Patent model

[3] On July 31, 1790, inventor Samuel Hopkins of Pittsford, Vermont became the first person to be issued a patent in the United States.

These earliest patent law required that a working model of each invention be produced in miniature.

In some cases, an inventor may still want to present a "working model" as evidence of actual reduction to practice in an interference proceeding.

[6] Many models were sold off by the patent office in 1925 and were purchased by Sir Henry Wellcome, the founder of the Burroughs-Wellcome Company (now part of GlaxoSmithKline).

After his death, the collection went through a number of ownership changes; a large portion of the collection—along with $1,000,000—was donated to the nonprofit United States Patent Model Foundation by Cliff Petersen.

Patent model of Eli Whitney 's cotton gin .
Cases of patent models on view at the U.S. Patent Office in 1861
Depiction of the 1877 fire at the U.S. Patent Office, which destroyed 75,000 patent models