Thomas Fessenden, Promoter of Perkins' Metallic Tractors, Publishes the First American Book on Patent Law

In 1810 American author, editor, and lawyer Thomas Green Fessenden issued from Boston An Essay on the Law of Patents for New Inventions with an Appendix Containing the French Patent Law, Forms, &c.

Fessenden, who has been characterized as a "Renaissance man," was a lawyer, poet, journalist, inventor and a venture capitalist who promoted various inventions. He was the holder of two patents for heating devices. He promoted "scientific" techniques in The New England Farmer, a journal he founded. His treatise included summaries of the relevant statutes, digests of leading cases (such as Whitney v. Carter over the invention of the cotton gin) and comparisons between the patent laws of the Unites States, Great Britain and France. The appendix included the U.S. Patent Law of 1800, a bilingual collection of French laws, and a set of French recommendations for improvements in the laws of the United States.

Fessenden also promoted the Perkins Metallic Tractors quack devices in a notorious book of poems best known for its second edition (1803): Terrible Tractoration!! A poetical Petition against galvanising Trumpery, and the Perkinistic Institution. In four Cantos. Most respectfully addressed to the Royal College of Physicians, by Christopher Caustic ….