[Sci-tech-public] Ivory Tower Working Group, Mar. 23

[Kara Swanson]

/Ivory Tower Working Group/

Before there was The Bomb, there was Edison's light bulb and Franklin's 
stove -- not to mention the development of an entire federal bureaucracy 
and branch of legal practice.  Come, enjoy lunch, and continue our 
discussion of the history of American patent system on *Thursday, March 
23 at 12:30, room 252 of the Science Center*, when Kara Swanson will 
speak on 

*/Professionalizing Ghostwriting:  Patents and the Authorship of 
Invention in the 19th Century United States/*

Lunch will be served.  Please RSVP to kswanson at fas.harvard.edu 
<mailto:kswanson at fas.harvard.edu>

______________________________________________________

*/Abstract/**:  *In the 18th century, the best known inventor of the 
American colonies, Benjamin Franklin, refused to consider seeking a 
patent for his new stove.  Instead, Franklin authored, printed, and sold 
a pamphlet which described his invention and the scientific principles 
behind it, a document which thus served triple-duty as a marketable 
commodity, a set of instructions for constructing the stove, and a 
building block in the creation of Franklin's scientific reputation.  By 
the late 19th century, premier inventor Thomas Edison enthusiastically 
engaged in the publication of his ideas as patents.  His patents were 
documents which, like Franklin's pamphlet, were commodities, included 
instructions, and enhanced the inventor's reputation.  But unlike 
Franklin, after generating his inventive ideas, Edison used other people 
to describe the ideas in words, and to publish the verbal form of the 
ideas.  Edison relied upon ghostwriters to author his inventions.

Kara's paper traces the 19th century history of the separation of 
inventors from the authorship of their inventions, through the 
development of the patent system.  This separation was actively sought 
by the government employees in the developing patent office, by legal 
practitioners, and by members of a new profession, that of patent 
agent.  All three groups struggled in different ways to encourage 
inventors to consider patents as a taken-for-granted step in the 
commercialization of invention, and to train inventors to author patents 
by hiring patent practitioners as ghostwriters.  By an examination of 
the advice given to inventors by each of these participants in patent 
authorship, she uncovers the development of a new form of authorship of 
invention.

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Kara W. Swanson, B.S., M.A., J.D.
Ph.D. Candidate
History of Science 
Harvard University 
Science Center 371
Cambridge, MA 02138
kswanson at fas.harvard.edu
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