British Patent Office

In 1934 the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard filed a patent with the British Patent Office. It was based on an idea, nothing more - an idea about how to harness nuclear energy. The Joliot-Curies had shown that bombarding nuclei with particles can induce radioactive decay artificially. And the work of Bothe and Chadwick had demonstrated that some radioactive nuclei emit neutrons. So what would happen if neutrons induced nuclear decay that led to more neutrons The result might be a chain reaction a self-sustaining release of nuclear energy. 

The following is the balance of DeLisle material. These are photocopies of original data obtained from the British Patent Office. Patents are part of the Public Domain and as such are not protected by copyrights. 

The older British patents have been thoroughly indexed in a number of publications of the British Patent Office. The 50-year subject index (1861) to 1910) is especially valuable, a separate index having been provided for each class the patents in each subdivision are in chronological order (182). 

British Patent Office, Fifty Years Subject Index, 1861-1910, H.M. Stationery Office, London, 1913-20. 

British Patent Office, Key to the Classifications of the Patent Specifications of France, Germany, Austria, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland, 2nd ed. 1905, 3rd ed. 1915. 

British Patent Office, Key to the Classifications of the Patent Specifications of France,... 

The timing of a patent application is of cracial importance. It is not necessary to perfect the invention before an application is made and too much delay may mean that someone else will patent first. As a general rule, if an invention appears to be patentable and of commercial interest, an application should be filed. If in doubt, apply. At tins early stage, all that need be filed at the British Patent Office is an indication that a patent will be sought, a description of the invention and the filing fee. 

Within twelve months of the initial applieatiotr, a full patent specification shotrld be sent to the British Patent Office and to Paterrt Offices in other coirrrtries where patents are required. This work wiU normally be done by a patent agent, who will use contacts abroad and wiU arrange for all of the necessary translatiorrs to be made. It is important to brief the patent agent several months before the expiry of the twelve month period, as there is a considerable amount of preparatory work to be done. 

R. F. Downing and E. B. James. Dust extractors for rotary abrasive tools. British Patent no. 780 761. London Patent Office. 1957. 

Nature NavOrd Rept NBSJR NC NDRC Rept NOra or NORD Rept OffGaz Off) Ohart(1946) ONRRR OpNav( Publications) Ordn OrgSynth(Voi year) Nature(London) Naval Ordnance Report National Bureau of Standards, Journal of Research (see JRNBS) Nitrocellulose (combined with SS in 1943) National Defense Research Council Report Naval Ordnance Report OffieialGazette, US Patent Office, Dept of Commerce, Washington 25,DC Official Tournal(British Patents) T.C.Ohart," Elements of Ammunition, Wiley, NY (1946) Office of Naval Research, Research Reviews Office of the Chief of Naval Operations(Publications), Washington,DC Ordnance, formerly ArOrdn "Organic Syntheses Wiley, NY, Coll Vols 1(1941), 2(1943), 3(1955) and individual vols 30(1950), 31(1951), 32(1952), 33(1953), 34(1954), 35(1955) 36(1956)... 

OfficialGazette, US Patent Office, Dept of Commerce, Washington 25,DC Official Joumal(British Patents)... 

The desk top computer, via the Internet and such US compilations as delphion.com, or the various national patent office compilations, notably www.patent.gov.uk/, esp cenet and www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html/, provides access to patents, greatly aided in the author s case by the British Library paper and electronic systems. Patents provide useful literature references and access to the inventors basic thinking, right or wrong Patents, the author has found, are full of mistakes, inconsistencies and contradictions, which enable the reader to learn by comparison, and to sort out the quintessential information. See Appendix C, for an elementary patent search technique via the US Patent Office. 

All but a dozen or so of the publications mentioned have been seen by the. author. Among the libraries which have been used are those of the British Museum and Patent Office in London, of the Universities of Cambridge London, and Manchester, the Cambridge Philosophical Society, some Departs mental Libraries in Cambridge, the Chemical and Geological Societies in London, and in the case of Russian publications the Society for Cultural Relations between the Peoples of the British Commonwealth and the U.S.S.R., in London. The staffs of all the libraries have, without exception, rendered the most willing, courteous, and expert assistance to the author, and he cannot adequately thank them for this. 

Some indication of the importance of British chemical patents at that period is given by the comment of the United States Patent Office examiner in that field, Charles G. Page, when he stated in 1844 ( Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the year 1843, 28th Congress, 1st session, Doc. No. 177, page 314) ... 

Some national offices such as the UK Patent Office (http // www.patent.gov.uk/) have plans to extend the electronic archive with scanned images of British patents these will need to be processed for optical character recognition, in order to make the text within searchable without such processing, the images are not identified by searching methods. 

Pfizer Inc. New York/USA British Patent Specification 1 419 788 The Patent Office London 1975. 

Parkes A (1857) Application for British patent 1856. In Patents for inventions. UK Patent office, p 255... 

The main national libraries in Great Britain are the Science Museum Library, the National Lending Library for Science and Technology, and the Patent Office Library. The British Museum Library while being primarily a reference library for the humanities also has a considerable amount of scientific material. In the United... 

The Patent Office in London (25 Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, London, W.C.2) issues the Classification Key which classifies the subject-matter of British patents into 279 classes. A Reference Index to the Classification Key is also published. This is in three sections. The first consists of an alphabetical list of catchwords and subdivisions giving the respective class number of each. The second section is a numerical arrangement of the classes with annotations as to their exact contents. The final section comprises a table which shows the groups to which the classes have been assigned. 

When he learned, possibly from Lindemann, that he could keep his patents secret only by assigning them to some appropriate agency of the British government, Szilard offered them first to the War Office. Director of Artillery J. Coombes turned them down on October 8, noting that there appears to be no reason to keep the specification secret so far as the War Department is concerned. If Lindemann heard of the rejection he must have remembered his own rejection by the Army in 1915. The following February 1936, he intervened on Szilard s behalf with the Admiralty, Churchill s old bailiwick, writing the head of the Department of Scientific Research and Development caimily ... 

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