Over at Wired, there’s a cool history of the evolution of patent drawings, which is way more interesting than it sounds.
For some background, from the article:
Since the United States Patent & Trade Office opened in 1790, it has required that every patent be accompanied by an illustration depicting the applicant’s invention. But in the past 222 years, patent drawings have changed, degrading from detailed works of art to simplistic line drawings that barely qualify as illustrations.
So the 1869 patent for a “flying machine” (pictured above) includes an intricate color drawing of a mustachioed man wearing a pair of quite complicated-looking wings. The “domestic animal telephone” from 2011 is decidedly less interesting.
