Truth or myth? A Patent Office official resigned and recommended that the Patent Office be closed because he thought that everything that could be invented had already been invented.
While that statement makes good fun of predictions that do not come to pass, it is none the less just a myth. Researchers have found no evidence that any official or employee of the U.S. Patent Office had ever resigned because there was nothing left to invent. Just the opposite is true.
A clue to the origin of the myth may be found in Patent Office Commissioner Henry Ellsworth’s 1843 report to Congress. In it he states, “The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.” But Commissioner Ellsworth was simply using a bit of rhetorical flourish to emphasize the growing number of patents as presented in the rest of his report. He even outlined specific areas in which he expected patent activity to increase in the future.
This mythical quote has also been attributed to Charles H. Duell, who held the office of commissioner of patents in 1899. But unlike Ellsworth, who simply may have been misquoted, there is absolutely no basis to support Duell’s alleged statement. Duell, like his predecessor, documented an increase in 1899 of about 3,000 patents over the previous year, and nearly 60 times the number granted in 1837. He further asked the Congress for aid and encouragement in improving the American patent system.