INDEX OF NAMES. [The names printed in Italic are those of the persons by whom the inventions have been communicated to the Applicants for Letters Patent.] PRINTED BY GEORGE E. EYRE AND WILLIAM SPOTTISWOODE PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF PATENTS FOR INVENTIONS, PREFACE. THE Indexes to Patents are now so numerous and costly as to render their purchase inconvenient to a large number of inventors and others, to whom they have become indispensable. To obviate this difficulty, short abstracts or abridgments of the Specifications of Patents under each head of invention have been prepared for publication separately, and so arranged as to form at once a Chronological, Alphabetical, Subject-matter, and Reference Index to the class to which they relate. As these publications do not supersede the necessity for consulting the Specifications, the prices at which the printed copies of the latter are sold have been added. The number of Specifications from the earliest period to the end of the year 1866 amounts to 59,222. A large proportion of the Specifications enrolled under the old law, previous to 1852, embrace several distinct inventions, and many of those filed under the new law of 1852 indicate various applications of the single invention to which the Patent is limited. Considering, therefore, the large number of inventions and applications of inventions to be separately dealt with, it cannot be doubted that several properly belonging to the group which forms the subject of this volume have been overlooked. In the progress of the whole work such omissions will, from time to time, become apparent, and be supplied in future editions. |