April 2nd, 1872.

In the afternoon, with General Myers again as our guide, we visited the Patent Office. It is a bureau of the Department of the Interior. Depending on the originality and importance of the invention, various degrees of recognition are accorded. Some people are simply granted a licence of patent, while others are awarded a medal of honour. Even though a new invention may not be good enough to win a medal, it is still an honour to have it put on display.

The Patent Office is an imposing building of brilliant white stone across from the United States Post Office. There are several dozen large rooms, each divided into sections where newly invented machines and models are exhibited. Americans boast that they lead the world as inventors of machinery. Their inventions include the steamship, the telegraph, the warship with an armoured steel hull, apparatus for academic research and science, as well as for household use, crafts of all kinds, fine arts and small objects such as toys and snuffboxes. Everything with some novel application is registered and a model of it displayed. There was such a bewildering array of inventions that merely asking their names was exhausting. Many of the machines were so cleverly contrived that even if one watched their movements, in eight or nine cases out of ten it was hard to grasp the secret of their mechanisms.