PATENT DOCUMENTS

JOHN A. & HIRAM A. PITTS;

PITTS AGRICULTURAL COMPANY; 

BUFFALO PITTS COMPANY;

AND BUFFALO STEAMROLLER COMPANY

INSTRUCTIONS: To view any patent listed below or on the other "Patents" pages just Crtl-Click on the name of the patent and a new tab will be formed to the right of the right-most tab currently open in your browser's window.  Do this for all the patents you wish to view.  Then open each tab to view the patent.  Close the tab when you're done reading the patent. 

Each patent is listed with:

- Year

- Patent Number   

- Brief Description      

- Inventor(s)            

PATENT DOCUMENTS - EARLY

The first three patents listed are the earliest patents by twin brothers John and Hiram Pitts.  The first one, although out of order chronologically, was by far their most important.  Patent #542 was for their groundbreaking thresher (a.k.a. separator). 

The other two patents listed were other early patents taken out directly by the firm-founding brothers.  The fourth is an extension.  Note that early patents were numbered within each category, that's why the newer patent has a lower number.  Later, patents were all listed with the same numbering system, except for design patents which are numbered with a "D" before the number. 

 

All in all, your webmaster has found over 120 patents that appear to be taken out by Buffalo Pitts et al or by their employees.  Although patents today, when taken out by an employee and assigned to the firm that they work for, are typically owned outright by the firm, there were better deals offered to employees 100 years ago or more. 

 

Some of these patents are marked as being owned ½ by the firm and ½ by the employee.  Some are owned outright by the employee.  The latter is confusing as your webmaster isn't sure how such a patents would work.  That is, was it taken out by the firm and owned by the employee outright?  Or, was it taken out by the employee and owned by the employee?  Perhaps the latter example proves that engineers were better paid 100 years ago (if not thought of more highly, too?). 

Because this page got to be too, too long, we've separated the various patent sections into distinct web pages, which are detailed in the navigation pane above, and on every page herein. 

STEAM TRACTION ENGINE PATENTS - Click HERE

STEAMROLLER PATENTS - Click HERE

THRESHER AND IMPLEMENT PATENTS - Click HERE

AVIATION PATENTS - Click HERE

 

 

NERDMASTER RAMBLINGS

OK, as always, your nerdy webmaster (or is that webby nerdmaster?) has to be a bit of a wise guy here. 

If you look at the third patent listed it's titled "Horse Power."  Wow!  These two guys invented horse power??  So, like every time someone steps on the gas pedal in their car and uses their car's "horse power" then they must owe that all to the Brothers Pitts? 

OK, seriously... a "Horse Power" is merely a treadmill designed for horses that allows the power produced by the horses to be transmitted via pulley and belt to another piece of machinery, such as a thresher, hay elevator, etc.

TIPS FOR DOING YOUR OWN PATENT SEARCHES

One more thing, anyone who has tried to search for older patents at the United States Patents and Trademark Office will tell you that it's nearly impossible.  Unless you have the exact patent date, you cannot find older patents.  Thankfully, Google to the rescue.  Using Google's Patent site you can search for any patent from day one to day now.  Click HERE for the link to the Google Patent search web site.   

Unfortunately, there are a few bugs in the site.  This webmaster has found that using the "inventor" field for searches doesn't seem to work.  If you know the inventor's name use the "Keyword" field instead.