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Greetings and welcome to an LGR thing.
And today I'd like to talk about retro patents!
More specifically, the artwork of the patents,
not necessarily the whole broad idea of trademarks and patenting in the United States,
that's a different topic. But, you know, just the art in general
that's on these things, I think it's interesting.
It's very technical, but it's made to be approachable and easy to understand.
And I just— it has a neat look to it, I've always thought.
And apparently I'm not the only one! There's this company called Retro Patents.
It has a website and they're selling their own prints of these patents.
Things like game controllers, computer peripherals,
and all sorts of fascinating retro tech.
They actually sent me and email and said,
“Hey, we like your videos, would you like to make one on our prints?”
and I said “Yeah, sure, why not?”
I can say anything I want about them
and they're not paying me, so that's my kind of deal.
So yeah, they sent me a tube.
Let's look at what's inside the tube!
Sweet. Let's get this opened up.
And in lieu of proper weights... [chuckles]
I've got some pint glasses here.
Heh. “Retro Patents <3 LGR”
“Hey Clint. Thanks for the many years of videos and inspiration.
Aidan, owner of Retro Patents.”
Oh, thank you very much, sir.
And yes, these are the three that it came with. And “the print has been delicately
taken from our printer with sterilized gloves and placed onto a silk pillow..."
[chuckles] “before mailing it to you.”
Yeah, I could believe it, because this is seriously impressive.
In person, at least. I don't know how it's coming across on camera.
But the contrast and just sharpness of all of these little details is just wonderful.
Now this particular patent is the one that I'm probably the least familiar with but...
obviously, it's attributed to Arthur Dickinson, who was an IBM associate...
and inventor.
With this one apparently representing a method for adding and subtracting using vacuum tubes,
which of course was pretty important for...
computing in the '40s and whatnot.
By the way, it just looks freaking awesome and that's why I wanted it.
So, you might not be aware but I actually used to work as a picture framer before...
doing LGR full-time, and I did that for years.
It was just designing frames, you know, with customers and then, of course,
getting them framed and working with archival prints and stuff. I mean, just everything.
Thousands and thousands of pieces over the years.
And I like to think that I know...
an decent print when I come across it, and this one absolutely is.
I'm tell you, this is just...
Yeah, especially from a decent distance.
You get really close up, you can notice some of the, I guess, fuzziness.
But they've done a really good job cleaning these up
and making them look, I mean, really presentable.
And of course, the actual text in the border is just razor sharp.
And I absolutely love this calculator patent, by the way.
This one in particular is the TI Cal-Tech,
which really sort of kickstarted the idea of a handheld calculator
by Texas Instruments, and in general.
Jack Kilby was involved with this one, of course,
one of the inventors of the integrated circuit and...
this made use of that, and quite a legendary little device.
And last, but not least...
the floppy disk drive patent that I actually asked if they could...
you know, make for me.
And they did! And here it is. And it looks awesome!
And this patent is, of course, a floppy disk drive.
Or in this case, they call it the "apparatus for writing on and/or reading magnetic disks."
I think this particular patent right here, as far as like the visual we're seeing,
is later.
By the way, the visuals are, again, the main selling point here.
Showing the double-sided floppy disk drive action and...
the belt and all sorts of cool stuff.
I mean, it's a floppy drive. I had to have this.
And this is the one that I'm definitely going to be framing, putting up on my wall.
Reminds me of childhood, looking through the "Way Things Work" books.
Of course, at that point, I didn't know that patents were a thing,
but you know, I just always liked the way they look.
Yeah, let's get this one out into a frame.
Nice!
Even with a cheap-as-dirt, all-plastic frame,
I think it looks quite snazzy.
I might get a better frame later on.
I'm quite fond of custom frames, as you might imagine, but...
for the purposes of this video, I just wanna kinda get it into something really quick to show you,
because this is neat and I can't wait to get it on my wall.
I'm thinking maybe right here? Hmm...
Move this a little bit out of the way. I can make it work.
I don't know where I'm gonna put it yet, but yeah, it's gotta go in this room.
Well that's pretty much it for the retro patents that I wanted to talk about in this video at least.
Except for one topic of course, and that is the question:
why can't you just make these yourself?
This is public information, public imagery that you can get from Google Patents, or wherever...
and yes, that is true. Ha.
I've done similar things myself as far as taking...
stuff that I think is neat and thought would make a cool poster.
Just printing it out on my own but...
it didn't turn out as nice as this, I can tell you that.
And, well, you know, there's something also to be said about being lazy and having somebody else...
make a really cool layout that is nice-y, high quality and...
a pretty decent price for something as niche as this.
I just think it's a cool idea and...
should make some really nice stuff to put up on my walls.
So I'm glad it exists, and I wanted to share it with you.
So, hope you thought it was fascinating like I did.
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And if you enjoyed this episode of LGR, perhaps you'd like to see some of my others.
I've got new videos every Monday and Friday on all sorts of topics.
And plenty more are coming soon.
And as always, thank you very much for watching LGR.