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It's no secret that Albert Einstein worked at the Swiss Patent Office after graduating
from his university studies.
He had really wanted a job in physics, teaching or researching, but his university professors
wouldn't really cooperate and wouldn't give him good recommendations.
He'd had reasonably good grades, but had a few falling outs with professors he didn't
like.
Eventually, it was through his friend's dad, that Einstein got the job of examining patent
applications.
It was a matter of looking through various mechanical inventions, and assessing their
practicality and originality to see if the inventor should be granted rights over the
idea.
It does seem an intriguing thought, to wonder how his time in this job may have influenced
Einstein's later work.
So out of curiosity, I've tracked down some of the actual patents that Einstein approved.
Einstein worked at the patent office from 1902 to 1909, which spans the period of time
when Einstein published his groundbreaking papers and began to gain recognition.
So it doesn't seem unreasonable that this work provided at least some inspiration.
However, not all of the inventions were glamorous.
Let's take a look at this first one.
It's a weather indicator based on air humidity, it's written in German but translates to say
that we have the device based on a twisted string of animal intestine, that's labelled
with the a in the diagram here, that reacts to the moisture content of the air, and changes
in humidity caused the intestine to twist, which moves the needle in the display.
Einstein himself looked at this and thought 'seems legit'.
And actually, the concept has been used a lot.
For example, in hygrometers, or weather houses.
The intestine is called a catgut.
But it is not made from cats.
Rather, it's made from sheep, goat or cattle.
This next pattern was for a gravel sorting machine, a series of various sized wire mesh
cylinders are rotated using the handle, with gravel coming in through this side, small
gravel will fall through the fine mesh with larger gravel making its way to the large
mesh, and that sorts the gravel.
Patents are practical engineering based solutions, rather than the deeply theoretical and abstract
work that Einstein would later become famous for.
Here's another one that Einstein approved.
It's for a kind of electrical typewriter.
With this, the keys are still pressed by a person, but the metal lever which imprints
the paper now moves electrically, rather than mechanically.
And this is some detail regarding that process.
There's a bit of a conspiracy swirling around that Einstein stole some of his greatest ideas
from the patents that he read.
There are obvious practical challenges to pulling that off.
But it also doesn't make a lot of sense, given that patent applications are not the same
as scientific papers.
They don't present new theoretical ideas, but rather the commercial applications.
But it does seem likely to me that having access to cutting edge inventions, and having
to think deeply about the ideas behind them certainly would have helped, especially when
Einstein was able to read patents surrounding ideas in electromagnetism, transmission of
signals and even the synchronisation of time.
Here is one that Einstein reviewed that was submitted by the General Electric Company,
an AC commutators with short circuit brushes and opposite brush auxiliary coils to avoid
sparks.
It's always good to try and minimise the amount of cables going to or from a machine.
So here they are using anchor points of the machine as a way to connect the commutator
coil.
But what's really interesting is that it includes one of the only surviving notes written by
Einstein while he was working at the office.
It's a sort of rejection letter, saying that the patent claim is incorrect, imprecise and
not clearly formulated.
Einstein's boss at the patent office had in fact told Einstein that "when you pick up
an application, you should think that anything the inventor says is wrong".
It would seem that in his earlier conflict with authority whilst a student Einstein already
had a bit of this mindset, but this attitude to work must have helped him to forge new
ground by not being limited to existing beliefs.
Einstein then got promoted to technical expert at a time when the office was seing a growing
number of patents regarding electric timekeeping and synchronisation of clocks.
This application likely came across his desk for an electromagnetically controlled pendulum
that would take a signal and correct a distant pendulum clock.
Many people were thinking about clocks, not as thought experiments, but because keeping
clocks synchronised was a real problem.
Patents were being filed trying to help determine train arrival times using coordinated clocks.
But it was Einstein who made a jump to realising there was an inseparable relation between
time and space.
In 1905, he published his work on special relativity, as well as the photoelectric effect,
Brownian motion and the energy mass equivalence.
Long after he left the patent office, he was still developing ideas based on current gaps
in physics, and gaining plenty of his own Patents, including his ideas for an adjustable
blouse.
But not all of Einstein's ideas were great or even correct.
And I think it's important to remember that even people who have been elevated to genius
status, have made mistakes or have failed.
If you would like to hear more about Einstein's flaws, then I know just the thing for you.
This course called What Einstein Got Wrong, is on the Great Courses Plus, who have sponsored
today's video.
The Great Courses Plus is an on-demand video learning service, with lectures and courses
from top professors, and also content from places like National Geographic and the Smithsonian.
They have a huge library of over 11,000 video lectures about anything that interests you.
What Einstein Got Wrong is taught by Dan Hooper, the head of the theoretical physics group
at Fermilab.
And I found it to be a nice way to remind myself of Einstein's achievements, but to
also learn a few new things about some of his flawed reasoning.
If you would like to explore any of the courses for yourself, you can head to TheGreatCoursesPlus.com/Tibees
to access a free trial.
That link can be found down in the description.
Thanks to The Great Courses Plus, and also to my Patreon supporters for enabling me to
make videos.
A special shout out to today's Patron cat of the day Moriko.