US LIGHTING PATENTS

The GUILD LEFLET-MATTAUSCH PROJECT

Link to Guild U.S. Lighting Patents database:

The material you see on these pages is the result of several years of planning. The inspiration and foundation of this effort is the 20 years of research done by Herbert A. Leflet, which culminated in the publication by the Rushlight Club of the book INDEX OF EARLY U.S. PATENTS 1836 to 1901 in 1997. This book was printed as a membership bonus by Rushlight, and thus its circulation was (and is) limited to Rushlight members.

Many of us with a bent toward research immediately dove into the book, identifying patentees and Patent numbers from objects in our collections. We quickly discovered that Herb had been somewhat selective in his listing (his bent, and thus the books' emphasis, is kerosene wick lamps), that stopping at the end of 1901 left a huge area of lamping development unsearched, and that there were some items even in Herbs' specialty that he missed.

Sometime in the fall of 2000, the United States Patent and Trademark Office made their entire Patent database available on a Website. As word got around the fraternity that we could obtain copies of patents while sitting at our computers, work on "Leflet additions" began in earnest. This project is, and may always be, a "work in progress."

With the blessings of Herb Leflet, a group of us undertook the task of transferring all the original Leflet material to database files. In the Fall of 2005, Dan Mattausch, one of the most committed gas lighting scholars and a Guild member, agreed to let us add the almost 6000 gas lighting Patents he had researched in the past years, and made into a database, adding them one at a time during visits to the Patent Office as Herb Leflet did. After much internal debate on how we should do it, Dan's data has been merged with the Guild database, but with an internal notation that will allow it to be reconstructed as a separate search database for a planned gas lighting website. This seems to be the best of all possible worlds: a unified listing of US Lighting Patents that includes gas, and yet the ability for the gas data to stand alone when the time comes. Now, if you have a hunk of brass that seems lighting related, and there is a greatly increased chance you will be able to identify the Patent from a date, and thus be able to identify what the strange item is and what it was used for. The Mattausch gas list has increased the database by about 50%!

The inspiration for all you see here, Mr. Herb Leflet, passed away on February 8, 2008. The debt of gratitude we all owe Herb will best be repaid by continuing to expand the list that he inspired.

We are adding the newly found Patents to the list on a regular basis, a task which will continue for likely many years. What is to be found at the hotlinked page PATENT LIST SEARCH (see below) is a completely searchable list of all the Patents found in Leflet and the Mattausch lists, plus our additions. For those familiar with the Leflet text, several major changes have been made in format. The Inventors column text has been amended to show co-inventors, and when the Patent was assigned to a company or individuals, that information appears in a new column. Some of the wording in the Leflet descriptions has been altered to better reflect the actual patent subject, rather than legalese; a "Search Class" column for easier searching has been added to Herb's format, a Comments column added to show the common names or other comments about the Patent that would relate to a collectors experience. We have also added an Application Serial No. and Application Date column, as it is felt this information will be a significant research tool in the future. What appears today may not be the final format for this searchable listing. What we have has survived a good bit of trial and error testing, and is still mutating a bit with each review. But the team that has been slaving away over hot keyboards is quite pleased with the results, and hope it will be as useful to you as it has already been to us!

We welcome additions to and comments about our work. If you find a liquid fueled (or gaseous) Lighting Patent we have not included, please contact the Guild Secretary at fgraff@comcast.net . We note that candles, vapor burners, gas and even some early electric lighting Patents are already in the list. We DO plan to continue to add Design patents relating to our field of interest. Any submission of potential additions will be expeditiously reviewed, and likely added to our list. All we need is Patent Number, date and a quick summary of what the Patent covers.