C · Who received them
Foreign links
21.6%England 1840–1852
Key point
The share of English grants with a foreign link ('communication' or an address abroad) is 2.5% in the 18th century and 21.6% in 1840–1852. Hulme counts 21 of 55 grants of 1561–1603 (four of them grants for regulating trade) as grants to aliens. In the Dutch Republic 18% of privilege documents of 1581–1621 name a grantee of known foreign origin, 23% if grantees of probable foreign extraction are included.
- Definition
- England 1617–1852: share of grants whose text says 'communication' (an invention communicated from abroad) or whose grantee lives outside the British Isles. 1561–1603: Hulme's alien count and our recoding from his notes. Dutch Republic: origin code in the Buning data.
- Formula
- grants with a foreign link ÷ grants, by decade; 95% Wilson interval
- How to read it
- In England 'communication' entries grow from the 1810s; by the 1840s–50s about one grant in five has a foreign link.
- Caveats
- Each jurisdiction defines 'foreign' differently. The English figure is a lower bound read from addresses and wording; nationality is not recorded. Our recoding from Hulme's notes finds fewer aliens than Hulme's own 21. For the Dutch Republic, Buning's codes 1–6 (a named foreign origin) count as foreign and code 7 (probably of foreign extraction) is shown separately; codes 8 and 9 mark Dutch grantees.
Table
Download CSV · m_c1_foreign_gb.csv
| Decade | Total | Communication | Address abroad | Either | Communication share | Address-abroad share | Either share | 95% CI low | 95% CI high |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1610 | 15 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0.0% | 6.7% | 6.7% | 1.2% | 29.8% |
| 1620 | 33 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | -0.0% | 10.4% |
| 1630 | 75 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0.0% | 4.0% | 4.0% | 1.4% | 11.1% |
| 1640 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 49.0% |
| 1660 | 31 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 11.0% |
| 1670 | 50 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0.0% | 6.0% | 6.0% | 2.1% | 16.2% |
| 1680 | 53 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0.0% | 1.9% | 1.9% | 0.3% | 9.9% |
| 1690 | 102 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0.0% | 2.9% | 2.9% | 1.0% | 8.3% |
| 1700 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 14.9% |
| 1710 | 38 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0.0% | 2.6% | 2.6% | 0.5% | 13.5% |
| 1720 | 89 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0.0% | 1.1% | 1.1% | 0.2% | 6.1% |
| 1730 | 56 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1.8% | 0.0% | 1.8% | 0.3% | 9.4% |
| 1740 | 82 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 4.5% |
| 1750 | 92 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0.0% | 1.1% | 1.1% | 0.2% | 5.9% |
| 1760 | 205 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 0.5% | 1.5% | 2.0% | 0.8% | 4.9% |
| 1770 | 294 | 2 | 9 | 11 | 0.7% | 3.1% | 3.7% | 2.1% | 6.6% |
| 1780 | 477 | 6 | 6 | 11 | 1.3% | 1.3% | 2.3% | 1.3% | 4.1% |
| 1790 | 646 | 3 | 18 | 21 | 0.5% | 2.8% | 3.3% | 2.1% | 4.9% |
| 1800 | 920 | 24 | 33 | 44 | 2.6% | 3.6% | 4.8% | 3.6% | 6.4% |
| 1810 | 1,134 | 72 | 74 | 95 | 6.3% | 6.5% | 8.4% | 6.9% | 10.1% |
| 1820 | 1,448 | 143 | 138 | 181 | 9.9% | 9.5% | 12.5% | 10.9% | 14.3% |
| 1830 | 2,435 | 370 | 141 | 418 | 15.2% | 5.8% | 17.2% | 15.7% | 18.7% |
| 1840 | 4,552 | 705 | 224 | 883 | 15.5% | 4.9% | 19.4% | 18.3% | 20.6% |
| 1850 | 1,434 | 272 | 160 | 407 | 19.0% | 11.2% | 28.4% | 26.1% | 30.8% |
sampledReliability card
Rule-based classification: assigned by word rules; below, the precision measured on an independently coded sample
- Image check, year
- 119/120 (99%, 95% CI 95–100%)
- Image check, term
- 118/120 (98%, 95% CI 94–100%)
- Image check, number of grantees
- 118/120 (98%, 95% CI 94–100%)
- Image check, communication
- 119/120 (99%, 95% CI 95–100%)
- Text recoding, address abroad
- 206/212 (97%, 95% CI 94–99%)
- Text recoding, communication
- 208/212 (98%, 95% CI 95–99%)
- Hulme transcription, date
- 55/55 (100%, 95% CI 93–100%)
- Hulme transcription, term
- 55/55 (100%, 95% CI 93–100%)
Prior results
- 55 grants 1561–1603: 21 to aliens, 30 to natives, 4 for regulating trade. — Hulme (1900), LQR 16, p. 52.
- 6.5% of the 169 patents of 1474–1550 went to foreign (non-Italian) inventors. — Comino, Galasso & Graziano (2017), pp. 21–22.
Sources
- Bennet Woodcroft, Titles of Patents of Invention, Chronologically Arranged, from March 2, 1617 (14 James I.) to October 1, 1852 (16 Victoriae), London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1854, 2 parts (Nos. 1–14,359). Entries were split from the word coordinates of the Internet Archive OCR of the University of Illinois copy (
chronologicalin1617grea_0,chronologicalind1617grea); 115 pages on which that OCR lost entry numbers were read again from the page images with tesseract 5. (public domain, 1854; https://archive.org/details/chronologicalin1617grea_0) - E. Wyndham Hulme, 'The History of the Patent System under the Prerogative and at Common Law', Law Quarterly Review 12 (1896) 141–154, and '… A Sequel', LQR 16 (1900) 44–56: the list of industrial monopoly grants 1561–1603, Nos. I–LV (55 grants), and the summary table on p. 52, transcribed by hand and checked against the page images. (public domain, 1896, 1900; https://archive.org/details/sim_law-quarterly-review_1900-01_16_61)
- Marius Buning & Henk Looijesteijn, 'Patents in the Dutch Republic, 1581-1621', figshare, 2021, doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.16685788.v1 (CC BY 4.0), the data behind Buning, Knowledge, Patents, Power (Brill, 2021). Only documents with 'Nature of contact' code 3 (privilege issued) are counted. (CC BY 4.0; https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.16685788.v1)
- Stefano Comino, Alberto Galasso & Clara Graziano, 'The Diffusion of New Institutions: Evidence from Renaissance Venice's Patent System', NBER Working Paper 24118 (2017): period counts of Venetian Senate patents (p. 7), the sector table (Table A1, from Berveglieri 1995) and the share of foreign inventors. Quoted as secondary figures only. (quotation; https://www.nber.org/papers/w24118)