es
Patent Office do not show whether a patentee is a Negro or a
Caucasian, and that to ascertain what the Negro has accomplished in
the field of invention other sources of information had to be
utilized; and finally, that the very omission from the public records
of all data calculated to identify a given invention with the Negro
race completely destroys the possibility of arriving at any definite
conclusion as to the exact number and character of negro inventions.

Judging from what has been duly authenticated as Negro inventions
patented by the United States, it is entirely reasonable to assume
that many hundreds of valuable inventions have been patented by Negro
inventors for which the race will never receive due credit. This is
the more unfortunate since the race now, perhaps, more than ever
before, needs the help of every fact in its favor to offset as far as
possible the many discreditable things that the daily papers are all
too eager to publish against it.

It appears that no systematic effort was ever made by the government
to collect information as to the number of inventions by Negroes until
January, 1900, when the then Commissioner of Patents, Hon. Charles H.
Duell, undertook the task. Previous to that time the United States
Patent Office had received numerous requests from all parts of the
country for information on that point, and the uniform reply was that
the official records of the Patent Office did not show whether an
inventor was colored or white, and that the office had no way of
obtaining such information.

Notwithstanding this fact, however, an employee of the Patent Office
had undertaken to collect a list of such patents, and this list was
used in selecting a small exhibit of Negro inventions. First, for the
Cotton Centennial at New Orleans, in 1884; again for the World's Fair
at Chicago, in 1893; and, lastly, for the Southern Exposition at
Atlanta in 1895. But it was reserved for the United States Commission
to the Paris Exposition of 1900 to make the first definite effort to
obtain this information, and at its request the following letter by
the Commissioner of Patents was addressed to hundreds of patent
lawyers throughout the country, to large manufacturing establishments,
to the various newspapers edited by colored men, and to prominent men
of the race:

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,
United States Patent Office.