Annual report of the Commissioner of Patents for the year ..
This is an annual government report of the United States Patent Office, published in Washington in 1871, listing patents granted that year. Its pages are grids of small engraved diagrams of machines, each captioned with the inventor's name and patent number, so designers can see how nineteenth-century mechanical devices were drawn. The pictures show technical line drawings of sewing machines, smokestacks, wagon seats and cultivators, with plain black ink on cream paper, useful for diagrammatic and mechanical motifs.
