Rhode Island American And Providence Gazette

Mr. Thoroton, of the Patent Office, Washington, relates the following anecdote.

Mr. Gilbert Brewster, a very ingenious artist from Connecticut, came to the Patent Office about the middle of October, 1823, and requested permission to examine the models. I informed him they were deposited for public inspection, and that he was at liberty to see and examine them as often and as long as he pleased.

Instead of spending a few hours, he visited them daily for about six weeks; then thanked me for the gratification he had enjoyed, declaring them worth millions of dollars, or that they were of incalculable value to a real mechanic. He said he saw movements and combinations of which he had before no idea, "and that he was now enabled so to improve the machinery for spinning wool, as to reduce the price of spinning from eight cents to one cent per lb. He went away, and returned in about three months, with two models, declaring, on his return, that he had perfected what he had contemplated, and that he could then spin wool at a lower price than the English, who could not effect it for less than four cents per lb. I issued three patents for his machines, and a gentleman who accompanied him from New York and who had engaged to buy these machines for a manufacturing company in Connecticut, paid him down ten thousand dollars in my presence.