“Forgotten Heroes and Forgotten Issues”: Business and Trademark History during the Nineteenth Century

2012 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Higgins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Cotton Textile ◽  
Three Solutions ◽  
Metal Fabrication ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Trademark Protection ◽  
History Of ◽  
Trade Names ◽  
Edge Tool

This reassessment of the importance of trademarks in business during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reveals that the focus by business historians on the beverage and processed-foodstuff industries has resulted in comparative neglect of the textile and metal-fabrication industries. The trademark histories of the latter two show that they followed their own paths, which resulted in their adopting three solutions to trademark issues that differed sharply from the approaches taken by the former two. The textile and metalfabrication sectors participated heavily in the evolution of an international regime to protect intellectual property; featured prominently in the development of patents in trademarks and trade names; and devised unique institutional solutions to the emerging problem of conflicting private marks in the Lancashire cotton-textile and Sheffield edge-tool industries. The history of these two industries indicates that trademark protection was not sufficient to ensure international competitiveness and long-run survival.

scholarly journals The Patent and the Paper: a Few Thoughts on Late Modern Science and Intellectual Property

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 600-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Hemmungs Wirtén
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Technology Transfer ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
Academic Publishing ◽  
Pure Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Modern

Marie and Pierre Curie’s decision not to patent the discovery (1898) and later isolation (1902) of radium is perhaps the most famous of all disinterested decisions in the history of science. To choose publishing instead of patenting and openness instead of enclosure was hardly a radical choice at the time. Traditionally, we associate academic publishing with “pure science” and Mertonian ideals of openness, sharing and transparency. Patenting on the other hand, as a byproduct of “applied science” is intimately linked to an increased emphasis and dependency on commercialization and technology transfer within academia. Starting from the Curies’ mythological decision I delineate the contours of an increasing convergence of the patent and the paper (article) from the end of the nineteenth-century until today. Ultimately, my goal is to suggest a few possible ways of addressing the hybrid space that today constitute the terrain of late modern science and intellectual property.

Principle, practice and persona in Isambard Kingdom Brunel's patent abolitionism

2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID PHILIP MILLER
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Patent System ◽  
Engineering Practice ◽  
Doing Business ◽  
History Of ◽  
Laissez Faire ◽  
Patented Inventions

AbstractThe nineteenth-century engineering hero Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a prominent patent abolitionist in debates about the patent system in Britain. His opposition is usually regarded as principled, that is, based in liberal laissez-faire opposition to monopolies and to the constraints of bureaucracy. Against this it is argued that Brunel's views on patents evolved. As late as 1840, despite lessons about patents from the bad experiences of his father, Brunel could still consider taking out a patent himself, something that a decade later he denied he had ever contemplated. Brunel's engineering persona, his experiences and conduct of engineering practice were the base from which he eventually formulated principled opposition to the patent system. The paper examines his responses to importunate inventors who pestered him with inventions in the 1840s and elucidates how he dealt with the patented inventions of others that he wanted to use in his projects. It is suggested that for Brunel patent abolitionism was in effect a way of doing business before it became a political cause. The case suggests the value of approaching the history of patents and, by implication, of intellectual property more generally, through detailed examination of practices.

The Grand Bargain

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Susskind ◽  
Daniel Susskind
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Routine Activities ◽  
Occupational Groups ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Traditional Arrangement

There are two possible futures for the professions. The first is reassuringly familiar. It is a more efficient version of what we already have today. On this model, professionals continue working much as they have done since the middle of the nineteenth century, but they heavily standardize and systematize their routine activities. They streamline their old ways of working. The second future is a very different proposition. It involves a transformation in the way that the expertise of professionals is made available in society. The introduction of a wide range of increasingly capable systems will, in various ways, displace much of the work of traditional professionals. In the short and medium terms, these two futures will be realized in parallel. In the long run, the second future will dominate, we will find new and better ways to share expertise in society, and our professions will steadily be dismantled. That is the conclusion to which this book leads. The first step in our argument involves taking stock of the professions we currently have. We do this, in this opening chapter, to provide a foundation of solid thinking about the professions—about their purpose and common features, their strengths and weaknesses—upon which we build later. We start by sketching an informal portrait of today’s professions. We follow this with a more systematic attempt to explain which occupational groups belong to the professions and why. We then discuss the history of the professions and look at the ‘grand bargain’, the traditional arrangement that grants professionals both their special status and their monopolies over numerous areas of human activity. Next, we reflect on various theoretical accounts of the professions, which leads us to identify a series of fundamental problems with our professions as currently organized. We close with a call for a new mindset, and point to a series of biases that are likely to inhibit professionals from thinking freely about their future. To set off at an easy pace, we begin with a set of non-theoretical, everyday views about the professions. On reflection, most people would say that the professions are at the heart of our social and working lives.

Bordeaux

Creating Wine ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Market Power ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic Independence ◽  
Wine Production ◽  
Long Run ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Political Voice ◽  
The Right

This chapter follows the long history of commercial relations between many British ports and Bordeaux. It begins by examining the long-run changes in wine production and trade during the nineteenth century and the organization of wine production in the region. After a period of prosperity that lasted from the mid-1850s to the early 1880s, there followed three decades of depression. Moreover, information problems for consumers of fine wines were reduced by the 1855 classification, but the growth in market power and economic independence of the leading estates was checked in the late nineteenth century. Finally, small growers successfully used their political voice to achieve legislation to establish a regional appellation, which limited to wines of the Gironde the right to carry the Bordeaux brand.

Bolton Ogden & Co.: A Case Study in Anglo-American Trade, 1790–1850

1974 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 501-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Killick
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Large Group ◽  
Long Run ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
American Trade

This study of the history of a large group of merchants directing Anglo-American commerce from the end of the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century analyzes major long-run changes in the organization and functions of mercantile institutions in that important period.

A history of some fruit models in wax and other materials: scientific teaching aids and courtly table decorations

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-JüRgen Lechtreck
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fruit Trees ◽  
Visual Aids ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Teaching Aids ◽  
Scientific Teaching ◽  
Glass Marble ◽  
History Of ◽  
By Products ◽  
Wax Models

Two early nineteenth century texts treating the production and use of wax models of fruit reveal the history of these objects in the context of courtly decoration. Both sources emphasise the models' decorative qualities and their suitability for display, properties which were not simply by-products of the realism that the use of wax allowed. Thus, such models were not regarded merely as visual aids for educational purposes. The artists who created them sought to entice collectors of art and natural history objects, as well as teachers and scientists. Wax models of fruits are known to have been collected and displayed as early as the seventeenth century, although only one such collection is extant. Before the early nineteenth century models of fruits made from wax or other materials (glass, marble, faience) were considered worthy of display because contemporaries attached great importance to mastery of the cultivation and grafting of fruit trees. This skill could only be demonstrated by actually showing the fruits themselves. Therefore, wax models made before the early nineteenth century may also be regarded as attempts to preserve natural products beyond the point of decay.

Adam Zalužanský’s “De sexu plantarum” (1592): an early pioneering chapter on plant sexuality

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Funk
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
History Of Botany ◽  
Main Work ◽  
Botanical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University ◽  
First Time

In the history of botany, Adam Zalužanský (d. 1613), a Bohemian physician, apothecary, botanist and professor at the University of Prague, is a little-known personality. Linnaeus's first biographers, for example, only knew Zalužanský from hearsay and suspected he was a native of Poland. This ignorance still pervades botanical history. Zalužanský is mentioned only peripherally or not at all. As late as the nineteenth century, a researcher would be unaware that Zalužanský’s main work Methodi herbariae libri tres actually existed in two editions from two different publishers (1592, Prague; 1604, Frankfurt). This paper introduces the life and work of Zalužanský. Special attention is paid to the chapter “De sexu plantarum” of Zalužanský’s Methodus, in which, more than one hundred years before the well-known De sexu plantarum epistola of R. J. Camerarius, the sexuality of plants is suggested. Additionally, for the first time, an English translation of Zalužanský’s chapter on plant sexuality is provided.

Correspondence between Adolphe Brongniart and Robert Schomburgk: trading natural history collections for honours

2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-336
Author(s):  
PIOTR DASZKIEWICZ ◽  
MICHEL JEGU
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Dominican Republic ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Herbarium Specimens ◽  
British Guiana ◽  
Natural History Collections ◽  
History Of ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
German Naturalist

ABSTRACT: This paper discusses some correspondence between Robert Schomburgk (1804–1865) and Adolphe Brongniart (1801–1876). Four letters survive, containing information about the history of Schomburgk's collection of fishes and plants from British Guiana, and his herbarium specimens from Dominican Republic and southeast Asia. A study of these letters has enabled us to confirm that Schomburgk supplied the collection of fishes from Guiana now in the Laboratoire d'Ichtyologie, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. The letters of the German naturalist are an interesting source of information concerning the practice of sale and exchange of natural history collections in the nineteenth century in return for honours.

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