In the class of "Fire-arms and other Implements of War" were included inventions for cannon, projectiles, small arms, cartridges, and tents. Rifled cannon, breech-loading rifles, and machineguns were introduced during the war but were not extensively used because of some initial imperfections and because of War Department conservatism. Patents for improvements in gunpowder were also issued during the war. Armament and revolving gun turrets for war vessels were developed, and their wartime use foredoomed the wooden ships. Patents were granted also for balloons and for telegraph and railroad instruments. Many patents in the class of "Medical and Surgical Instruments" were for artificial limbs. But, to quote further from Commissioner Holloway, "Numerous improvements in hospital beds, ambulances, stretchers, apparatus for treating fractured and bruised limbs and wounds by a constant drip of cold water, coffins and burial cases, all bear melancholy testimony to the horrors of war." Successive Commissioners of Patents during the war period: P. J. Federico, "Evolution of Patent Office Appeals," Patent Office Society, Journal, 22:838-864, 920-949 (Nov., Dec. 1940); Thomas B. Hudson, "A Brief History of the Development of Design Patent Protection in the United States," ibid., 30:380-400 (May 1948); Harry Kursch, Inside the U. S. Patent Office; the Story of the Men, the Laws, and the Procedures of the American Patent System (New York, 1959); Berkeley R. Lewis, Small Arms and Ammunition in the United States Serv ice (Washington, 1956); President's Commission on Economy and Efficiency, Report of the Investigation of the United States Patent Office (H. Doc. 110, 62 Cong., 3 sess., Serial 6469; Washington, 1912); Gustavus A. Weber, The Patent Office; Its History, Activities and Organization (Baltimore, 1924); "Charges against the Commissioner of Patents," Mar. 2, 1863, H. Rept. 48, 37 Cong., 3 sess., Serial 1173. The Report of the Commissioner of Patents for each wartime year appeared as follows: 1861. H. Ex. Doc. 53, 37 Cong., 2 sess., Serials 1131-1133. 1862. H. Ex. Doc. 52, 37 Cong., 2 sess., Serials 1166, 1167. 1863. H. Ex. Doc. 60, 38 Cong., 1 sess., Serials 1191, 1192. 1864. H. Ex. Doc. 51, 38 Cong., 2 sess., Serials 1225, 1226. 1865. H. Ex. Doc. 52, 39 Cong., 1 sess., Serials 1257-1259. Record Group 241. --Records of the Patent Office include records of patents issued, 1860-70. In that period the application for a patent included a petition, a specification, a drawing, and a model. In the specification, besides describing the invention, the inventor was required to set forth the part, improvement, or combination that he claimed as his discovery. The patent application files ("patented files"), 1836-1900, are arranged by patent number; patents granted, Jan. 1, 1861-Dec. 26, 1865, are numbers 31, 005-51, 783. The application files include the petitions, specifications and claims, reports by patent examiners accepting or rejecting the claims, rejoinders by inventors or their attorneys, oaths of invention taken by applicants, additional reports and rejoinders, printed copies of patents as granted, powers of attorney, notices of allowances and fee payments, fee receipts, and correspondence with inventors or their attorneys. The papers are folded and arranged by patent number in jackets on which are recorded the steps in the examining procedure. The amended specifications and claims of approved patents were engrossed on parchment for sending to the patentees, and record copies were made on signatures bound together in volumes for preservation in the Office. The drawings--larger than the other documents and of different sizes--are in a separate file, also arranged by patent number. Drawings for reissued patents are in another separate file, as are those for improvements to patented inventions; the latter file, however, ends in 1861, when the section of the act of 1836 that permitted the patenting of improvements was repealed. This patent extension file, 1836-61, includes patents for which rights were extended for a 7-year period beyond the original 14 years allowed by the act of 1836. All these files provide a useful starting point for the history of Civil War invention in many fields, though they seldom contain much information on the origin of the inventions. The published Subject-Matter Index cited below serves as an index to the patent application files. "Contested interference files" document the procedures used to determine conflicting or interfering applications between rival inventors or between an application and an unexpired patent for the same invention. More heavily documented than the patent application files and containing valuable information on the development and use of inventions, the "contested interference files" are an important source for the history of science and technology. Other extensive record series, most of them dating from 1836, are in the Federal Records Center at Alexandria, Va. Registers of applications, which served as control devices during the processing of patent applications, are accompanied by index volumes. In "transfers of patents" are the documents such as deeds, transfers, assignments, and licenses, by which inventors transferred their property rights in patents and in pending applications to other persons. The documents in the "tranfers of patents" are briefed and indexed by name of inventor in "digests of assignments." Printed copies of specifications and claims in selected inactive classes and subclasses of patents and registers of design patent files, 1843-1936, containing applications and drawings of the designs, are also in the Alexandria center. Nathan Reingold, "U. S. Patent Office Records as Sources for the History of Invention and Technological Property," Technology and Culture, 1:156-167 (Spring 1960); U. S. Patent Office, Subject-Matter Index of Patents for Inventions Issued by the have been issued by commercial ees. lished in the annual reports of the Records in Other Custody.--Some records have been retained by the Patent Office for the use of its examiners and of the general public. In 1866 the Patent Office began to print patent specifications, claims, and drawings in order to have reference copies for its own use, to furnish other copies to the patentees, to exchange them with the British Government in return for copies of its patents, and to have copies for sale. Printing the patents provided a compact text in uniform size suitable for binding, assured an exact reproduction of the original, and precluded the possibility of alteration. The printing was gradually extended back to 1836. In the searchroom of the Patent Office are two sets of bound printed patents, one arranged numerically by patent number and the other according to the patent classification system. The patents are indexed by number, by inventor's name, and by patent classification. The numerical file of patents for Jan. 1, 1861, to Dec. 26, 1865, is printed in volumes 163 to 215 of the set of volumes in which patents are arranged numerically. The "reissue patented files" (from 1836) contain corrected patent grants necessitated by defects in the original patents. Copies of certificates issued to patentees cover 1839-87. Decisions (from 1853) of the Commissioner and the board of chief examiners on appeals from decisions of patent examiners and on petitions and motions are used as precedents by the examiners and other personnel of the Patent Office. An abstract of decisions, 1837-1917, of courts of the District of Columbia on patent appeals is available. Registers of the interference case files and the patent extension files (discussed above under Record Group 241) have been retained in the Patent Office. "Printing of Documents by the Patent Office; Abridgment of American Patents," June 8, 1882 (H. Misc. Doc. 41, 47 Cong., 1 sess., Serial 2046). The printed reports of the circuit and supreme courts of the District of Columbia ("D. C. Reports") contain a few patent appeal cases; Copyright Library Copyright protection had been extended by law since 1790 to the authors or owners of books, maps, charts, musical compositions, prints, cuts, and engravings. The titles of these works had to be registered with the clerks of U. S. district courts, and copies of the works themselves had to be deposited with the clerks for yearly transmission to the Department of State. An act of Feb. 5, 1859 (11 Stat. 380), provided that the copyright deposits and the records relating to them should "be removed to, and be under the control of the Department of the Interior." Upon its transfer to the Department, the Copyright Library was assigned to the Patent Office, and during the Civil War its librarian was Edmund Flagg. At the time of the transfer in 1859 there were about 40,000 items in the copyright library. During the war more pieces were received from district court clerks, who continued to register copyrights and to receive the copies. The Librarian of Copyrights also maintained a register of copyrights. Copyright protection was extended to photographs and photographic negatives by an act of Mar. 3, 1865 (13 Stat. 540). (See Richard R. Bowker, Copyright; Its History and Its Law; Boston and New York, 1912.) Records in Other Custody. --An act of July 8, 1870 (16 Stat. 212), transferred the administration of the copyright laws to the Library of Congress. The act also transferred to the Library of Congress the Copyright Library, together with records relating to copyrights; and it provided that thereafter copyright material should be sent direct to the Library of Congress for deposit. Copyright records in that Library include the register that was kept in the Patent Office, Jan. 10, 1860-July 5, 1870. Other copyright records transferred from the Patent Office to the Library of Congress include an index to copyrights, a letter book containing copyright correspondence of the Commissioner of Patents, 1859-70, and lists of publications, photographs, etc., which were not registered but which were kept in the Patent Office Library. The original copyright registers kept by clerks of district courts are also in the Library of Congress. Gaps in those registers can be filled from the copies of the registers sent to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Interior by court clerks. The copyright records are valuable for study of the state of American literature and typography during the Civil War. U. S. Library of Congress, Records in the Copyright Office Deposited by the United States District Courts Covering the Period, 17901870, comp. by Martin A. Roberts (Washington, 1939). CENSUS OFFICE Supervision over marshals and others who took the census of the United States had been transferred in 1849, by the act establishing the Interior Department, from the Secretary of State to the Secretary of the Interior. The decennial census of 1860 was conducted as provided by an act of May 23, 1850 (9 Stat. 428). That act had put the census of 1850 under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior; but, after finishing its work on the 1850 census, the staff of the Census Office had as usual been disbanded. On June 1, 1860, Secretary of the Interior Thompson appointed Joseph C. G. Kennedy, who had been in charge of the 1850 census and who had been compiling the 1850 digest of manufactures, as superintending clerk of the Eighth Census. An act of May 5, 1860 (12 Stat. 14), authorized the Census Office to employ a chief clerk and such other clerks of the first class as the Secretary thought necessary. Late in 1860 the staff of the Census Office included, besides the superintendent and the chief clerk, a disbursing agent and 125 clerks. Other clerks, messengers, laborers, and watchmen were soon employed, but after 1862 the force was gradually reduced until the Office was abolished on May 31, 1865. The files, public property, and pending statistical compilations were transferred at that time to the General Land Office. A few of the remaining clerks were shifted to that Office, but Kennedy's services were discontinued. James M. Edmunds, Commissioner of the General Land Office, succeeded him on June 6, 1865, in charge of the census work. The organization of a permanent Census Office in the Department of the Interior was not provided for until 1902. The Census Office is now the Bureau of the Census, in the Department of Commerce. The enumeration of the inhabitants and the collection of statistical information in 1860 were carried on under the supervision of 64 U. S. marshals attached to the judicial districts of the country. President Buchanan appointed a special agent to enumerate the population in the unorganized territory west of Minnesota (Dakota), and a census was also taken of slaves and freedmen on Indian reservations west of Arkansas. Each U. S. marshal divided his district into subdivisions and appointed for each subdivision an assistant, who was required to take an oath and to whom he furnished instructions, blanks, information, and supervision. The enumeration was essentially completed by Nov. 1, 1860, and all the returns were eventually received by the Census Office, despite the outbreak of war. The war did, however, prevent the settlement of the accounts of some 1, 200 marshals and assistants who had taken the census in Southern States. After the war provision was made to pay those who could prove their loyalty to the Union (act of June 24, 1870; 16 Stat. 167). On the basis of data compiled from the census returns and certified by the Secretary of the Interior to the House of Representatives, a reapportionment of the House was provided for by an act of Mar. 4, 1862 (12 Stat. 353). When all the census returns had been received, the staff of the Census Office under Kennedy's direction began to compile, analyze, and interpret them. A preliminary report summarizing the results of the census appeared in 1862; it was followed by volumes on population and agriculture in 1864. Two other volumes, on manufactures and statistics (of mortality, property, etc.), were completed under Edmunds' direction and appeared in 1865 and 1866. Successive Superintendents of the Census during the war: William S. Holt, The Bureau of the Census; Its History, Activities, and Organization (Washington, 1929); U. S. Census Office, Eighth Census, United States--1860; Act of Congress of Twenty-Third May, 1850, Instructions to U. S. Marshals, Instructions to Assistants (Washington, 1860), and Preliminary Report on the Eighth Census, 1860 (H. Ex. Doc. 116, 37 Cong., 2 sess., Serial 1137; Wash- |