Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1879.djvu/49

Rh by United States commissioners, or other United States officers, of commissions issued by foreign governments to take testimony in the United States to be used before foreign patent offices and before all judicial, legislative, and executive departments of foreign governments, and to punish perjury committed in such testimony; the law to be operative only in favor of such governments as shall make like provision for taking testimony in foreign countries, to be used in like manner in the United States.

As to the work of reproducing drawings by photolithography, the Commissioner expresses the opinion that the highest standard possible in the art could be secured at the lowest cost by the establishment of a division in some one of the executive departments, where photolithographic work could be executed for any branch of the service that might require it.

Recommendation is made for an appropriation of $50,000 for printing the specifications of patents-issued prior to November, 1866; also for an appropriation of $10,000 for the publication of the general index of patentees, from 1790 to 1873. The work is nearly completed and will soon be ready for the printer.

For the reproduction of illustrations for the Patent Office Report for the year 1870, $6,000 is asked for.

For the reproduction of drawings destroyed by tire it is estimated that an appropriation of $60,000 will be necessary, and the urgency of the work suggests that the amount be made immediately available.

The Commissioner also recommends that the law relating to the payment of the final fee within six months of the allowance of a patent be so amended as to make the execution of the law possible in all cases. Under the present law, requiring a patent to be dated within six months of its allowance, the payment of the fee on the last day of the prescribed time makes it impossible to conform to the law without resorting to the fiction of a new allowance, made upon payment of the final fee too late to admit of the preparation of the patent before the expiration of the six months. The extension of the time, within which a patent may be dated, to seven months from the date of its allowance would obviate the present difficulty.

The Commissioner of Education states that the demand upon his office for information relating to educational matters has been greater during the past year than ever before. He reports that the collection of educational appliances and illustrations in the possession of the office has received numerous visits and proved extremely useful, and recommends that provision be made for its better exhibition, cataloguing, and increase; also, that a librarian be allowed by law, the library of his office containing at the present time 11,000 volumes and 22,000 pamphlets.