Samuel Hopkins (inventor)

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Plaque honoring Samuel Hopkins in Pittsford, Vermont

Samuel Hopkins ( December 9, 1743 – 1818 ) was an American inventor from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On July 31, 1790 he was granted the first U.S. patent, under the new U.S. patent statute just signed into law by President Washington on April 10, 1790. Hopkins had petitioned for a patent on an improvement "in the making of Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process."

The statute did not create a Patent Office. Instead a committee of the Secretary of State, Secretary of War and the Attorney General were authorized to make a decision on the merit of a properly documented petition.

The patent was signed by:

The other U.S. patents issued that year were for:

a new candle-making process and
Oliver Evans' flour-milling machinery.

According to the present-day Canadian Office of Intellectual Property, Hopkins also received the first Canadian patent, in 1791, from "the Governor General in Council to Angus MacDonnel, a Scottish soldier garrisoned at Quebec City, and to Samuel Hopkins, a Vermonter, for processes to make potash and soap from wood ash."

Samuel Hopkins, the second child of Quaker parents, was born just north of Baltimore, Maryland. At about the age of 16 he was apprenticed to Robert Parrish, a Quaker tradesman in Philadelphia. In the spring of 1765, Hopkins married Parrish's sister-in-law, Hannah Wilson, and together they raised six children in Philadelphia over the course of 25 years.

The 1790 U.S. Census listed Hopkins' occupation as "Pott Ash Maker". The city directories of the period listed him as a "pot-ash maker" and a "pot-ash manufacturer". Around 1800, for financial reasons, he and his wife moved to Rahway, New Jersey, to live with their daughter Sarah and son-in-law, William Shotwell. They returned to Philadelphia, before Hopkins' death in 1818.