The raiders of the lost archives

Anonymous Patron writes The raiders of the lost archives is one from the NY Times News Service on a fire that in 1836, destroyed 10,000 patents, the U.S. has hunted them ever since. The Patent and Trademark Office has issued nearly 7 million patents. The first 10,000 are known as the X-patents. They were issued from July 1790, when the U.S. patent system was created under an order signed by George Washington, to July 1836, when every one of them burned in a fire.”