Ken Burns and patents

January 18, 2005 on 6:11 pm | In Famous Inventors |

Last night I noticed that my TiVo was recording a new Ken Burns PBS documentary called "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson."  [I love how you can set your TiVo to automatically record programs for you…in this case a "wishlist" for "Ken Burns" resulted in having the program automatically recorded.]

According to the PBS site, Johnson was "the first African-American Heavyweight Champion of the World, whose dominance over his white opponents spurred furious debates and race riots in the early 20th century…" 

Then…tonight I was reading a week old news magazine I swiped from my office’s reception area and found an article discussing Burns’ new series.  The article mentioned Jack Johnson having three patents. 

A little digging…and I found two of them (inventor "John Arthur Johnson"):

These two patents list his address as Leavenworth, KS…leading me to wonder if he applied for them while in prison.

I note that the third patent "was some kind of a steam winch that lifted very heavy equipment."  [cite]

Stumped me…maybe a reader (particularly an examiner with full text access) can hunt the patent number of the third patent for us.  The comments are open.

Part II of the program is on tonight.  If you missed it, PBS will sell you the DVD. 

P1774251reg

Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | | Subscribe via e-mail

Related Posts:

7 Comments

  1. Hey
    Lots of patents out there to a John A. Johnson in that time frame….none appeared to related to a steam winch as you described though. Check them out if you want:
    1491864
    1468449
    1442344
    1375391
    1369814
    1511169
    1522128
    1523018

    …also tried other name versions…like Jack, J.A. etc…..no better luck.

    Eric

    Comment by Eric — January 20, 2005 #

  2. I believe my father applied for a patent — possibly in the late teens (1919, e.g.). I’m not sure whether it was granted or not. Is it possible to find a patent application?

    Comment by Naomi — April 18, 2005 #

  3. The patent 1,413121 to Hohn Arthur Johnson of Leavenworth, Kansas.

    Entitled “Wrench”

    Comment by Robert — February 12, 2007 #

  4. Sorry about the typo. Its “John”, not “Hohn”

    Comment by Robert — February 12, 2007 #

  5. Filed in prison for violation of the Mann Act.

    Comment by Robert — February 12, 2007 #

  6. Actually, that is the patent mentioned earlier in the post. The missing one is for the “steam winch.”

    A Google patents search reveals 8 patents, but none of them appear to be the missing one: http://www.google.com/patents?.....ch+Patents

    I did some additional patent searching using the Google patents search and was unable to find it…

    Comment by Nipper — February 12, 2007 #

  7. Black History Month: Jack Johnson Patents

    A couple of years ago (2005) I had a post entitled Ken Burns and patents which discussed a Ken Burns documentary on Jack Johnson, the first African-American Heavyweight Champion of the World. Mr. Johnson was also an inventor, having three

    Trackback by The Invent Blog :: Stephen M. Nipper's Patent Blog — February 12, 2007 #

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

Powered by WordPress with Pool theme design by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds. Valid XHTML and CSS. ^Top^