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Technological Change in a Society in Transition: Work in Progress on a Unified Reference Work in Early American Patent History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Robert R. MacMurray
Robert R. MacMurray
Affiliation:
The author is Associate Professor of Economics at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania 17815.
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Abstract

Fire destroyed the Patent Office on December 15, 1836. From the ensuing actions by the Congress and Commissioner, it is possible to create a comprehensive and accurate description of the scope and level of technology and changes therein, as the United States transformed itself into an industrial society. This paper reports the progress made toward that description (in the form of a unified reference work), illustrates some uses of the data, and suggests other uses of the final version in expanding understanding of the processes of sociocultural change, particularly those of capitalist development.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-fourth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , June 1985 , pp. 299 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1985

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References

1 Schmookler, Jacob, Invention and Economic Growth (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), p. 18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Schmookler, Jacob, Invention and Economic Growth (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), p. 80, footnote.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Of the 1,000 copies of his report, published by order of Congress, only four have been located. Only two of the four are listed in the National Union Catalogue.

4 Ellsworth, Henry L., A Digest of Patents Issued by the United States from 1790 to January 1, 1839 (Washington, D.C., 1840), pp. xiii–xvii.Google Scholar

5 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 (Wahington, D.C., 1960), Series A, 1–3, p. 7.Google Scholar

6 MacMurray, Robert R., Technological Change in the American Cotton Spinning Industry: 1790–1836 (New York, 1977), pp. 43–44.Google Scholar

7 MacMurray, Robert R., Technological Change in the American Cotton Spinning Industry: 1790–1836 (New York, 1977)., Table 1–1, p. 10.Google Scholar

8 MacMurray, Robert R., Technological Change in the American Cotton Spinning Industry: 1790–1836 (New York, 1977)., pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

9 MacMurray, Robert R., Technological Change in the American Cotton Spinning Industry: 1790–1836 (New York, 1977)., Table 4–2, p. 68.Google Scholar