilian , “Early history of patents for invention”, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, xxvi (1947), 47–55; Doorman , Patents for inventions in the Netherlands (ref. 10), 13–15.

Thirsk , Economic policy and projects (ref. 79), 55.

Examples of these attempts (successful and unsuccessful alike) are in Molà , “Artigiani e brevetti” (ref. 11), 58–59, 63.

Harris John , Essays in industry and technology in the eighteenth century: England and France (Aldershot, 1992); Harris John , Industrial espionage and technology transfer: Britain and France in the eighteenth century (Aldershot, 1998); Guillerme André (ed.), “De la diffusion des sciences à l'espionnage industriel”, special issue of Cahiers d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences, xlvii (1999); Davids Karel , “Openness or secrecy? Industrial espionage in the Dutch Republic”, The journal of European economic history, xxiv (1995), 333–49; Davids Karel “Public knowledge and common secrets: Secrecy and its limits in the early modern Netherlands”, Early science and medicine, x (2005), 411–27.

Bacon Francis , The Advancement of Learning and New Atlantis, ed. by Johnston Arthur (Oxford, 1974), 230. I read Bacon's line that “These ships are not otherwise fraught than with store of victuals and good quantity of treasure to remain with the brethren for the buying of such things and rewarding of such persons as they should think fit” to refer to bribes for trade secrets (p. 230). The distinctly autocratic and not republic-of-letters-like nature of the House of Solomon was highlighted in Heilbron John , “Why revisit Solomon's House?”, in Frangsmyr Tore (ed.), Solomon's House revisited (Canton, MA, 1990), 331–42. The autocratic character of the House of Solomon reflects, I believe, the trade policies Bacon had become familiar with at Court.

Thirsk , Economic policy and projects (ref. 79), 53. Similarly, Felicity Heal and Clive Holmes claim that “Cecil was claimed to have combed England and Europe for new processes and manufactures. He certainly employed a variety of local agents to report on the feasibility of projects” (“The economic patronage of William Cecil” (ref. 79), 199–229, p. 203).

Landes David , “The round of horological migrations”, in Cavaciocchi Simonetta (ed.), Le migrazioni in Europa, secoli XIII–XVIII (ref. 75), 561–6; Rossum Gerhard Dohrn-Van , “Migrating technicians: Medieval clockmakers”, ibid., 671–76. On early modern artisanal mobility in early modern Europe see also Moch Leslie Page , Moving Europeans (Bloomington, 2003); Epstein Stephan , “Labour mobility, journeyman organisations and markets in skilled labour in Europe, 14th-18th centuries”, in Arnoux Monnet (eds), Le technicien dans la cité en Europe occidentale, 1250–1650 (ref. 11), 251–69; and Ehmer Josef , “Worlds of mobility: Migration patterns of Viennese artisans in the eighteenth century”, in Crossick (ed.), The artisan and the European town, 1500–1900 (ref. 75), 172–99.

Heller Henry , Labour, science, and technology in France, 1500–1620 (Cambridge, 1996), 120. On the migration of Huguenot artisans see Scoville Warren , “The Huguenots and the diffusion of technology”, Journal of political economy, lx (1952), 294–311. Other examples of forced migrations are discussed in Schilling Heinz , “Innovation through migration: The settlement of the Calvinistic Netherlanders in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Central and Western Europe”, Histoire sociale, xvi (1983), 7–33. Another example is the expulsion of Sephardic Jewish artisans from Spain and Portugal. A reassessment of the non-dramatic causes and greater scale of artisanal mobility in early modern Europe is Epstein Stephan , “Labour mobility, journeyman organisations, and markets in skilled labour in Europe, 14th-18th centuries”, in Arnoux Mahieu Monnet Pierre (eds), Le technicien dans la cité en Europe occidentale, 1250–1650 (Rome, 2004),251–69.

Doorman , Patents for inventions in the Netherlands (ref. 10), 59. Later examples are Tito Livio Burattini at the Polish court in Warsaw, Jacob Lusuerg at the court in Modena, or Joost Bürgi at the Hesse-Kassel and Rudolphine courts.

Turner A. J. , From pleasure and profit to science and security: Etienne Lenoir and the transformation of precision instrument-making in France, 1760–1830 (Cambridge, 1989), 10. Sections of two letters from Cassini to Belsaigne are in Wolff Christian , Histoire de l'Observatoire de Paris de sa fondation à 1793 (Paris, 1902), 299–300.

Popplow Marcus , “Protection and promotion: Privileges for inventions and books of machines in the Early Modern Period”, History of technology, xx (1998), 103–24, p. 109. On Venice's policies see Berveglieri , Inventori stranieri a Venezia (ref. 9), 42–44, 49. As peculiar as it may seem, the decision to reward inventors for the inventions they had not invented yet has an analogue at the other end of the spectrum of authorship, where authorial credit transforms into responsibility. Roger Chartier has shown that the first of three categories used by the Spanish Inquisition to classify heretical books included “all the works of the authors considered to be heretics — That is to say, not only the works they had already written but also the works they were to write and publish in the future” (“Foucault's Chiasmus”, in Biagioli Mario Galison Peter (eds), Scientific authorship (New York, 2003), 13–31, p. 23).

McCray Patrick , “Creating networks of skill: Technology transfer and the glass industry of Venice”, The journal of European economic history, xxviii (1999), 301–33, esp. pp. 309–16. Bologna had harsher penalties: “Ugolino Menzani was tried in absentia and condemned to death at the beginning of the seventeenth century for having exported equipment for throwing and twisting silk to Venice. A painting showing him hanged upside down remained on public display in Bologna for more than a century” ( Belfanti , “Guilds, patents, and the circulation of technical knowledge” (ref. 75), 581).

Ceredi Giuseppe , Tre discorsi sopra il modo d'alzar acque da' luoghi bassi … (Parma, 1567), p. 19, quoted in Popplow , “Protection and promotion” (ref. 89), 122, note 51. Ceredi himself had obtained a privilege from his local prince — Ottavio Farnese — In 1566 (a year before he published his book) for an improved version of the Archimedean screw.

Quoted in MacLeod , Inventing the Industrial Revolution (ref. 10), 11.

da Vinci Leonardo , “Codices Madrid”, quoted in Popplow , “Protection and promotion” (ref. 89), 122, note 50.

Poni Carlo , “Richerche sugli inventori bolognesi della macchina seminatrice alla fine del secolo XVI”, Rivista storica Italiana, lxxvi (1964), 455–69, p. 458. Other examples are: The Dutch hydraulic engineer Cornelius Meijer who travelled from Amsterdam to Venice and Rome, obtaining patents in each city ( Berveglieri , Inventori stranieri a Venezia (ref. 9), 43; van Berkel Klaas , ‘“Cornelius Meijer inventor et fecit’: On the representation of science in late seventeenth-century Rome”, in Smith Findlen , Merchants and marvels (ref. 60), 277–96); the French inventor François Antola who obtained patents in Lyons, Florence, and Venice ( Berveglieri , Inventori stranieri a Venezia (ref. 9), 43); and Guidoboni's and Gabrielli's scheme to obtain patents in Venice Rome Florence analysed in Molà , “Artigiani e brevetti nella Firenze del Cinquecento” (ref. 11), 66–67. Huygens's 1664 English patent of the pendulum clock with Bruce could be put in this category as well.

A detailed discussion of the career of one of these projectors is Smith Pamela , The business of alchemy: Science and culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton, 1994). A discussion of the complex relation between patents and projects is in Thirsk , Economic policy and projects (ref. 79), esp. pp. 24–77.

A contextualization of Galileo's invention and use of the telescope within patenting practices is in Biagioli , Galileo's instruments of credit (ref. 5), 77–134, esp. pp. 119–27.

The complementarity (rather than opposition) of guilds and patents has been proposed by Belfanti in his “Guilds, patents, and the circulation of technical knowledge” (ref. 75), 569–89, esp. pp. 576–80.

Gouk , The ivory sundials of Nurenberg, 1500–1700 (ref. 4), 52, 63, 66, 77–81, 117.

On the Dutch case: “The urban authorities in Delft in 1755 ruled that no craftsman in the faience-making industry who had gone to practice his trade outside of Delft would ever be allowed to get employment in his native city again or to receive assistance from the poor-box.” Davids Karel , “Public knowledge and common secrets: Secrecy and its limits in the early modern Netherlands”, Early science and medicine, x (2005), 411–27, p. 419.

Belfanti gives the example of a Florentine immigrant to Venice, Cosimo Scatini, who was given a patent for silk dyeing and applied to the Venetian dyers' guild at the expiration of the patent, promising to teach his technology to local craftsmen (“Guilds, patents, and the circulation of technical knowledge” (ref. 75), 578).

MacLeod , Inventing the Industrial Revolution (ref. 10), 10–14.

Quite common, such training requirements were as much a form of embodied disclosure than a kind of reduction to practice.

Early sixteenth-century printing privileges issued by the Pope warned potential Christian pirates that they would be excommunicated. This threat was dropped in later privileges. The peculiarity of early papal privileges does not reflect a change in the logic of the privilege, but rather in the nature of this specific prince — One who claimed a non-secular jurisdiction over all Christians ( Fontana Pierina , “Inizi della proprietà letteraria nello Stato Pontificio”, Accademie e biblioteche d'Italia, iii (1929), 204–21, p. 207).

Prager Frank , “Brunelleschi's patent”, Journal of the Patent Office Society, xxviii (1946), 109–35; Prager Frank Scaglia Gustina , Brunelleschi: Studies of his technology and inventions (Cambridge, MA, 1970), 111–23.

Long Pamela , “Invention, authorship, ‘intellectual property,’ and the origin of patents: Notes toward a conceptual history”, Technology and culture, xxxii (1991), 846–84, p. 877.

The geographical notion of originality survived until the nineteenth century, that is, well after the emergence of author-centred notions of originality. It was dropped only when the development of formalized patent systems led various countries to recognize each other's patents. For instance, Article 3 of the French patent law of 7 January 1791 reads: “Quiconque approtera en France une découverte étrangère jouira des mêmes avantages que s'il en était l'inventeur”, in Plasseraud Savignon , L'état et l'invention (ref. 74), 186.

Berveglieri Poni , “Three centuries of Venetian patents” (ref. 9), 390.

Woodmansee Martha , “The genius and the copyright: Economic and legal conditions of the emergence of the ‘author’”, Eighteenth-century studies, xvii (1984), 425–48.

While Harris and others have shown that there was widespread “industrial espionage” in early modern Europe, we should add that there was no categorical distinction between such “espionage” and the use of patents to draw artisans and inventors from one country to another. Despite the use of pejorative terms such as ‘espionage’, these practices were not illegal.

Iliffe , ‘“In the warehouse’” (ref. 1), 29–67.

Ibid., 41–52.

On Huygens's ongoing concerns with the determination of the longitude through accurate timekeepers see Leopold J. H. , “The longitude timekeepers of Christiaan Huygens”, in Andrewes (ed.), The quest for longitude (ref. 51), 102–14.

Iliffe has shown that Hooke and Huygens strove to deliver increasingly more accurate and reliable watches to the King and his counsellors. Oldenburg's plea to Huygens to send a watch with a hand marking seconds (‘“In the warehouse‘” (ref. 1), 50) is obviously not a priority issue but a performance-related argument. No patent for the spring watch (either to Hooke or Huygens) is recorded in the rolls.

Furthermore, the inventions covered by these privileges were sometimes put to work in public spaces (canals, public land, or, in Brunelleschi's case, rivers). In this sense, early patents had more than a passing resemblance with earlier mining privileges.

According to U.S. patent law, such specifications need to be sufficiently full and clear to enable a person skilled in the art to make and use that invention ( Halpern Nard Port , Fundamentals of United States intellectual property law (ref. 16), 235).

This does not apply to secret patents concerning, for instance, military technologies ( O'Dell Tom , Invention and official secrecy: A history of secret patents in the United Kingdom (Oxford, 1995)).

See ref. 82 above.

In 1598 Cornelis Meynertsz was asked to provide drawings of the drainage mill he was trying to patent to the Deputies of the States of Holland so that “should the latter find the invention to be new the patent would be granted” ( Doorman , Patents for inventions in the Netherlands (ref. 10), 174).

Ibid., 22–23. When models or drawing were kept by state official, they were not disclosed to the public. Dutch practices were quite similar to English ones, as analysed in Robinson Eric , “James Watt and the laws of patents”, Technology and culture, xiii (1972), 115–39.

Doorman , Patents for inventions in the Netherlands (ref. 10), 175.

Hilaire-Pérez , “Invention and the state in 18th-century France” (ref. 12), 919; Hahn , Anatomy of a scientific institution (ref. 12), 67.

Quoted in Pohlmann , “The inventor's rights in early German law” (ref. 10), 126, 130.

The seven volumes of Gallon (ed.), Machines et inventions approuvées (ref. 66), listed the inventions approved from 1666 to 1754 (but were published between 1735 and 1777).

Berveglieri , Inventori stranieri a Venezia (ref. 9): “purtroppo una descrizione tecnica precisa di ciò che è stato inventato e brevettato manca per la quasi totalità dei brevetti” (p. 26); “Naturalmente non si conosce il principio, oggi sostenuto da alcuni, che concedendo una patente la pubblica autorità deve descrivere l'invenzione che vuole proteggere” (p. 27); “I dossier sono estremamente poveri di illustrazioni” (p. 38).

MacLeod , Inventing the Industrial Revolution (ref. 10), 49.

Ibid., 49.

Ibid., 42.

“Since official and judicial guidance was lacking for most of the eighteenth century, it is doubtful whether patentees had any clear idea what the function of a specification was or how full and accurate it ought to be. Like most other things about the system, it was left to the patentee's discretion” (ibid., 50).

HOC. v, 157.

Hall Rupert Hall Marie Boas (eds), The correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, iv (Madison, 1967), 223–4, 235.

Sorrenson has argued that when Dollond's son, Peter, sued for infringement of his father's 1658 patent for achromatic doublets, the court did not recognize that the invention Peter Dollond was trying to defend was related to, but different from, the one of the 1658 patent: “Rather than questioning what particular kind of achromatic lens it was that the patent covered, the legal proceedings focused on whether or not Dollond's lens was the first commercially available achromatic lens of any kind” (“Dollond & Son's pursuit of achromaticity” (ref. 1), 39).

Ibid., 37–42.

Quoted in ibid., 40.

Milburn John , Adams of Fleet Street, instrument makers to King George III (Aldershot, 2000), 61; McConnell , “From craft workshop to big business” (ref. 60), 49. The author seems to relate these drawings to a 1775 dividing engine, but that year Ramsden patented an equatorial instrument (AIPI, 465).

Robinson , “James Watt and the laws of patents” (ref. 119), 125. This is a very important article for anyone interested in the history of disclosure requirements.

Mourlevat , Les machines arithmétiques de Blaise Pascal (ref. 38), 12.

Current U.S. patent law lists two kinds of reduction to practice: Constructive and actual. Actual reduction to practice occurs when the inventor constructs the invention (which usually means a prototype), but constructive reduction to practice is deemed sufficient. Constructive reduction to practice was defined in Fiers v. Revel (1993) as “While one does not need to have carried out one's invention before filing a patent application, one does need to be able to describe that invention with particularity” ( Halpern Nard Port , Fundamentals of United States intellectual property law (ref. 16), 205–7).

Renn Jürgen Valleriani Matteo , “Galileo and the challenge of the Arsenal”, Nuncius, xvi (2001), 496, note 36; Berveglieri , Inventori stranieri a Venezia (ref. 9), 40.

Pohlmann , “The inventor's rights in early German law” (ref. 10), 126, 129–30; Hahn , Anatomy of a scientific institution (ref. 12), 67.

Iliffe , “‘In the warehouse’” (ref. 1), 43–48; HOC, xvii, 175, note 2.

Huygens applied on 5 February 1675 (HOC, vii, 401), but had already showed Colbert a model on 31 January (ibid., 407).

Biagioli , Galileo's instruments of credit (ref. 5), 120–1.

Pohlmann , “The inventor's rights in early German law” (ref. 10), 129–30.

MacLeod , Inventing the Industrial Revolution (ref. 10), has found that in late sixteenth-century England, “the consideration or quid pro quo originally demanded was not the disclosure of his secret but the ‘furtherance of trade’ through the effective introduction of a new technique or industry”, p. 13. Reduction to practice requirements in the Netherlands are discussed in Davids , “Patents and patentees in the Dutch Republic” (ref. 10), 267, and the French ones in Hilaire-Pérez , “Invention and the state in 18th-century France” (ref. 12), 923. In Florence too disclosure was replaced by prompt reduction to practice. That requirement could be fulfilled by showing affidavits by reliable witnesses that the invention was operative ( Molà , “Artigiani e brevetti” (ref. 11), 64). Rather than public written disclosure, privileges could include provisions about the training of local workers and artisans into the technology covered by the privilege. In line with the logic of the privilege, the recipients of such “disclosure” were not generic members of society, but the princely subjects who were to use that technology right there and then. On Venetian requirements for reduction to practice (and the cancellation of patents for inventions that failed to meet those requirements) see Berveglieri , Inventori stranieri a Venezia (ref. 9), 26–28. On reduction to practice in the Hapsburg Empire see Pohlmann , “The inventor's rights in early German law” (ref. 10), 129–30.

Davids Karel has argued that reduction to practice requirements played a significant role in the decline of Dutch patenting starting around 1640, when inventions became, on average, larger and more complicated, thus requiring more time and capital to develop (“Patents and patentees in the Dutch Republic” (ref. 10), 278–80). The troubles of poor Venetian inventors who did not have sufficient resources to meet reduction to practice requirements are discussed in Berveglieri , Inventori stranieri a Venezia (ref. 9), 28–29.

See ref. 136 above.

Biagioli , Galileo's instruments of credit (ref. 5), 121.

Society Royal , “Journal Book”, 16 January 1695, quoted in Bryden Simms , “Spectacles improved to perfection” (ref. 4), 31.

Iliffe , ‘“In the warehouse’” (ref. 1), 46–52.

Foster George , “Izaac Thuret, clockmaker to Louis XIV”, Antiquarian horology, iii/3 (1960), 73–75; HOC, vii, 399–436.

MacLeod argues that, even after the introduction of specification requirements in England in 1723, detailed descriptions of the invention were filed only after the sealing of the patent (Inventing the Industrial Revolution (ref. 10), 49, 42). There seem to have been two levels of disclosure: A preliminary summary with the application, and a fuller one after the issuance. This would fit the pattern of inventors' distrust found elsewhere. Given the enterprising tendencies of many brokers and administrators at the royal court (but — As shown in Ash, Power, knowledge, and expertise (ref. 34) — Also of the Crown itself), such level of caution on the inventors' side was probably not paranoid.

On 3 June 1663 “Sir Robert Moray … produced likewise a certain petition lately presented to the king, for a patent to practise a secret of making all grain grow plentifully in any barren ground, without laying on any dung or compost; so that the same land so sown should improve yearly, and bear corn constantly, at the charge of ten or twelve shillings an acre …” ( Birch Thomas , The history of the Royal Society of London (London, 1756), i, 252). I have not been able to find this patent in the English rolls. Equally unfitting the image of impartiality that the Society was trying to develop for itself were its plans to demand explicitly higher levels of disclosure from non-members who wished to enter sealed priority claims about their inventions in its archives. At the 16 November 1667 meeting it was discussed that: “Mention being made, that a security might be provided for such inventions or notions, as ingenious persons might have, and desired to secure from usurpation, or from being excluded from having a share in them, if they should be lighted on by others; it was thought good, if any thing of that nature should be brought in, and desired to be lodged with the society, that, if the authors were not of their body, they should be obliged to shew it first to the president, and that then it should be sealed up both by the small seal of the society, and by the seal of the proposer; but if they were of the society, then they should not be obliged to shew it first to the president, but only to declare to him the general heads of the matter, and then it should be sealed up, as mentioned before” ( Birch , The history of the Royal Society of London (ref. 152), ii, 212).

Hunter , Establishing the new science (ref. 7), 73–121; Ochs K. H. , “The Royal Society of London's History of Trades programme: An early episode in applied science”, Notes and records of the Royal Society, xxxix (1985), 129–58, esp. pp. 146–50.

Sprat wrote that “… the Royal Society will be able by degrees, to purchase such extraordinary inventions, which are now close lock'd up in Cabinets; and then to bring them into one common Stock, which shall be upon all occasions expos'd to all mens use” (History of the Royal Society (ref. 77), 75). At the 18 May 1664 meeting, Hooke “mentioned that he knew a person, who had the art of softening steel to that degree, that it might be twisted. He was desired to endeavour to get the secret, and to offer a reward for it” ( Birch , The history of the Royal Society of London (ref. 152), i, 426).

Birch , The history of the Royal Society of London (ref. 152), i, 219.

In the first decade or so after its foundation, the Royal Society seemed interested in taking out patents on its members' work as a way to booster its weak finances. The 1665 patent that included Bruce's and Huygens's clock is an example. And the fact that, in February 1675, Huygens offered the English patent for his spring watch to the Society and/or Oldenburg is probably a move inspired by his 1665 experience (HOC, vii, 423). Letters between Moray and Huygens in 1664–65 also suggest that Moray (speaking, it seems, in the name of the Society) was interested to share inventions by some members of the Society with Huygens if he managed to take European patents on them. On 5 December 1664 he told Huygens that “Ces Calesches at Chariots [a reference to an invention included in the 1665 Royal Society English patent] seront de grand usage en Hollande aussi. Cest porquoy Je crois que Je vous prieray aussi d'en demander le privilege en ce païs là. Mais Je vous entretienderay plus amplement sur ce sujet, lors que les Cahiers de la [English] patente seront dressez” (HOC, v, 157).

In the early modern period, trade secrets could be uncovered and used without legal penalties, but not so after a privilege had been issued on them.

Recognized by the law, trade secrets are now regulated by a doctrine that is conceptually distinct from intellectual property ( Foster Frank Shook Robert , Patents, copyrights, and trademarks (New York, 1993), 207–15).

Wood Derek , “A state pension for L. J. M. Daguerre for the secret of his Daguerrotype technique”, Annals of science, liv (1997), 489–506.

Bennett Jim , “The travels and trials of Mr Harrison's timekeeper”, in Bourguet Marie-Noëlle Licoppe Christian Sibum Otto (eds), Instruments, travel, and science (London, 2002), 75–95. Bennett shows that the discovery of the longitude came to be construed as a double discovery — The discovery of a method to the longitude and the disclosure of such a method in a manner that would allow others to discover the longitude as well. Harrison's clock was made public in The principles of Mr. Harrison's time-keeper, with plates of the same, published by order of the Commissioners of Longitude (London, 1767), a year after he received £7,500.

HOC, v, 271.

Berveglieri Poni , “Three centuries of Venetian patents” (ref. 9), 390; Ceredi , Tre discorsi sopra il modo d'alzar acque da'luoghi bassi … (ref. 91), 94–100.

Popplow , “Protection and promotion” (ref. 89), 103–24. Comparable examples are in Davids , “Patents and patentees in the Dutch Republic” (ref. 10), 276–8.

Jackson Myles , “Can artisans be scientific authors?”, in Biagioli Galison (eds), Scientific authorship (ref. 89), 113–31.

Iliffe , “‘In the warehouse’” (ref. 1), 38, 45.

Because many of the pre-1700 mathematical instruments were custom-made and required little investment in special equipment beyond the tools of the engraver, their copying could require even less time and capital investment than copying a book (for which one would have to buy expensive paper, fonts, a press, etc.). Optical instruments were a different matter as they required lens-grinding equipment, templates, etc.

On the attempted patenting of the telescope in the Netherlands see van Helden Albert , The invention of the telescope, American Philosophical Society, Transactions, lxvii/4 (1977).

Landes , Revolution in time (ref. 27), 237.

Pohlmann , “The inventor's rights in early German law” (ref. 10), 131: “A so-called ‘tax’ was levied for an inventor's privilege. It was payable on delivery of the letters patent and it amounted to 15 Thaler, the equivalent of DM 100 to 150 [in 1961 currency].”.

HOC, v, 168. Some eighteenth-century English instrument patents (such as those by Blair, Dixon, and Storer) list a number of devices, probably for the same reason give by Moray more than a century earlier (AIPI, 51, 162, 547).

HOC, v, 186, and p. 173, note 3.

“Between 1750 and 1852 patents could cost anything up to £400, depending on the geographical extent of protection…. The cost of an English patent varied from invention to invention, but was between £100 and £120”, Dutton Harold , The patent system and inventive activity during the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1852 (Manchester, 1984), 35. Registering additional patents for Scotland and Ireland could cost an additional £225. MacLeod gives comparable figures and discusses the various investments of time and capital faced by applicants, MacLeod , Inventing the Industrial Revolution (ref. 10), 76–77.

Sorrenson , “Dollond & Son's pursuit of achromaticity” (ref. 1), 52, note 26.

Ibid., 34.

Biagioli , “Galilei v. Capra” (ref. 2).

van Helden Albert , “Longitude and the satellites of Jupiter”, in Andrewes (ed.), The quest for longitude (ref. 51), 86–100, esp. pp. 86–92; Bedini Silvio , The pulse of time (Florence, 1991), 7–21.

Tycho's instruments are an exception (see ref. 5 above).

Berveglieri , Inventori stranieri a Venezia (ref. 9), 74; Lincoln Evelyn , “Invention and authorship in early modern Italian visual culture”, DePaul law review, lii (2003), 1093–119; Pon Lisa , “Prints and privileges: Regulating the image in 16th-century Italy”, Harvard University Art Museums bulletin, vi (1998), 41–64; and Hunter David , “Copyright protection for engravings and maps in eighteenth-century Britain”, The library, 6th ser., ix (1987), 128–47; Witcombe Christopher , Copyright in the Renaissance: Prints and the privilegio in sixteenth-century Venice and Rome (Leiden, 2004); Bury Michael , “Infringing privileges and copying in Rome, c. 1600”, Print quarterly, xxii (2005), 133–8; and Orenstein Nadine , Hendrick Hondius and the business of print in seventeenth-century Holland (Rotterdam, 1996), 86–137, esp. pp. 90–94.

Besides the paper instruments by Apian discussed below, Hartmann Georg (1489–1564) printed sundials which were then pasted on wood. Besides being much cheaper than the ivory or metal sundials, the printing of paper sundials allowed Hartmann to bypass the regulations of the Nuremberg's dial-makers guild ( Gouk , The ivory sundials of Nurenberg (ref. 4), 68–69, 76, 92, 130, 124). Other paper instruments are in the Oxford Museum of History of Science: Inv. #44745 “Paper astrolabe” ( Krabbe Johann , German 1583); Inv. #52008 “Paper quadrant” (Oxford, late seventeenth century); Inv. #49296 “Paper astrolabe” ( Hartmann Georg , Nurenberg 1542) (different editions of Hartmann's paper astrolabe were issued between 1531 and 1545); Inv. #91897 “Paper astrolabe” ( Hergahmer Hanns , 1492). Philippe Danfrie produced a paper astrolabe in Paris in 1578, reissued it in 1584 (following the adoption of the Gregorian calendar), and probably kept printing and selling it for the rest of his life. Passed on to his heirs, the plates were either sold or rented to other printers, producing more editions around 1625 and again in 1644 ( Turner A. J. , “Paper, print, and mathematics: Philippe Danfrie and the making of mathematical instruments in late 16th-century Paris”, in Blondel (eds), Studies in the history of scientific instruments (ref. 4), 23–41, pp. 31–33). Paper instruments were produced and sold by Joseph Moxon in London ( Bryden , “Evidence from advertising for mathematical instrument making” (ref. 4), 330). Moore's Jonas 1674 paper “Universal dial for all latitudes, being a projection of the sphere in plano” is discussed in Turner A. J. , “Mathematical instruments and the education of gentlemen”, Annals of science, xxxviii (1988), 51–88, p. 83. On paper logarithmic rules see Bryden , “Evidence from advertising for mathematical instrument making” (ref. 4), 328. More paper instruments are mentioned in Gingerich Owen , “Astronomical paper instruments with moving parts”, in Anderson Bennett Ryan (eds), Making instruments count (ref. 60), 63–74. In some cases we find books which include prints of instruments that seem just too detailed and too large to be meant as illustrations. For instance, Lorini's Bonaiuto 1597 Delle fortificationi libri cinque (Venice, 1597) opens with a very large print of the “squadra zoppa” — The moveable square needed to design and survey the construction of the fortifications described in the book. The awkward pagination aimed at maximizing the size of the print and the fact that these pages, if cut out, would not at all damage the content of the book supports the hypothesis that we are in fact dealing with a paper instrument (p. 16). This suggests that there might be more paper instruments in books of practical mathematics that have been mistaken as illustrations. The need to withhold assumptions about what counts as an illustration or a model of an instrument has been stressed in Bennett Jim , “Knowing and doing in the sixteenth century: What were instruments for?”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxvi (2003), 129–50, 140–1. While my discussion here is limited to paper instruments that could be built out of prints included in books (not paper devices like pop-up geometrical figures or other pedagogical instruments with moving parts that were part of the textbooks that contained them), there are other hybrid cases that need to be mentioned. These are the paper instruments that, while not meant to be taken out of books, were nevertheless designed and printed with sufficient precision to be used as calculating devices. In this sense, they were both book pages and instruments. Examples are in Gingerich , “Astronomical paper instruments” (ref. 179) and in his “Apian's Astronomicum Caesareum and its Leipzig facsimile”, Journal for the history of astronomy, ii (1971), 168–77.

“Despite the fact that relatively few paper instruments have survived from this period … it was probably in this form that the astrolabe and other instruments were most widely known and used. If this be so, and the case of globes where the paper instrument displaced the metal one almost entirely tends to confirm the suggestion, then it entails a considerable revision in our ideas about the distribution and availability of instruments in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century”, Turner A. J. , “Paper, print, and mathematics” (ref. 179), 32.

Turner A. J. , “Paper, print, and mathematics” (ref. 179), 35; Bennett Jim , “The challenge of practical mathematics”, in Pumfrey Stephen Rossi Paolo Slawinski Maurice (eds), Science, culture, and popular belief in Renaissance Europe (Manchester, 1991), 176–90, pp. 177–8. In later periods, some makers continued to publish books on their instruments as instructions or publicity. But because of the specialization that resulted from changes in the material characteristics of instruments, we no longer find such a symbiotic relation between printing and instrument making. We could say that if around 1580 it was normal to find instruments in bookstores, around 1750 one found instruction books in instruments shops.

Bennett , “Knowing and doing in the sixteenth century” (ref. 179), 141.

On the overlap between booksellers and instrument sellers see de Clercq , At the Sign of the Oriental Lamp (ref. 54), 23, 27, 32, 68; Turner G. L'E. , “Mathematical instrument-making in London in the sixteenth century”, in Tyacke Sarah , English map-making 1500–1650 (London, 1983), 93–106, p. 95; and Eisenstein Elizabeth , The printing press as an agent of change (Cambridge, 1979), 139, 443. On the continuing presence of instruments in bookstores in late seventeenth-century London see Bryden , “Evidence from advertising for mathematical instrument making in London, 1556–1714” (ref. 4), 329, 331.

Apian Peter , Instrument Buch (Ingolstadt, 1533).

Gingerich , “Astronomical paper instruments” (ref. 179), 71.

Apian Peter , Folium populi: Instrumentum hoc a Petro Apiano iam recens inventum, et in figuram folii populi redactum … (Ingolstadt, 1533), at the bottom of the second page of the Latin text.

Bryden , “Evidence from advertising for mathematical instrument making in London, 1556–1714” (ref. 4), 328. On Wingate see Turner A. J. , ‘“Utile pour les calculs’: The logarithmic scale rule in France and England during the seventeenth century”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xxxviii (1988), 252–70, p. 257.

Turner A. J. , “Paper, print, and mathematics” (ref. 179), 26.

van der Krogt Peter , Globi Neerlandici (Utrecht, 1993), 49, 57; Pohlmann , “The inventor's rights in early German law” (ref. 10), 136. Doorman , Patents for inventions in the Netherlands (ref. 10), lists the following globes: Balochi (1601, p. 101), Van Cal (1650, p. 145), Deur (1722, p. 159), Teunisz (1682, p. 186), Van Luchtenberg (1684, p. 187), Valck (1701, p. 190).

Van der Krogt , Globi Neerlandici (ref. 189), 31.

Van der Krogt , Globi Neerlandici (ref. 189), 43, ill. 2.3.

See ref. 15 above.

Van der Krogt , Globi Neerlandici (ref. 189), 26.

The titlepage of Johannes Schöner's 1515 Luculentissima quaedam terrae totius descriptio described the book as a “manual for the use of the solid spherical body, or Astronomical globe and the quick application of it …” ( van der Krogt , Globi Neerlandici (ref. 189), 32).

Paper technology had the additional bonus of allowing for the production of larger globes. Some prices of Frisius's and Mercator's globes are in van der Krogt , Globi Neerlandici (ref. 189), 51, 72–75.

Martin Waldseemüller's 1507 Cosmographiae introductio (the first book known to include an unmounted paper globe as well as the term “America”) went through several editions exceeding a thousand copies in a few months ( Fischer Joseph von Wieser Franz , The Cosmographiae introductio of Martin Waldeseemüller (New York, 1907), 2. It was reprinted several times more by 1509 ( van der Krogt , Globi Neerlandici (ref. 189), 28). The workshop of Johannes Schöner — The leading German globemaker after Waldeseemüller — Was unable to meet the high demand for printed globes. No one violated his Imperial privilege in the countries that recognized it, but his globes were quickly reprinted and modified in the Netherlands, triggering a long tradition of globe manufacturing ( Van der Krogt , Globi Neerlandici (ref. 189), 37–82, esp. pp. 40, 47; de Smet Antoine , “L'orfèvre et graveur Gaspar van der Heyden et la construction des globes à Louvain dans le premier tiers du XVIe siècle”, Album Antoine de Smet (Brussels, 1974), 171–82).

I am borrowing from Thomas Nicholas , Entangled objects: Exchange, material culture, and colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge, MA, 1991).

Examples are: Hood Thomas , The making and use of the geometrical instrument called a sector (London, 1598); Danti Ignazio , Trattato dell' uso e della fabbrica dell'astrolabio (Florence, 1569); Danfrie Philippe , Declaration de l'usage du graphometre … (Paris, 1597); Gunter Edmund , The description and use of the sector … (London, 1624); Zubler Leonhard , Fabrica et usus instrumenti chorographici (Basel, 1607); Fabri Ottavio , L'uso della squadra mobile … (Venice, 1615); Taisnier Jean , De annuli spherici fabrica et usu (Antwerp, 1560); Oddi Muzio , Fabrica et uso del compasso polimetro (Milan, 1633); Lupicini Antonio , Discorso sopra la fabrica e uso delle nuove verghe astronomiche (Florence, 1582); Capra Baldesarre , Usus et fabrica circini cuiusdam proportioni (Padua, 1607). While the genre lasted into the eighteenth century, its function changed as it became increasingly focused on instruments for students and amateurs, not for professionals. An example is Bion Nicolas , Traité de la construction et des principaux usages des instrumens de mathematique (Paris, 1709). It covers everything from rulers, squares, sectors (which were more than a century old by the time he described them), to reduction compasses, pantographs, and parallel rulers.

Palmer John , The Catholique planisphaere. Which Mr. Blagrave called The Mathematical Jewel … (London, 1658), 1.

Ibid., 15–16.

An example is Fabri , L'uso della squadra mobile … (ref. 198). Besides providing prints of the instrument and its parts, the book reviews possible construction materials (cardboard, cypress wood, copper, brass) and gives tips about what construction tasks might be better farmed out to founders and metal workers (pp. 15–18). Similarly, Digges Leonard , Tectonicon (London, 1692; original edn, London, 1556), described in great detail the construction of the various components of the “profitable Staffe”, indicating which tasks could be reasonably performed by the reader and which ones, instead, might require the “helpe of some Craftsman” (p. 23r).

Shapin Steven , “Pump and circumstance: Robert Boyle's literary technology”, Social studies of science, xiv (1994), 481–520.

Many examples of this trend are discussed in Bryden , “Evidence from advertising for mathematical instrument making in London, 1556–1714” (ref. 4), and, for the earlier periods, in Turner G. L'E. , “Mathematical instrument-making in London in the sixteenth century” (ref. 183), 97–101.

For instance, Hood Thomas ended his 1592 The use of both the globes, celestiall, and terrestriall (see ref. 210), by saying that “if you shall stand in need of my helpe, either through forgetfulnes or hardnes of that, which I have taught, you, if you will repaire to my poore lodging in Abchurch lane, you shall find me ready to doe you what pleasure I can”.

Fabri , L'uso della squadra mobile (ref. 198), 16.

Worsop Edward , A discoverie of sundrie errours and faults daily committed by lande-meaters, ignorant of arithmetike and geometrie … (London, 1582), “Advertisement to the reader”. See also Lucar Cyprian , A treatise named Lucarsolace devided into fower bookes … (London, 1590), 10: “Geometricall tables with their feete, frames, rulers, compasses, and squires are made by John Reynolds, dwelling right against the southeast end of Barking churchyard in tower streete within London, and by John Reade, and Christopher Paine, dwellin in Hosier lane neere unto West smithfield in the suburbs of London: Wyer lines like to that above mensioned, may be bought in crooked lane neare unto Eastcheape in London, and you may buy of any painter for a penny 3. or 4. Fine pointed coles or keelers: But for your better instructions, the tipe of every one of the said instruments is to be viewed in the side of paper opposite to this page.”.

Johnston , “Mathematical practitioners and instruments in Elizabethan England” (ref. 45); Pumphrey Stephen Dawbarn Frances , “Science and patronage in England, 1570–1625”, History of science, xlii (2004), 137–88, esp. pp. 150–64; Ash , Power, knowledge, and expertise in Elizabethan England (ref. 34).

Turner A. J. , “Mathematical instruments and the education of gentlemen” (ref. 179).

Johnston , “Mathematical practitioners and instruments in Elizabethan England” (ref. 45), 327.

Hood Thomas , The use of both the globes, celestiall, and terrestriall, most plainely delivered in the forme of a dialogue … (London, 1592), p. B1.

In “Evidence from advertising for mathematical instrument making in London” (ref. 4), Bryden has discussed a progressive shift from late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century endorsements of specific makers found in the texts of English “usus et fabrica” books, to more distinctly commercial kinds of advertisements found in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (p. 311). This pattern, I believe, matches the trends I discuss here: Informal endorsements of makers by mathematical practitioners reflects a context characterized by a small emerging market for instruments. These endorsements do not function as advertisements (as the market is too small to justify it), but rather as tips for buyers who otherwise might not know where to find a reliable maker. The second phase, instead, reflects a context characterized by an established and increasingly competitive market for instruments. At that point, advertisements become just advertisements.

Worsop , A discoverie of sundrie errours and faults (ref. 206), “Advertisement to the reader”.

Raymond Eric , The cathedral and the bazaar (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 65–112.