18th January

Ken Burns and patents

by nipper. | Posted in Info For Inventors, Interesting Patents & IP History   7 Comments »

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

Related posts:

  1. Black History Month: Jack Johnson Patents
  2. Patents on uses of existing products
  3. Five Things Corporate Counsel Need to Know About Patents
  4. Downloading copies of patents
  5. Google bingo

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 18th, 2005 at 6:11 pm and is filed under Info For Inventors, Interesting Patents & IP History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

7 Responses to “Ken Burns and patents”

  1. Eric Says:
    January 20th, 2005 at 8:50 am

    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

  2. Naomi Says:
    April 18th, 2005 at 11:20 am

    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?

  3. Robert Says:
    February 12th, 2007 at 2:24 pm

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

    Entitled “Wrench”

  4. Robert Says:
    February 12th, 2007 at 2:28 pm

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

  5. Robert Says:
    February 12th, 2007 at 2:30 pm

    Filed in prison for violation of the Mann Act.

  6. Nipper Says:
    February 12th, 2007 at 3:19 pm

    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?zoom=4&q=%22John+Arthur+Johnson%22&btnG=Search+Patents

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

  7. The Invent Blog :: Stephen M. Nipper's Patent Blog Says:
    February 12th, 2007 at 3:30 pm

    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