Patent and Place: Intellectual Property and Site-Specificity

Intro­duc­tion

Among the more than 9 mil­lion U.S. patents grant­ed since the Patent Act of 1790, a rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al anom­aly exists in which intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and place con­verge in an evoca­tive yet con­found­ing hybrid at the inter­stices of tech­nol­o­gy and envi­ron­ment. For good rea­sons, known geo­graph­i­cal loca­tions are rarely rep­re­sent­ed in patent doc­u­ments. The speci­fici­ty of place pre­cludes the widest inter­pre­ta­tion of patent claims and is, there­fore, gen­er­al­ly omit­ted from texts and images that aim to pro­tect the broad­est inter­pre­ta­tion of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty. Besides, direct cor­re­la­tion between the con­fig­u­ra­tion and func­tion of a nov­el inven­tion and a spe­cif­ic loca­tion, land­scape, or envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tion is atyp­i­cal — obvi­ous­ly. Yet, the schism between patent and place is not absolute, and a unique sub­set of patents grant­ed by the U.S. Patent and Trade­mark Office (USP­TO) includes texts and images that sug­gest site speci­fici­ty with­in intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty claims.

Patent, Rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and Environment

Patents have oper­at­ed as an invis­i­ble land­scape-of-pow­er in the built envi­ron­ment since the Ital­ian Renais­sance, when the world’s first patent was issued to the emi­nent archi­tect Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi in 1421 for a ​“machine or ship” and method of trans­port­ing mate­ri­als for his Duo­mo of Flo­rence, estab­lish­ing sem­i­nal legal and archi­tec­tur­al prece­dents.¹ Brunelleschi’s patent pro­tect­ed his inven­tion of a new machine and method for trans­port­ing heavy loads by water, solv­ing one of three major engi­neer­ing prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with his nov­el dome con­struc­tion process­es.² Although the patent’s legalese and the dome’s struc­ture oper­at­ed inde­pen­dent­ly on dis­crete legal and struc­tur­al prin­ci­ples, they formed togeth­er a high­ly inter­de­pen­dent and deter­min­is­tic mech­a­nism gov­ern­ing the form of the built envi­ron­ment. In this man­ner, the patent — west­ern civilization’s old­est legal and insti­tu­tion­al mech­a­nism for incen­tivized inno­va­tion — has long mir­rored, defined, and shaped the built envi­ron­ment, yet failed to rep­re­sent it eidet­i­cal­ly in a way that is com­mon­ly recalled.³

Patents do par­al­lel the built envi­ron­ment and design think­ing. In his book The New Archi­tec­ture and the Bauhaus (1935), the mod­ernist archi­tect and the­o­rist Wal­ter Gropius fore­told the trans­for­ma­tion of archi­tec­ture and design through indus­tri­al process, and, true to form, he and his busi­ness part­ner Kon­rad Wachs­mann secured a U.S. Patent for a ​“Pre­fab­ri­cat­ed Build­ing Sys­tem” (US2355192) in 1942, apply­ing Bauhaus prin­ci­ples to con­tem­po­rary hous­ing prob­lems.⁴ Just a few years ear­li­er, in 1938, Stan­ley Hart White, a pro­fes­sor of land­scape archi­tec­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois, uni­fied new steel struc­tur­al prin­ci­ples with advances in hydro­pon­ic tech­nol­o­gy to cre­ate a ver­ti­cal gar­den mod­el called the ​“Veg­e­ta­tion Bear­ing Archi­tec­ton­ic Struc­ture and Sys­tem.” Cor­re­lat­ing mod­ern land­scape the­o­ry to U.S. Patent claims, White’s inven­tion was a tru­ly mod­ern accom­plish­ment in the con­text of aca­d­e­m­ic Beaux Arts.⁵ This coevo­lu­tion of patent devel­op­ment and the built envi­ron­ment can also be traced through oth­er com­plex infra­struc­tur­al and nat­ur­al sys­tems, such as rivers, coasts, cities, build­ings, and designed land­scapes.⁶

A patent is, in essence, a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a spe­cif­ic inven­tion. U.S. patents have been accom­pa­nied by mod­els, draw­ings, and tex­tu­al descrip­tions since the Patent Act of 1790, which estab­lished Amer­i­can patent law and per­ti­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al stan­dards.⁷ The Patent Act states that grantees shall deliv­er to the Sec­re­tary of State, Sec­re­tary of War, and Attor­ney Gen­er­al ​“a spec­i­fi­ca­tion in writ­ing, con­tain­ing a descrip­tion, accom­pa­nied with drafts or mod­els, and expla­na­tions and mod­els (if the nature of the inven­tion or dis­cov­ery will admit of a mod­el) of the thing or things, by him or them invent­ed or dis­cov­ered.” If the inven­tion was found to be new and valu­able by the cab­i­net sec­re­taries and the Attor­ney Gen­er­al, the patent was grant­ed and signed, bear­ing ulti­mate­ly the ​“teste” of the Pres­i­dent him­self. In that man­ner, the gov­ern­ment and inven­tors coe­volved the tech­no­log­i­cal sub­strate of ​“the arts” towards unfore­seen ends. Patent law places no restric­tion on what may be invent­ed or what might be deemed use­ful or valu­able among the arts, open­ing up a world of pos­si­bil­i­ties lim­it­ed only by the inge­nu­ity of the cit­i­zen­ry and the rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al stan­dards of the patent, which today is glob­al, ter­ri­to­r­i­al, nanoscale, atmos­pher­ic, and even astro­nom­i­cal in reach.

Fig­ures 1a‑b: Patents dis­close inno­va­tion across a range of scales, from nanoscale mate­ri­als to sys­tems for geo­engi­neer­ing and manip­u­la­tion of atmos­pher­ic sys­tems. Patent doc­u­ments are cur­rent­ly for­mat­ted on 8.5” x 11” sheets, with black and white line draw­ings and text, mak­ing issues of scale par­tic­u­lar­ly salient. The patents shown here oper­ate at the largest known scales for patent innovation.

Most patents relat­ed to land­scapes, rivers, cities, regions, coast­lines, and oth­er com­plex envi­ron­men­tal sys­tems are inten­tion­al­ly site-less, dis­tanc­ing intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty claims from any spe­cif­ic loca­tions. Patents of this sort typ­i­cal­ly use dia­gram­mat­ic or typo­log­i­cal draw­ings to dis­close inven­tions and pro­tect the widest pos­si­ble scope of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty claims while main­tain­ing ambi­gu­i­ty as to where the patent might be applied.

Fig­ures 2a‑f: The built envi­ron­ment is often rep­re­sent­ed in patent doc­u­ments as a site­less series of typo­log­i­cal con­di­tions, mate­r­i­al assem­blages, process­es, and method­olo­gies. The patents shown here dis­close inven­tions for (2a) chore­o­graph­ing earth mov­ing and build­ing lev­ees, (2b) con­struct­ing unique water/​terrestrial edge con­di­tions (U.S. 5,678,954), (2c) con­trol­ling the eco­log­i­cal flow of water and sed­i­ment (U.S. ²⁰¹⁴⁄_0042064), (2^d) uti­liz­ing data for place­mak­ing (U.S. ²⁰¹⁴⁄_0324395), (2^e) eval­u­at­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty (U.S. ²⁰¹¹⁄_0047086), and (2f) gen­er­at­ing urban form (U.S. ²⁰⁰⁹⁄_0070131). They are site­less, yet poten­tial­ly impact the built environment.

Those draw­ings cov­er a range of design think­ing and process­es — describ­ing work­flows, eval­u­a­tive meth­ods, detailed mate­r­i­al con­fig­u­ra­tions, gad­gets of one kind or anoth­er, and a dizzy­ing array of objects — ulti­mate­ly rep­re­sent­ing the envi­ron­ment as a series of typo­log­i­cal con­di­tions, tec­ton­ic assem­blages, data sets, and oper­a­tions often con­tin­gent on spe­cif­ic spa­tial or phys­i­cal con­di­tions yet, in essence, with­out spe­cif­ic sites.

The site­less qual­i­ty of envi­ron­men­tal patent doc­u­ments does not dimin­ish their poten­tial impact on large-scale com­plex sys­tems. Con­sid­er, for exam­ple, the design and con­struc­tion of Eads’ Jet­ties at the South Pass of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er, near Fort Jack­son, a patent­ed sys­tem real­ized between 1875 and 1879 and cred­it­ed with sav­ing the Port of New Orleans by sus­tain­ing com­mer­cial activ­i­ties along the Mississippi.

James Buchan­nan Eads and his busi­ness part­ner James Andrews pro­to­typed and test­ed their jet­ty sys­tem at full scale for four years before receiv­ing their fee for the main­te­nance of a nav­i­ga­ble chan­nel at the mouth of the Mis­sis­sip­pi, rad­i­cal­ly alter­ing the flu­vial geo­mor­phol­o­gy and ecol­o­gy at the Head of Pass­es.⁸ The patent grant­ed to Eads and Andrews was designed to suit the unique con­di­tions at the Heads of Pass­es, yet the doc­u­ment itself makes no men­tion of this spe­cif­ic loca­tion, ref­er­enc­ing only envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions com­mon to delta­ic land­scapes and a method of con­struc­tion. We know of the patent’s use through Eads’ peti­tions to Con­gress and detailed his­to­ries of the jet­ties, but the patent itself makes no ref­er­ence to a known geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion. Eads’ patent may be site­less, but its imprint on a spe­cif­ic land­scape is bound to the fab­ric of cul­ture and remains leg­i­ble today in the mor­phol­o­gy of the Mis­sis­sip­pi River.

Site Spe­cif­ic Intel­lec­tu­al Property

The anom­aly of site-speci­fici­ty in patents weaves a dis­tinct nar­ra­tive through geo­gra­phies of the Amer­i­can land­scape dat­ing back to the ear­li­est days of the Patent Office. In this nascent area of envi­ron­men­tal inno­va­tion stud­ies, I pro­pose Thomas Paine as the first per­son to sub­mit site-spe­cif­ic works to the patent office, though we may nev­er know for sure about that prece­dence as most of the ear­li­est Amer­i­can patents were destroyed in a fire in 1836. Paine nev­er built a steel bridge in Amer­i­ca, con­trary to what was sug­gest­ed in cor­re­spon­dence with Thomas Jef­fer­son. He did, how­ev­er, pro­pose bridges in New York, New Jer­sey, and Penn­syl­va­nia a short time after his book Com­mon Sense (1776) helped cat­alyze the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. Mod­els of Paine’s designs for bridges span­ning the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers were exhib­it­ed in France and Eng­land pri­or to being sent to the U.S. Patent Office for dis­sem­i­na­tion and safe­keep­ing, estab­lish­ing the ear­li­est known prece­dent for site-spe­cif­ic works curat­ed by the patent office.⁹

Although the mod­els men­tioned in Paine’s writ­ings were prob­a­bly destroyed in one of sev­er­al con­fla­gra­tions of the Patent Office, we can reflect on the con­found­ing inter­sec­tion of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and place, or real prop­er­ty, and trace a lin­eage to the envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges of today. Paine’s sub­mis­sion of bridge mod­els to the U.S. Patent Office was not an iso­lat­ed instance of site-speci­fici­ty with­in the annals of patent his­to­ry. In fact, many site-spe­cif­ic works have been premised on intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty of one sort or anoth­er. These pro­pos­als range in scale and scope from design patents that pro­tect the form and appear­ance of spe­cif­ic build­ings, such as archi­tect Wal­lace Harrison’s patent for mod­els of the Try­lon and Peri­sphere (New York World’s Fair, 1939 – 1940) and Apple Inc.’s patent for its store on Fifth Avenue in New York City, to util­i­ty patents for sys­tems that aim to recon­fig­ure the func­tion and per­for­mance of cities, regions, and ecosystems.

Speak­ing gen­er­al­ly, the site­less qual­i­ty of patents has obscured an inti­mate rela­tion­ship between known places and spe­cif­ic tech­nolo­gies. One may eas­i­ly miss the rela­tion­ship between patent and place when sur­vey­ing mil­lions of doc­u­ments, which at first glance appear as a trea­sure trove of things — gad­gets, machines, and objects — but not of the envi­ron­ment as a whole, a place, or any known geog­ra­phy. Car­to­graph­ic forms of rep­re­sen­ta­tion with­in patent doc­u­ments quick­ly reori­ent the mind to the poten­tial inter­sec­tions of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and envi­ron­ment through the famil­iar imagery of maps.

Fig­ures 5a‑e: Patent car­togra­phies sit­u­ate tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions with­in known geo­graph­i­cal loca­tions. Exam­ples of envi­ron­men­tal and tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion in patent doc­u­ments include (5a) ​“Method of Clean­ing Har­bors,” sit­ed in Havana, Cuba; (5b) ​“Device for Uti­liz­ing the Water Pow­er of Falls,” sit­ed at Nia­gara Falls, New York; (5c) ​“Sub­ma­rine Wall,” sit­ed in Galve­ston Bay; (5^d) a method of ​“Obstruct­ing Ice in Rivers and Har­bors,” sit­ed in New York City; and (5^e) ​“Method and appa­ra­tus for coast­line reme­di­a­tion, ener­gy gen­er­a­tion, and veg­e­ta­tion sup­port,” sit­ed in glob­al man­grove ecosystems.

Although patent car­togra­phies usu­al­ly lack the scale and gratic­ule of con­ven­tion­al map­ping, known loca­tions are some­times clear­ly demar­cat­ed with labels and iden­ti­fi­able bound­aries. Not only can those places be recalled, known, or vis­it­ed in the real world; they are also sites of tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion. As rep­re­sen­ta­tions, the maps range in speci­fici­ty from sys­tems dia­grams that sit­u­ate an inven­tion with­in a known loca­tion to detailed bathyme­tries that show the resul­tant geo­mor­phol­o­gy of a spe­cif­ic inter­ven­tion. Exam­ples include pro­pos­als for the removal of ice from New York Har­bor and the East Riv­er, a pas­sive dredge sys­tem for Galve­ston Bay, a hydro­elec­tric plant for Nia­gara Falls that pre­serves scenery and pro­duces pow­er, and even cur­rent infrastructure/​ecology hybrids designed to rein­force and cul­ti­vate man­grove ecosys­tems in Flori­da and around the world.¹⁰

What is the rela­tion­ship between patent car­togra­phies and known geo­graph­i­cal loca­tions? Site speci­fici­ty with­in patents rais­es impor­tant ques­tions about the extents and juris­dic­tion of patent law, in addi­tion to chal­leng­ing com­mon­ly accept­ed mod­els for inno­va­tion in com­plex envi­ron­men­tal sys­tems. Take, for exam­ple, the life work of Lewis M. Haupt (1844 – 1937), a pro­fes­sor of civ­il engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia and, before that, a patent exam­in­er at the USP­TO.¹¹ Haupt’s the­o­ries on the ​“Phys­i­cal Phe­nom­e­na of Har­bor Entrances” earned him a Mag­el­lan­ic Pre­mi­um award from the Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal Soci­ety in 1887, and, on the same day that he accept­ed that award, he was grant­ed a U.S. Patent for a ​“Dike or Break­wa­ter,” which linked his design the­o­ries to known envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions and spe­cif­ic loca­tions.¹² Fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of Eads and oth­ers advanc­ing Amer­i­can infra­struc­ture through public/​private part­ner­ships, the ​“Reac­tion Break­wa­ter,” as Haupt’s inven­tion was pop­u­lar­ly known, was to be pro­to­typed at Aransas Pass, Texas, by the Reac­tion Break­wa­ter Com­pa­ny using the spec­i­fi­ca­tion of his patent.

Fig­ures 6a‑c: Lewis M. Haupt’s patent for the ​“reac­tion break­wa­ter,” sit­ed in Texas, Delaware/​New Jer­sey, South Car­oli­na, and par­tial­ly pro­to­typed at Aransas Pass, Texas. Pro­fes­sor Haupt received a Mag­el­lan­ic Award from the Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal Soci­ety and a patent for a ​“Dike and Break­wa­ter” from the Unit­ed States Patent and Trade­mark Office (U.S. 380,569). Pic­tures of the design mod­els show the before and after con­di­tions of Aransas Pass.

After a revi­sion to the con­tract, how­ev­er, the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment ulti­mate­ly award­ed the bid for con­struc­tion to anoth­er com­pa­ny, which intend­ed to build the break­wa­ter per Haupt’s spec­i­fi­ca­tions. Dur­ing this process, Haupt’s patent was assigned to the U.S. Gov­ern­ment for use at Aransas Pass. In turn, the Sec­re­tary of War, respon­si­ble for over­see­ing improve­ments in rivers and har­bors, dis­missed Haupt’s research and patent as ​“pure­ly the­o­ret­i­cal,” insist­ing that all of his dis­cov­er­ies were ​“uncon­firmed by expe­ri­ence, and con­tain noth­ing not already well known, and which has a use­ful appli­ca­tion in the improve­ment of our har­bors.“¹³ The War Department’s attempt to dis­cred­it Haupt’s inven­tion also inad­ver­tent­ly cast doubts on the Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal Society’s Mag­el­lan­ic Pre­mi­um, which Haupt defend­ed tire­less­ly in lec­tures to the Soci­ety and through pub­li­ca­tions.¹⁴ Haupt even­tu­al­ly peti­tioned Con­gress for pay­ment for par­tial use of his patent­ed inven­tion, but only after the deba­cle called into ques­tion the role of patent inno­va­tion in civic and pub­lic works under the juris­dic­tion of the fed­er­al government.

Accu­sa­tions of patent infringe­ment and the botched con­struc­tion process result­ed in a law­suit between Haupt and the Sec­re­tary of War, in which rul­ing the jet­ty was declared prop­er­ty of the U.S. Gov­ern­ment and, there­fore, not sub­ject to intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty infringe­ment. Haupt’s dif­fi­cul­ties propos­ing inno­va­tions for works under the juris­dic­tion of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and the Army Corps of Engi­neers did not dis­suade him from fur­ther explo­rations, and he con­tin­ued to devel­op patent pro­pos­als for places such as the South­west Pass on the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er, fol­low­ing in Eads’ foot­steps of twen­ty-five years ear­li­er at the South Pass.¹⁵

In the lat­er years of Haupt’s career, he also con­sult­ed on the need for inno­va­tion in infra­struc­ture and helped for­mu­late a cri­tique of new patent law that attempt­ed to sup­press patent inno­va­tion in civic works.¹⁶ Inter­est­ing­ly, by 1920, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment was involved in fif­teen mil­lion dol­lars of patent infringe­ment law­suits, and sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars of suits relat­ed to improve­ments in rivers and har­bors.¹⁷

Irre­spec­tive of the shift­ing land­scapes of patent law, the ever expand­ing role of gov­ern­ment in large-scale engi­neer­ing works, or the lack of clear finan­cial incen­tives for works that pre­clude com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion, inven­tors and inno­va­tors attempt­ed to rein­vent the built envi­ron­ment and nat­ur­al sys­tems using the legal and insti­tu­tion­al mech­a­nisms of the patent. Today, this record pro­vides an induc­tive view of envi­ron­men­tal design think­ing and a fruit­ful repos­i­to­ry for future inno­va­tion stud­ies. New tools may be need­ed to link patent inno­va­tion to place and the unique con­di­tions, dura­tions, and scales of com­plex envi­ron­men­tal sys­tems. For exam­ple, maps and oth­er car­to­graph­ic forms of rep­re­sen­ta­tion are not the only indi­ca­tors of site-speci­fici­ty in the patent archive. Known geo­graph­ic loca­tions are also some­times described in tex­tu­al claims and descrip­tions, even though the asso­ci­at­ed patent dia­grams and draw­ings remain site­less. Men­tions of known loca­tions are espe­cial­ly easy to over­look. More than 9 mil­lion patents have been grant­ed to date in the Unit­ed States, and each of those con­tains many words — even into the tens of thou­sands — mak­ing tex­tu­al search­es for known loca­tions dif­fi­cult. Nev­er­the­less, even with­in sur­fi­cial read­ings of his­tor­i­cal patent texts, we find evoca­tive envi­ron­men­tal design pro­pos­als, such as a pas­sive lev­ee con­struc­tion sys­tem for California’s Cen­tral Val­ley meant to bal­ance source/​sink sed­i­ment bud­gets dur­ing peri­ods of gold rush, a flood con­trol sys­tem along the south­ern reach­es of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er pri­or to the great floods of 1927, a method of con­struct­ing nav­i­ga­ble chan­nels at the Heads of Pass­es that poten­tial­ly sta­bi­lizes hectares of delta­ic land­scape, and oth­ers to be discovered.

Redraw­ing the Places of Intel­lec­tu­al Property

When think­ing of patents, one typ­i­cal­ly pic­tures some type of thing. His­tor­i­cal inter­re­la­tions among man­u­fac­tur­ing, indus­tri­al­iza­tion, and patents has result­ed in a dis­tinct ​“thing­li­ness” (think cot­ton gins, plows, tie hold­ers, auto­mo­biles, toast­ers, etc.), though busi­ness mod­els, con­struc­tion process­es, chem­i­cal for­mu­las, car­to­graph­ic sys­tems, meth­ods of man­u­fac­tur­ing, and oth­er ​“non-things” also have a long his­to­ry of patent inno­va­tion.¹⁸ Things and non-things alike may be grant­ed the pro­tec­tion of a util­i­ty patent, giv­en that the nature of their claims is non-obvi­ous, inno­v­a­tive, and dis­clos­es the func­tion and con­fig­u­ra­tion of a spe­cif­ic ​“art.” The hybridiz­ing of geo­graph­i­cal stud­ies with patent inno­va­tion stud­ies sug­gests a scale, scope, and ori­en­ta­tion for intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty claims that verge of the infra­struc­tur­al, eco­log­i­cal, and envi­ron­men­tal. Land­scapes are not things, cities are not things, and coastal zones are not things, yet each is sub­ject to the iter­a­tive and often deter­min­is­tic forces of human ingenuity.

In the fol­low­ing texts and images, I inves­ti­gate site-spe­cif­ic patents that func­tion at land­scape and region­al scales but with draw­ings and dia­grams that are site­less and scale­less. We know of each patent’s site speci­fici­ty through the inclu­sion of geo­graph­i­cal ter­mi­nol­o­gy and ref­er­ence to spe­cif­ic places and regions with­in the patent text, but the scale and impact of the pro­posed inter­ven­tion remains open to inter­pre­ta­tion. In one draw­ing per patent, I adapt claims and tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions to the geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion described in the text, syn­the­siz­ing his­tor­i­cal research and maps with the ​“new” inno­va­tion dis­closed in the patent. The texts and images pre­sent­ed here are, in their sim­plest form, rumi­na­tions on the inter­sec­tions of place and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty. They pro­vide geo­graph­i­cal con­text to patents that may have rad­i­cal­ly altered the Amer­i­can land­scape, tran­scend­ing the object-ori­ent­ed his­to­ry of patents to sug­gest a new hybrid at the inter­sec­tion of tech­nol­o­gy and envi­ron­men­tal geog­ra­phy of innovation.

A Medici Pro­pos­al for the Mis­sis­sip­pi – US Patent 658,795

Juan Bautista Medici was born in Pied­mont, Italy, in 1843 and died in Buenos Aires, Argenti­na, in 1903. While resid­ing in Italy, he worked as an engi­neer on domes­tic rail­road projects and the potable water net­work of Mon­te­v­ideo, Uruguay. After emi­grat­ing to Argenti­na in 1870, Medici became involved in the detailed sur­vey of Buenos Aires. Lat­er, togeth­er with the Argen­tine engi­neer Lavalle, he grad­ed 175,000 square kilo­me­ters of the province of Buenos Aires. The lat­ter was fol­lowed by the con­struc­tion of an exten­sive net­work of chan­nels to drain the area and the addi­tion of two nav­i­ga­ble chan­nels. This project was award­ed a gold medal at the Espo­sizione Ita­lo-Amer­i­cana in Genoa (1892).¹⁹ Dur­ing his illus­tri­ous career in Argenti­na, Medici was also involved in the lay­out, plan­ning, water­works, and con­struc­tion of the cap­i­tal of the province of Buenos Aires, La Pla­ta.²⁰ At 57 years old, and after a lifetime’s work in civ­il and hydro­log­ic engi­neer­ing, Medici sub­mit­ed his patent to the USP­TO with the inten­tion of recon­fig­ur­ing the delta of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er.²¹ Medici intend­ed for his inven­tion to be a direct tech­no­log­i­cal retort, or inno­va­tion, fol­low­ing Eads’ Jet­ties at the South Pass of the Mis­sis­sip­pi. Medici claimed:

The sys­tem of jet­ties or arti­fi­cial islets formed of brush and earth employed, for exam­ple, in the delta of the Mis­sis­sip­pi [refer­ring to Eads’ Jet­ties] has fall­en short of desired results, owing to the rigid nature of the resis­tance thus offered to the tremen­dous for of wave and cur­rent, before which force such rigid bod­ies must even­tu­al­ly give way. I have there­fore sought to over­come the defects of such sys­tems in the man­ner which I will now pro­ceed to describe.

Medici’s patent involves the anchor­ing of a sub­sur­face ​“for­est” or ​“orchard” of large, cut trees with vari­able depths rel­a­tive to the sur­face to guide flow­ing water and cap­ture sed­i­ment. The field or matrix of ver­ti­cal trunks and branched canopy would alter the speed and direc­tion of water by estab­lish­ing a new bathym­e­try of tree canopies that define chan­nels, islets, and bars at the riv­er delta. The sys­tem invites us to imag­ine a vast delta­ic land­scape con­struct­ed on prin­ci­ples observed in nat­u­ral­ly dynam­ic delta­ic land­scapes, yet designed to meet human neces­si­ty for nav­i­ga­tion. Medici’s pro­posed struc­ture is expan­sive, poten­tial­ly extend­ing for miles, and would func­tion at a scale com­men­su­rate with the deltas of large rivers. When com­pared with con­ven­tion­al tech­nolo­gies for engi­neer­ing of nav­i­ga­ble chan­nels, such as jet­ties and break­wa­ters, Medici’s pro­pos­al neglects the sin­gu­lar object and, there­fore, pre­cludes object-ori­ent­ed descrip­tion, evok­ing instead var­i­ous con­di­tions found in nature or oth­er large-scale pro­duc­tive land­scapes such as field, for­est, orchard, plain, island, field, delta, etc.

Pro­tect­ing South­ern Louisiana’s Ripar­i­an Lands from Over­flow – US Patent 488,422

Linus Weed Brown (1856−1910) was appoint­ed assis­tant engi­neer of the City of New Orleans in 1885 and chief engi­neer in 1892. In those capac­i­ties, he com­plet­ed detailed topo­graph­i­cal sur­veys of the city, includ­ing stud­ies of pre­cip­i­ta­tion and run-off and detailed pro­pos­als for a drainage sys­tem.²² He lat­er pub­lished a book­let sum­ma­riz­ing the com­plex engi­neer­ing works under­tak­en while he was a city engi­neer.²³ Brown’s work on the drainage of New Orleans neces­si­tat­ed a com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er lev­ee sys­tem and the topog­ra­phy of the region. In 1892, just as he was appoint­ed chief engi­neer for New Orleans, he was also grant­ed a patent for a ​“Sys­tem of Pro­tect­ing Ripar­i­an Lands from Over­flow,” which advanced the art of flood man­age­ment by using out­lets or ​“waste weirs” along the low­er Mis­sis­sip­pi. Locat­ed at pre­cise flood ele­va­tions along the river’s course, the weirs would car­ry flood­wa­ter to adja­cent lakes, where it would be dis­trib­uted nat­u­ral­ly through the vast delta­ic net­work of bay­ous and chan­nels drain­ing ulti­mate­ly into the gulf. Brown sug­gest­ed that his sys­tem be imple­ment­ed at Lake Brogne and Lake Mau­repas, and at as many riv­er bends as nec­es­sary to dis­trib­ute flood­wa­ters effec­tive­ly. Although the pri­ma­ry pur­pose of Brown’s inven­tion was to pro­tect low-lying lands from over­flow, it might also have facil­i­tat­ed sed­i­ment recharge in a delta starved by lev­ees. Boost­ers of the ​“lev­ees only” pol­i­cy ulti­mate­ly dis­cred­it­ed alter­nate pro­pos­als, includ­ing designed out­lets such as Brown’s, even though crit­ics knew that a lev­ees only solu­tion to flood con­trol would to con­tribute to the col­lapse and sub­si­dence of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er Delta.²⁴ The weir plan was nev­er imple­ment­ed dur­ing the legal peri­od of Brown’s patent. Inter­est­ing­ly, the Bon­net Carre Spill­way, which employs a weir sys­tem to divert water to Lake Pontchar­train, was con­struct­ed after the dev­as­tat­ing floods of 1927 sub­merged thou­sands of acres of land. That event occurred 39 years after Brown’s patent was grant­ed and a decade after expert wit­ness­es argued before Con­gress in favor of waste weirs sim­i­lar to those Brown pro­posed for the Mis­sis­sip­pi.²⁵

Source/​Sink Lev­ee for­ma­tion in Cal­i­for­nia Delta – US Patent 235,967

On Decem­ber 28, 1880, New­ton Sewell (1821 – 1902), a coun­ty asses­sor and landown­er in Yuba, Cal­i­for­nia, was grant­ed U.S. Patent 235,967, which describes a pas­sive hydraulic method for lev­ee for­ma­tion through the con­struc­tion of check dams with­in sed­i­ment-laden rivers. The dams would divert accu­mu­lat­ed sed­i­ment to a series of set­tling enclo­sures that in turn would become a lev­ee. Sewell’s patent for a ​“Method of Reliev­ing Riv­er-Chan­nels of Sed­i­ment and Form­ing Lev­ees” uti­lizes the ener­gy of rivers, local topog­ra­phy, and riv­er sed­i­ment of the gold rush to build lev­ees in California’s Cen­tral Val­ley. The design is topo­graph­i­cal in nature, cor­re­lat­ing the slopes of rivers, dam sequences, and sed­i­ment enclo­sures to the loca­tions of lev­ees. Sewell’s inven­tion was con­ceived in the lat­er years of hydraulic dredg­ing prac­tices for gold min­ing in the upper reach­es and trib­u­taries to the Sacra­men­to and San Joaquin Delta (aka the Cal­i­for­nia Delta) — a min­ing process that almost choked the delta and San Fran­cis­co Bay with sed­i­ment. Dur­ing this peri­od, an esti­mat­ed 300 mil­lion cubic meters of sed­i­ment were moved by rivers and creeks from the Sier­ra Neva­da Moun­tains into the Cen­tral Val­ley and San Fran­cis­co Bay — enough mate­r­i­al to cov­er 380 square miles at a depth of one foot. Sewell’s design is note­wor­thy not only for its engi­neer­ing of the intrin­sic flu­vial process­es of rivers and for link­ing lev­ee for­ma­tion to topo­graph­i­cal change in riv­er sys­tems, but also for its mas­tery of region­al source-sink sed­i­ment bud­gets in riv­er sys­tems by uti­liz­ing the sed­i­ment gen­er­at­ed upstream, in the dis­tant reach­es of the Sier­ra Neva­da Moun­tains to build lev­ees down­stream in the pro­duc­tive allu­vial plains of the val­ley. Sewell also sug­gest­ed that the sys­tem might be used to ​“reclaim,” or raise, low lying areas through the addi­tion of sed­i­ment — an inter­est­ing and far­sight­ed pro­pos­al giv­en the mas­sive sub­si­dence in the delta today result­ing from exten­sive lev­ee con­struc­tion, agri­cul­ture, and oxi­da­tion of rich organ­ic soils. The process is quite sim­ple, uti­liz­ing a series of low-crest­ed check-dams to raise the lev­el of water and divert sed­i­ment-laden water into set­tling enclo­sures, allow­ing for lev­ee for­ma­tion at an increased height rel­a­tive to the orig­i­nal ele­va­tion of the riv­er. Once the lev­ee has formed and the dam is removed, the riv­er ele­va­tion recedes to nor­mal and the lev­ee remains ele­vat­ed. When envi­sioned seri­al­ly along the reach­es of a riv­er sys­tem, a mosa­ic of lev­eed lands can be envi­sioned, sim­i­lar to the nat­ur­al bars and high­lands formed intrin­si­cal­ly by migrat­ing rivers. Impor­tant­ly, the sys­tem was devel­oped for imple­men­ta­tion along the rivers of cen­tral Cal­i­for­nia, between the gold rich lands of the Sier­ra Neva­da and agri­cul­tur­al­ly pro­duc­tive lands of the Cal­i­for­nia Delta, a statewide sed­i­ment man­age­ment plan dis­closed in patent.

Con­clu­sion

Patents have indi­rect­ly mir­rored and defined the built envi­ron­ment since the Ital­ian Renais­sance, when the first true patent was issued to the archi­tect Brunelleschi. As the founders of Amer­i­can Democ­ra­cy pon­dered inno­va­tion and patents cen­turies lat­er, they cre­at­ed a sys­tem to pro­mote inven­tion, lim­it monop­o­lies, and expand the pub­lic domain of shared intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly build­ing a new nation. The poten­tial for envi­ron­men­tal trans­for­ma­tion implic­it in new tech­nolo­gies was well under­stood by Jef­fer­son and oth­ers, yet the future per­mu­ta­tions of tech­nol­o­gy and envi­ron­ment remained inde­ter­mi­nate and unfore­seen. Impor­tant­ly, the authors of the Con­sti­tu­tion (1787) and the sub­se­quent Patent Act of 1790 put few lim­its on what may be patent­ed,²⁶ which lib­er­at­ed the cre­ative spir­it of a cit­i­zen­ry to evolve all sec­tors of ​“the arts,” includ­ing the less­er-known envi­ron­men­tal arts. Many impor­tant ques­tions are raised by the curi­ous reci­procity between patents and the built envi­ron­ment, includ­ing the poten­tial for inno­v­a­tive new ideas to trans­form places. The anom­aly of site-speci­fici­ty with­in patents is only one rhetor­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal frame­work through which to explore the envi­ron­men­tal arts. With­in this nar­row sam­pling, or inno­va­tion study, we can trace a lin­eage from Thomas Paine’s bridges for the Hud­son and Schuylkill Rivers, to the unre­al­ized delta­ic inno­va­tions pro­posed by Juan Bautista Medici at the Mis­sis­sip­pi, to the built works of Lewis M. Haupt. They are linked not only by their inte­gra­tion of known geo­graph­i­cal loca­tions with spe­cif­ic tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, but also through the prece­dent they estab­lish for inno­va­tion in the envi­ron­men­tal arts — work as rel­e­vant and for­ma­tive today as it has been for centuries.