Patent Models Online at Missouri Historical Society's Website

In a recent blog post, we shared information on a little-known area of Google’s website: Google Patents. We discussed how you could check to see if one of your ancestors filed for a U.S. patent and the interesting information a patent file might contain. (If you missed that post from October 2023, you can find it here.) Shortly after our blog was released, the fall 2023 issue of the Gateway magazine published by the Missouri Historical Society arrived containing a fascinating article on patents written by Assistant Collections Manager Bryan Morey. Read on to see how the Missouri Historical Society’s collection may lead to some remarkable discoveries for you.

Mr. Morey explains that prior to 1880, in addition to filing paperwork, patentees had to submit working models of their inventions. Thousands of these models were sent into the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C., but two major fires in the nineteenth century destroyed many of them, especially those created prior to 1836 and then some from later in the century. By the time Congress voted to sell the collection in 1926, there were about 160,000 models remaining. The Smithsonian Institution kept about 10,000 and the rest were purchased by repositories nationwide, including quite a few now owned by the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis.

In addition to some enlightening text, Mr. Morey’s article reveals that the museum has digitized their collection of patent models and has posted the images on its website. Finding them, however, is a bit tricky. They are not obviously labeled as a collection, and it was only after trying several search keywords that the collection popped up. And once it did, what a pleasant surprise!

Here’s how to access them:

1. Go to https://mohistory.org/collections.
2. In the grey bar at the top where it says, “Enter Keyword(s),” type in “patent models,” and then click on the small arrow to the right (or just press “Enter”).
3. If you are looking for a particular person or patent, use the grey bar to type in the specific name and you can go directly to that entry.

The search for “patent models” yields 669 hits, most of which have been photographed and described in detail on the site. Each also is identified by the name of the patentee, the patent number, and the time period in which it was submitted. Even if you don’t have an ancestor who created a model, the scope and ingenuity of the pieces makes scrolling through them worth your time. You can see small models of early wood stoves and refrigerators, butter churns (one of the few patents by a woman) and door locks. One of the more interesting examples is a model meat canning machine created by Thomas Houlahan [sic], who worked for the St. Louis Beef Canning Company. And one of the strangest is from another St. Louisan, Henry Fred Langewische, who created an elaborate fly fan and alarm to keep pesky insects away while a person was asleep. See both below.

You can read Bryan Morey’s article, “Treasures from the Collection,” if you are a member of the Missouri Historical Society, in the Gateway, volume 43, no. 2, Fall 2023, pgs. 2–5. We hope you enjoy learning about this new addition to the Missouri History Museum’s website, and maybe you will discover more about one of your ancestors while you are there.