XXI: Record

 

content

From narration to writing

Archives, libraries and cabinets

Model collections

1790-1880: American patent models

 

 

From narration to writing

 

The German mathematician Herbert Stachowiak (1973, 159-181) was one of the first theoreticians to point out the “record” function of models. He mentioned

·        photographies,

·        radiographs and

·        “kinematographic” models,

·        maps,

·        pictures and

·        discs as well as

·        non-scientific and

·        scientific records.

 

We can assume that the first kind of recording have been narration and the repeating of reports.

Likewise we assume that already cavemen collected nice specimens of stones and gems, bones and figures.

see:

Funde und Befunde zum Frühmenschen

K: P. Oakley in J. Z. Young, E. M. Jope, K. P. Oakley (Ed.): The emergence of man. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B. Biological Sciences, Vol. 292, Number 1057, 8. May 1981.

 

The next steps in recording were drawing and writing.

 

 

Archives, libraries and cabinets

 

Archives are as old as the early civilizations in Sumer and Egypt. They first contained mostly the records of commercial transactions or inventories and only few documents of theological or historical relevance. Private and public libraries are found in Greece since 500 BC and soon in Persia and in the Roman Empire.

Ptolemy I Soter established in 280 BC a library in Alexandria which can also be regarded as a kind of museum. A definition runs: “Museums collect and care for objects of scientific, artistic or historical importance and make them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary.”

.

In Renaissance times wealthy persons, families or institutions began to collect natural objects and artifacts (Julius von Schlosser, 1907; Patrick Mauriès, 2002).

 

From 1472 an inventory of a “Silberkammer” (cabinet of silver) in Dresden is pereserved. In 1560 at the same place a „Kurfürstliche Kunst- und Naturalienkammer“ (elector’s room of art and natural objects) was established, which became soon a big collection of products of art, technics and science. The first inventory of 1587 already covered 10 000 objects. The later outsourced "Königliche Cabinet der mathematischen und physikalischen Instrumente" (royal cabinet of mathematical and physical instruments) was placed since 1728 in the famous Dresden “Zwinger”.

Similarly around 1560 a cabinet of art has been established in the Viennese Hofburg. It was soon ampfified by precious things.

 

 

Model collections

 

Soon after its foundation in 1666 the French Academy of Sciences started to collect models which they received from inventors hoping to gain official reputation for their products. A catalogue of these models was published in seven volumes: „Machines et inventions approuvées par l'Académie royale des sciences, depuis son établissement jusqu'à present", Paris, 1735-77; the first volume contains the objects submitted before 1700.

 

In 1669 the mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz mentions in his sketch of the “Ars inveniendi”.the collections of models, which were very popular in his time: „de Theatro Naturae et Artis seu de Modulis rerum ipsarum conservatoriis" (1903, 163). Shortly after he proposes in his “Atlas universalis” to collect machines and models for a department of objects, which “oculis subjici possunt”: „Mechanica, ubi omnis generis Machinae et moduli" (222-223).

 

Legendary objects in these collections were the superb small scale models of:

·        the fortresses built by Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban since 1655 and today showed in the Musée des Plans-reliefs in Paris

·        the cathedrals of St. Peter in Rome and St. Paul in London (Encyclopédie, 1765, 599);

·        the Temple Salomonis with 6726 pillars in the collection of Dresden (J. G. Krünitz, 1803, 526ff.);

·        the model of Central Switzerland in Lucerne by Franz Ludwig Pfyffer (1762-86) with dimensions of 7x4 meters.

 

Many models of kork (“Felloplastiken”) of ruins, temples and monuments of Old Rome were manufactured. Around 1800 some of these were copied by a confectioner and sold to the public. Their purpose:

"to sharpen the artistic sense by concrete vision and comparison, to disseminate true art taste and to give more clearness, distinctness and firmness to the concepts of architectural pieces of art" (J. G. Krünitz, 1803, 544f.; also Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich, 1937, Sp. 932f.).

 

1790-1880: American patent models

 

The United States Patent Office represented an early form of Federal support for science. This support enabled scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs to secure property rights for their innovations. While many of the original thirteen American Colonies had some form of patent law, Thomas Jefferson (among others) influenced the development of the first national patent system in 1790. President George Washington signed the Patent Act of 1790.

 

Until 1880, to obtain a patent, the inventor submitted to the U.S. Patent Office an application, which consisted of a proper specification, carefully measured drawings, and, in most cases, a physical model of the invention. Well-known examples are the washing machine, the septic tank and alarm systems (William and Marlys Ray 1974; Robert E. Post 1984; Barbara Suit Janssen 1990).

 

Fire in the Patent Office in 1836 and 1877 destroyed more than 80,000 models, but 150,000 remained when the obligation to submit a model was dropped. Today the office only demands a model when the applicant has to show that his inventions works in practice.

 

Nowadays there are various collections, private or public, of these patent models, e. g. with the „United States Patent Model Foundation“ (and its program „Invent America“), the Smithsonian Institution or the Rothschild Petersen Patent Model Museum.

 

 

Bibliography

 

Museen und Modellsammlungen