Did You Know...
...that the inventor of the electric motor was a blacksmith named Thomas Davenport? Described as "a brilliantly unsuccessful inventor", Davenport invented the first rotary electric motor. In 1836 he headed out -- on foot -- from his Vermont home to file a patent application at the Patent Office in Washington, D.C. By the time he got there, he had squandered away his money and couldn't afford the $30 filing fee so he turned around and went home. When he later mailed in his application with money he'd raised, the Patent office was destroyed in a fire. He did finally get credit for his invention on Feb. 5, 1837.
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 4273455 | Justifying text writing composing machine A mechanism which provides bi-directional movement of the carrier of an electric typewriter incorporating proportional spacing. A ratchet arrangement is operable in both directions to provide the desired proportional spacing increments, with rotation of a... | 06/16/1981 |
| 4252451 | Print point reposition feature for an electronic typewriter On electronic typewriters which have the ability to record into a small working memory the escapement of the characters which are keyed at the keyboard, it is many times advantageous to be able to reposition the carrier at the rightmost end of the typed m... | 02/24/1981 |
| 4172672 | Device for facilitating location of the printing point and/or correction of characters A device for facilitating location of the printing point and/or the correction of characters comprises a mechanism actuated by a back space key to shift the printing point back. A second mechanism, also actuated by the back space key, moves a pointer to a... | 10/30/1979 |
