While perusing the interweb last night I somehow wound up at the U.S. Patent Office. I was playing around with the search feature, but finding a particular patent isn't straightforward unless you actually know the patent number. So I grabbed the first thing I could think of that I knew would have a patent number stamped on it, a PEZ dispenser. From there I was able to use references to previous patents and the names of inventors to trace back to the earliest PEZ patent. After a while I was able to find the patents for all kinds of stuff like LEGOs, an Atari joystick, and the yo-yo. I was unable to find a patent for the Castle Grayskull playset, but I did find one for the trap door inside of it. If you click on the "Images" link you can see scanned copies of the original documents. If you need a TIFF plug-in for your browser, I recommend AlternaTIFF.
I amassed quite a collection of various patents, from fishing lures to pinball machines. Finding some of this stuff required a little research on my part. A few Google search results led me to eBay auctions where people are selling patent documents that they printed on their home printer. Some aren't even selling printed copies, just the digital files. If only the buyers knew that they could get these documents for free.
Seeing those auctions did give me the idea to print and frame some of these patents.
