Letters Patent are granted to applicants for bringing into use new trades or new manufactures, for presenting new knowledge to the public, and for promoting the progress of science and useful arts. During the period covered by Great Maritime Inventions, 1833-1950, the two basic requirements for a patented invention were utility and novelty. (Inventiveness is a third requirement under modern patent law.) Concerning the element of utility, the invention had to be useful, to work as expected, and to produce the promised results. A model of the invention was often required to demonstrate utility. To meet the requirement of novelty, the invention must not have been known or used by others, in the province or in any other country, prior to its discovery.
Before Confederation, each province had its own patent system, modelled on the systems used in the United States and Great Britain. The following extract from the Revised Statutes of Nova Scotia, Chapter 120, entitled “Of Patents for Useful Inventions,” dated 1833, outlines that province’s first patent system:
Whenever any person resident in the Province, and who shall have resided therein for the period of one year, or any British subject who shall have been an inhabitant of Canada, New Brunswick, Prince Edward’s Island, or Newfoundland, for the space of one year previous to his application, shall apply to the Governor, alleging that he has discovered any new and useful art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereon, not heretofore known or used, and pray that a patent may be granted to him for the same, the Governor may direct Letters Patent to be issued, reciting therein the allegations of such petition, and giving a short description of such invention, and shall thereupon grant to the person so applying for the same and his representatives, for a term not exceeding fourteen years, the exclusive right of making, using, and vending the same to others, which Letters Patent shall be good and available to the grantee, and shall be recorded in the Secretary’s Office, in a book for that purpose, and shall then be delivered to the patentee.
The 1833 statutes also stipulated: “Before any person shall obtain any Letters Patent, he shall make oath in writing that he verily believes that he is the true inventor or discoverer of the art, machine, or composition of matter, or improvement, for which he solicits Letters Patent, and that such invention or discovery has not been known in this province or any other country, which oath shall be delivered in with the petition for such Letters Patent.”
A similar patent system was established in New Brunswick in 1834 and in Prince Edward Island in 1837. The patent systems of all three provinces were transferred to what is now the Canadian Intellectual Property Office in Hull shortly after Confederation, between 1869 and 1874.
The novelty or originality of the inventions described in Great Maritime Inventions is reasonably dependable. Each patent is either the first of its kind on record or the claims in it are so broad that the intellectual property protection afforded by the patent encompasses every possible precursor. The uniqueness of each invention is accepted based on the applicant’s signed declaration of absolute novelty and on the knowledge and literature available to the examiners at the patent office at the time of the application.
Although great care has been taken to ensure that each invention is in fact a pioneer, it may be possible using modern information technologies to demonstrate that this or that invention was perhaps not quite the first of its kind in the world. On the other hand, it may also be possible to demonstrate that each alleged prior inventor had kept his invention as a trade secret, had disclosed it only to a select few under a confidentiality agreement, or simply did not file a patent application for it. Earlier inventions that are outside the patent system were also outside the scope of this book.
Under patent law, a patent is granted to an inventor who is willing to share his knowledge with the public. Each patent listed here went through a thorough examination by experts at the patent office. On the invention date, each invention was found to present new knowledge to the public and was seen as an important step forward in the evolution of science and the useful arts. Therefore, I considered the integrity of the patent office sufficient to support my claims of novelty.
Not all inventions are spectacular. In fact, most of the inventions described in Great Maritime Inventions never made it into the history books. Only after fifty years or more can we realize that every one of these inventions had an influence on our society. Each invention, large or small, was an important link in the chain of the evolution of science and the useful arts. Each invention has guided the progress of science in a certain direction, and each has improved to some degree the way we live.
The inventions are listed in chronological order within their categories. Each page contains an illustration and a short description of the invention, as well as the patent number and the name and address of the inventor(s). Copies of Canadian and US Patent documents are available to the public from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), Place du Portage I, 2nd floor, 50 Victoria Street, Hull, QC, Canada, K1A 0C9, by specifying the patent number and the inventor’s name.
Great Maritime Inventions illustrates the importance of invention in our lives and instills pride in those who may recognize the genius of an ancestor. It describes some memorable inventions of residents of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick for which patents were granted between the introduction of the formal patent system and 1950; documents dated after 1950 may still be under copyright protection. During that period, over 3,300 patents were granted to residents of the Maritime Provinces.
The memorable inventions that have been selected for this book are those that mark great advances in science, those that substantially changed the course of development of technology, or those that have enjoyed a lasting success. Some of them are remembered or used to this day.