George Washington signed America's first patent
On this day · 31 July 1790
The young United States issued patent number one in 1790 — for a better way to make potash from wood ashes.
On 31 July 1790, the United States granted its first patent. The recipient was Samuel Hopkins, and the invention was a more efficient process for making potash and pearl ash — alkaline compounds leached from wood ashes that were essential to fertilizer, soap, glass, and gunpowder in an agrarian economy.
The document carried extraordinary signatures. President George Washington signed it personally, joined by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Attorney General Edmund Randolph — a measure of how seriously the new republic took rewarding invention.
One sheet of paper, signed by a president, launched the American patent system.
The grant flowed from the Patent Act of 1790, which Washington had signed that April. It built into law a bargain the founders prized: inventors gained exclusive rights for a limited term, and in exchange their methods entered the public record. Hopkins’s humble potash process became the first entry in a system that now numbers in the millions.
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