Classification lies at the foundation of the mental processes. Without the power of perceiving, recognizing resemblances, distinguishing differences in things, phenomena and notions, grouping them mentally according to those resemblances and differences, judgment is impossible, nor could reason be exercised in proceeding from the known to the unknown.

The facilitation and abbreviation of mental labor is at the bottom of all mental progress. The reasoning faculties of Newton were not different in qualitative character from those of a ploughman; the difference lay in the extent to which they were exerted and the number of facts which could be treated. Every thinking being generalizes more or less, but it is the depth and extent of his generalizations which distinguish the philosopher. Now it is the exertion of the classifying and generalizing powers which thus enables the intellect of man to cope in some degree with the infinite number and variety of natural phenomena and objects. (Jevons, Principles of Science.)

PAST CLASSIFICATIONS OF UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

As under the patent laws the people of the United States assume all the risks in granting a patent for any means of the "useful arts," a classification that will facilitate a judgment respecting the patentability of any means presented to the Patent Office is of peculiar moment. The enormous extent, diversity, and refinement of the useful arts preclude the formation of a judgment on novelty within a reasonable time, unless the necessary comparisons with known processes and instruments have been previously made along the lines that searches must follow and the results of such comparisons made available in a classification. The vast majority of available disclosures of the arts occur in patents. Hence the Patent Office classification must be adjusted in the main to the analysis, diagnosis, and orderly arrangement of the disclosures of patents.

For more than 80 years United States patents have been classified. The first published classification, promulgated in 1830, comprised 6,170 patents, divided into 16 classes. The change from a registration to an examination system in 1836 instigated a new classification in 22 classes, including 9,800 patents. The next came in 1868 with 36 classes, including about 75,000 patents. On March 1, 1872, a revised classification was adopted, comprising 145 classes, including 131,000p. 2 patents. This classification is said to have been planned by Dr. Edward H. Knight. The placing of the patents in accordance with the schedule of classes is said to have been done by the several examiners. The class arrangement was purely alphabetical by class titles, and the number designations followed the alphabetical order. The names of things to be found in the several classes were arranged alphabetically under each class title. No attempt was made to bring the titles of allied materials into juxtaposition or to effect other definite arrangement with reference to subject matter in the printed schedules. A consolidated name index supplemented the list of names by classes.

This classification of 1872 is in part the classification that now exists, many of the same class numbers and titles being still in use. Examiners were apparently permitted to make changes in classification to suit their convenience without notice until 1877. In that year a revision of the published schedule was made by a committee, resulting in the addition of 13 new classes, and examiners were ordered to transfer patents in accordance with the new titles. The first classification published with distinct subclasses appeared in 1880. From that time until 1898 the classification grew by addition and subdivision of classes to suit the ends of individual examiners or in response to supposed exigencies of the work where one division was thought to be overloaded and another underloaded, and the alphabetical arrangement of subclasses under each class has succeeded the alphabetical list of names. The arbitrary correspondence originally established between the alphabetical order of class titles and the numerical order was destroyed as soon as expansion of the classification began.

However suitable to the then-existing material of the useful arts the classification of 1872 may have been, it failed as fail all inductive processes wherein the generalizations are not broad and deep. (Isaac Newton's intellect could detect the resemblance between the falling fruit and the motions of the planets.) The classification of 1872 was not exhaustive; it failed to recognize to the fullest extent what Bishop Wilkins saw nearly 300 years ago, to wit, that there are "arts of arts;" and it failed to provide for future invention of new species in the same art, and to recognize that new arts could be formed from combinations of the old.

BEGINNING OF REVISION.

The Classification Division was created in the hope that guiding principles of classification could be developed and applied for the purpose of amending or revising the classification whereby patents could be placed with greater assurance, and whereby the searcherp. 3 with these guiding principles in mind might find the nearest references. It was confronted with the problem of revising while at the same time keeping accurate record of all changes, correcting all indexes of patents, and using copies in constant demand for search at the same time, necessitating much clerical work, and constant interruption—of correcting rather than planning anew; of mending a machine while constantly increasing duty was required of it.

Ideas on the subject of revision were called for by the Commissioner of Patents, and all in the Patent Office had an opportunity to set forth their notions. The views of one met with approval and in accordance with those views a "Plan of Classification" was prepared and promulgated in 1900. What other plans may have been submitted is not now generally known. But in substantial accordance with that published plan, the process of revision has proceeded for more than 14 years until approximately 50 per cent of the patents (including incomplete work) have been placed in revised classes.

PRECEDENTS AND AUTHORITIES.

No effective precedents have been found in any prior classifications of the arts. The classifications of the principal foreign patent offices have not been materially different in principle from the United States Patent Office classifications of the past.

The divisions found suitable for book classification for library use, have not been deemed adequate to the exactness and refinement essential to a patent office classification of the useful arts. The systems of class and subclass sign or number designations of the modern library classifications, with their mnemonic significance, afford the most important suggestions to be drawn from library classification. None of these systems of designation has been adopted, (1) because of a serious doubt as to the availability of such designations by reason of the length or unwieldiness to which they would attain in the refinements of division necessary in a patent office classification, and (2) because of the enormous amount of labor necessary to make the change from present practice.

The best analogies are in the known (but changing) classifications of the natural sciences, and in them the problems are so different that they can serve only to illustrate general principles. The broad principles of classification are well understood. The authorities are the logicians from the ancient Aristotle to the modern Bentham, Mill, and Jevons. The effort of the Classification Division has been to adapt and apply these well-known principles to the enormously diversified useful arts, particularly as disclosed in patents and applications for patents.

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DEFINITION OF SCIENTIFIC CLASSIFICATION.

It may be well to insert here an authoritative definition: "A scientific classification is a series of divisions so arranged as best to facilitate the complete and separate study of the several groups which are the result of the divisions as well as of the entire subject under investigation." (Fowler, Inductive Logic.)

Investigation and study of any subject will be facilitated if the facts or materials pertinent to that subject be so marshaled and arranged that those most pertinent to it may appear to the mind in some form of juxtaposition. It is the purpose of the Patent Office classification to divide and arrange the body and multitudinous units of the useful arts so that, having the question of novelty of any defined means to answer, one may with reasonable assurance approach that portion of the rank of arts in which it will be found if it is not new, and in propinquity to which will also be found those means that bear the closest resemblances to that sought for, the resemblances of other units growing less in proportion to their distance therefrom.

Success in the fundamental aim of facilitating adequate search should evidently at the same time reduce proportionately the danger that interfering applications will be overlooked and also effect a distribution of labor favorable to the acquisition of special skill.