If the complicated birth of United States patent law can be told through the story of a single figure, that person is Oliver Evans. Evans’s patenting activities spanned the Founding. He received patents from four states in the 1780s, and then, in 1791, the third U.S. patent to be granted. This...

Airplanes were invented by hobbyists and experimenters, and some personal computers were as well. Similarly, many open-source software developers are interested in the software they make, and not focused on profit. Based on these cases, this paper has a model of agents called tinkerers who want...

The process of developing technology through open discussion has been called collective invention. Open source software projects have this form. This paper documents two earlier episodes of collective invention and proposes a general model based on search theory. One episode was the development...

Airplanes were invented by hobbyists and experimenters, and some personal computers were as well. Similarly, many open-source software developers are interested in the software they make, and not focused on profit. Based on these cases, this paper has a model of agents called tinkerers who want...

Since its inception, supporters of the Jones Act have claimed that the law is essential to U.S. national security. Although indefensible on economic grounds, Jones Act advocates argue that its restrictions promote the development of both a U.S. merchant marine and shipbuilding and repair...

Patenting expanded rapidly across the post bellum South as its transportation network filled in and city growth extended markets. This was consistent with Sokoloff and Khan (1990), who demonstrated the elastic supply of patentable ideas in early America. Successful innovation required that...

In historical perspective, both the nature of and arrangements for the generation of engineering knowledge have evolved over the past 150 years. We examine the historical development of the search for ‘useful knowledge’ in agriculture, aeronautics and chemical engineering during the first...

Debates about the future of work frequently reference past instances of transformative innovation to preface analysis of how automation and artificial intelligence could reshape society and the economy. However, technological shifts in history are rarely considered in depth or used to improve...

Innovation is widely acknowledged as one of the main forces driving economic growth. However, despite our significant knowledge of the technological determinants of innovation processes, an adequate understanding of demand side factors is still lacking. This paper aims to survey the literature...