San Felipe, Texas
San Felipe known as San Felipe de Austin, is a town in Austin County, United States. The town was the social and political center of the early Stephen F. Austin colony; the population was 747 at the 2010 census. In 1823, John McFarland operated a ferry on the Brazos River near this location. In the fall of the same year, the site was chosen by Stephen F. Austin, with the help of Felipe Enrique Neri, Baron de Bastrop, to be the main site in Texas for American colonization. Founded in 1824 as San Felipe de Austin, the town served as the capital of Stephen F. Austin's first colony and the founding site of the Texas Rangers. James Cummins was appointed as mayor. By 1828, San Felipe had been surveyed, with Calle Commercio laid out as the main commercial street. Austin and his secretary, Samuel May Williams, both resided in log cabins on the square. There were about 30 buildings, at least one of these was a wood-framed structure. On the square was the tavern of Jonathan Peyton. By 1835, the town's population had increased to around 600.
It was home to one of the earliest newspapers and land offices in Texas. San Felipe was second only to San Antonio as a commercial center of Texas; the Texas conventions of 1832 and 1833 and the Consultation of November 3, 1835, were held here. San Felipe acted as the capital for the provisional government of Texas until the Convention of 1836; the town was burned in 1836 to prevent the Mexican army from capturing it, rebuilt a few years but never regained its popularity. The oldest post office in Texas is located here. San Felipe is located in eastern Austin County at 29°47′40″N 96°6′17″W, along the west bank of the Brazos River; the town limits extend south below Interstate 10, with access at Exit 723. Sealy is 3 miles to the west, downtown Houston is 46 miles to the east. Stephen F. Austin State Park is located in the northern part of the town. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 8.7 square miles, of which, 8.5 square miles of it is land and 0.3 square miles is covered by water.
The climate in this area is characterized by hot, humid summers and mild to cool winters. According to the Köppen climate classification system, San Felipe has a humid subtropical climate, Cfa on climate maps; the population was 747 at the 2010 census. As of the census of 2000, 868 people, 312 households, 234 families resided in the town; the population density was 103.7 people per square mile. The 347 housing units averaged 41.5/sq mi. The racial makeup of the town was 60.83% White, 34.56% African American, 0.35% Native American, 3.00% from other races, 1.27% from two or more races. |Hispanics or Latinos of any race were 9.45% of the population. Of the 312 households, 29.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 57.7% were married couples living together, 13.5% had a female householder with no husband present, 24.7% were not families. About 23.1% of all households were made up of individuals and 8.3% had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.78 and the average family size was 3.26.
In the town, the population was distributed as 27.8% under the age of 18, 8.1% from 18 to 24, 22.9% from 25 to 44, 27.0% from 45 to 64, 14.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females, there were 102.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.3 males. The median income for a household in the town was $38,203, for a family was $43,558. Males had a median income of $31,667 versus $22,500 for females; the per capita income for the town was $17,169. About 9.1% of families and 9.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 3.1% of those under age 18 and 16.0% of those age 65 or over. San Felipe is served by the Sealy Independent School District. Stephen F. Austin, founder of the Austin Colony and "Father of Texas" Town of San Felipe official website San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site Stephen F. Austin State Park Colonial Capital of Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest state in the United States by both area and population. Geographically located in the South Central region of the country, Texas shares borders with the U. S. states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas to the southwest, while the Gulf of Mexico is to the southeast. Houston is the most populous city in Texas and the fourth largest in the U. S. while San Antonio is the second-most populous in the state and seventh largest in the U. S. Dallas–Fort Worth and Greater Houston are the fourth and fifth largest metropolitan statistical areas in the country, respectively. Other major cities include Austin, the second-most populous state capital in the U. S. and El Paso. Texas is nicknamed "The Lone Star State" to signify its former status as an independent republic, as a reminder of the state's struggle for independence from Mexico; the "Lone Star" can be found on the Texan state seal.
The origin of Texas's name is from the word taysha. Due to its size and geologic features such as the Balcones Fault, Texas contains diverse landscapes common to both the U. S. Southern and Southwestern regions. Although Texas is popularly associated with the U. S. southwestern deserts, less than 10% of Texas's land area is desert. Most of the population centers are in areas of former prairies, grasslands and the coastline. Traveling from east to west, one can observe terrain that ranges from coastal swamps and piney woods, to rolling plains and rugged hills, the desert and mountains of the Big Bend; the term "six flags over Texas" refers to several nations. Spain was the first European country to claim the area of Texas. France held a short-lived colony. Mexico controlled the territory until 1836 when Texas won its independence, becoming an independent Republic. In 1845, Texas joined the union as the 28th state; the state's annexation set off a chain of events that led to the Mexican–American War in 1846.
A slave state before the American Civil War, Texas declared its secession from the U. S. in early 1861, joined the Confederate States of America on March 2nd of the same year. After the Civil War and the restoration of its representation in the federal government, Texas entered a long period of economic stagnation. Four major industries shaped the Texas economy prior to World War II: cattle and bison, cotton and oil. Before and after the U. S. Civil War the cattle industry, which Texas came to dominate, was a major economic driver for the state, thus creating the traditional image of the Texas cowboy. In the 19th century cotton and lumber grew to be major industries as the cattle industry became less lucrative, it was though, the discovery of major petroleum deposits that initiated an economic boom which became the driving force behind the economy for much of the 20th century. With strong investments in universities, Texas developed a diversified economy and high tech industry in the mid-20th century.
As of 2015, it is second on the list of the most Fortune 500 companies with 54. With a growing base of industry, the state leads in many industries, including agriculture, energy and electronics, biomedical sciences. Texas has led the U. S. in state export revenue since 2002, has the second-highest gross state product. If Texas were a sovereign state, it would be the 10th largest economy in the world; the name Texas, based on the Caddo word táyshaʼ "friend", was applied, in the spelling Tejas or Texas, by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves the Hasinai Confederacy, the final -s representing the Spanish plural. The Mission San Francisco de los Tejas was completed near the Hasinai village of Nabedaches in May 1690, in what is now Houston County, East Texas. During Spanish colonial rule, in the 18th century, the area was known as Nuevo Reino de Filipinas "New Kingdom of the Philippines", or as provincia de los Tejas "province of the Tejas" also provincia de Texas, "province of Texas", it was incorporated as provincia de Texas into the Mexican Empire in 1821, declared a republic in 1836.
The Royal Spanish Academy recognizes both spellings and Texas, as Spanish-language forms of the name of the U. S. State of Texas; the English pronunciation with /ks/ is unetymological, based in the value of the letter x in historical Spanish orthography. Alternative etymologies of the name advanced in the late 19th century connected the Spanish teja "rooftile", the plural tejas being used to designate indigenous Pueblo settlements. A 1760s map by Jacques-Nicolas Bellin shows a village named Teijas on Trinity River, close to the site of modern Crockett. Texas is the second-largest U. S. state, with an area of 268,820 square miles. Though 10% larger than France and twice as large as Germany or Japan, it ranks only 27th worldwide amongst country subdivisions by size. If it were an independent country, Texas would be the 40th largest behind Zambia. Texas is in the south central part of the United States of America. Three of its borders are defined by rivers; the Rio Grande forms a natural border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas to the south.
The Red River forms a natural border with Arkansas to the north. The Sabine River forms a natural border with Louisiana to the east; the Texas Panhandle has an eastern border with Oklahoma at 100° W, a northern border with Oklahoma at 36°30' N and a western
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they compose the legislature of the United States; the composition of the House is established by Article One of the United States Constitution. The House is composed of Representatives who sit in congressional districts that are allocated to each of the 50 states on a basis of population as measured by the U. S. Census, with each district entitled to one representative. Since its inception in 1789, all Representatives have been directly elected; the total number of voting representatives is fixed by law at 435. As of the 2010 Census, the largest delegation is that of California, with fifty-three representatives. Seven states have only one representative: Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming; the House is charged with the passage of federal legislation, known as bills, after concurrence by the Senate, are sent to the President for consideration.
In addition to this basic power, the House has certain exclusive powers, among them the power to initiate all bills related to revenue. The House meets in the south wing of the United States Capitol; the presiding officer is the Speaker of the House, elected by the members thereof. The Speaker and other floor leaders are chosen by the Democratic Caucus or the Republican Conference, depending on whichever party has more voting members. Under the Articles of Confederation, the Congress of the Confederation was a unicameral body in which each state was represented, in which each state had a veto over most action. After eight years of a more limited confederal government under the Articles, numerous political leaders such as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton initiated the Constitutional Convention in 1787, which received the Confederation Congress's sanction to "amend the Articles of Confederation". All states except Rhode Island agreed to send delegates; the issue of how to structure Congress was one of the most divisive among the founders during the Convention.
Edmund Randolph's Virginia Plan called for a bicameral Congress: the lower house would be "of the people", elected directly by the people of the United States and representing public opinion, a more deliberative upper house, elected by the lower house, that would represent the individual states, would be less susceptible to variations of mass sentiment. The House is referred to as the lower house, with the Senate being the upper house, although the United States Constitution does not use that terminology. Both houses' approval is necessary for the passage of legislation; the Virginia Plan drew the support of delegates from large states such as Virginia and Pennsylvania, as it called for representation based on population. The smaller states, favored the New Jersey Plan, which called for a unicameral Congress with equal representation for the states; the Convention reached the Connecticut Compromise or Great Compromise, under which one house of Congress would provide representation proportional to each state's population, whereas the other would provide equal representation amongst the states.
The Constitution was ratified by the requisite number of states in 1788, but its implementation was set for March 4, 1789. The House began work on April 1789, when it achieved a quorum for the first time. During the first half of the 19th century, the House was in conflict with the Senate over regionally divisive issues, including slavery; the North was much more populous than the South, therefore dominated the House of Representatives. However, the North held no such advantage in the Senate, where the equal representation of states prevailed. Regional conflict was most pronounced over the issue of slavery. One example of a provision supported by the House but blocked by the Senate was the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to ban slavery in the land gained during the Mexican–American War. Conflict over slavery and other issues persisted until the Civil War, which began soon after several southern states attempted to secede from the Union; the war culminated in the abolition of slavery. All southern senators except Andrew Johnson resigned their seats at the beginning of the war, therefore the Senate did not hold the balance of power between North and South during the war.
The years of Reconstruction that followed witnessed large majorities for the Republican Party, which many Americans associated with the Union's victory in the Civil War and the ending of slavery. The Reconstruction period ended in about 1877; the Democratic Party and Republican Party each held majorities in the House at various times. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a dramatic increase in the power of the Speaker of the House; the rise of the Speaker's influence began in the 1890s, during the tenure of Republican Thomas Brackett Reed. "Czar Reed", as he was nicknamed, attempted to put into effect his view that "The best system is to have one party govern and the other party watch." The leadership structure of the House developed during the same period, with the positions of Majority Leader and Minority Leader being created in 1899. While the Minority Leader
Austin County, Texas
Austin County is a county in the U. S. state of Texas. As of the 2010 census, the population was 28,417, its seat is Bellville. The county is named for Stephen F. Austin, who facilitated the Anglo-American colonization of Texas and is known as the "Father of Texas". Austin County is included in the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, Texas Metropolitan Statistical Area. Austin County is not to be confused with the city of Austin, the state capital city that lies in Travis County, about 110 miles to the northwest. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 656 square miles, of which 647 square miles is land and 9.9 square miles is covered by water. Washington County Waller County Fort Bend County Wharton County Colorado County Fayette County As of the census of 2000, 23,590 people, 8,747 households, 6,481 families resided in the county; the population density was 36 people per square mile. The 10,205 housing units averaged 16 per square mile; the racial makeup of the county was 80.22% White, 10.64% African American, 0.28% Native American, 0.29% Asian, 6.99% from other races, 1.58% from two or more races.
About 16.13% of the population was Hispanic or Latino of any race, 26.9% were of German, 8.0% Czech, 6.4% English, 5.0% Irish ancestry according to Census 2000. Of the 8,747 households, 34.70% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 60.60% were married couples living together, 9.60% had a female householder with no husband present, 25.90% were not families. The average household size was 2.67 and the average family size was 3.14. In the county, the population was distributed as 27.00% under the age of 18, 8.10% from 18 to 24, 26.40% from 25 to 44, 23.70% from 45 to 64, 14.80% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.50 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.90 males. The median income for a household in the county was $38,615, for a family was $46,342. Males had a median income of $32,455 versus $22,142 for females; the per capita income for the county was $18,140. About 8.80% of families and 12.10% of the population were below the poverty line, including 13.70% of those under age 18 and 14.40% of those age 65 or over.
District 18: Lois Kolkhorst – first elected in 2006 District 13: Lois Kolkhorst – first elected in 2000 County Judge: Tim Lapham Tax Assessor-Collector: Marcus A. Peña – first elected in 2012 The following school districts serve Austin County: Bellville Independent School District Brazos Independent School District Brenham Independent School District Columbus Independent School District Sealy Independent School District Interstate 10 U. S. Highway 90 State Highway 36 State Highway 159The TTC-69 component of the once-planned Trans-Texas Corridor went through Austin County. Bellville Brazos Country Sealy Wallis Industry San Felipe Rexville Adelsverein List of museums in the Texas Gulf Coast National Register of Historic Places listings in Austin County, Texas Recorded Texas Historic Landmarks in Austin County Austin County website Austin County, Texas from the Handbook of Texas Online Austin County from the Texas Almanac Austin County from the TXGenWeb Project Historic Austin County materials, hosted by the Portal to Texas History
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
The Atchison and Santa Fe Railway referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. Chartered in February 1859, the railroad reached the Kansas-Colorado border in 1873 and Pueblo, Colorado, in 1876. To create a demand for its services, the railroad set up real estate offices and sold farm land from the land grants that it was awarded by Congress. Despite the name, its main line never served New Mexico, as the terrain was too difficult; the Santa Fe was a pioneer in intermodal freight transport, an enterprise that included a tugboat fleet and an airline. Its bus line extended passenger transportation to areas not accessible by rail, ferryboats on the San Francisco Bay allowed travelers to complete their westward journeys to the Pacific Ocean; the AT&SF was the subject of a popular song, Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer's "On the Atchison and the Santa Fe", written for the film, The Harvey Girls. The railroad ceased operations on December 31, 1996, when it merged with the Burlington Northern Railroad to form the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway.
The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway was chartered on February 11, 1859, to join Atchison and Topeka, with Santa Fe, New Mexico. In its early years, the railroad opened Kansas to settlement. Much of its revenue came from wheat grown there and from cattle driven north from Texas to Wichita and Dodge City by September 1872. Rather than turn its survey southward at Dodge City, AT&SF headed southwest over Raton Pass because of coal deposits near Trinidad and Raton, New Mexico; the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad was aiming at Raton Pass, but AT&SF crews arose early one morning in 1878 and were hard at work with picks and shovels when the D&RGW crews showed up for breakfast. At the same time the two railroads had a series of skirmishes over occupancy of the Royal Gorge west of Cañon City, Colorado. Federal intervention prompted an out-of-court settlement on February 2, 1880, in the form of the so-called "Treaty of Boston", wherein D&RG was allowed to complete its line and lease it for use by Santa Fe.
D&RG paid an estimated $1.4 million to Santa Fe for its work within the Gorge and agreed not to extend its line to Santa Fe, while Santa Fe agreed to forego its planned routes to Denver and Leadville. Building across Kansas and eastern Colorado was simple, with few natural obstacles, but the railroad found it economically impossible because of the sparse population, it set up real estate offices in the area and promoted settlement across Kansas on the land, granted to it by Congress in 1863. It offered discounted fares to anyone. AT&SF reached Albuquerque in 1880. In March 1881 AT&SF connected with the Southern Pacific at Deming, New Mexico, forming the second transcontinental rail route; the railroad built southwest from Benson, Arizona, to Nogales on the Mexican border where it connected with the Sonora Railway, which the AT&SF had built north from the Mexican port of Guaymas. AT&SF purchased the Southern California Railway on Jan. 17, 1906. The Atlantic & Pacific Railroad was chartered in 1866 to build west from Springfield, along the 35th parallel of latitude to a junction with SP at the Colorado River.
The infant A&P had no rail connections. The line, to become the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway would not reach Springfield for another four years, SP did not build east from Mojave to the Colorado River until 1883. A&P started construction in 1868, built southwest into what would become Oklahoma, promptly entered receivership. In 1879 A&P struck a deal with the Santa Frisco railroads to construct a rail line for each; the railroads would jointly own the A&P railroad west of Albuquerque. In 1883 A&P reached Needles, where it connected with an SP line. A&P built a line between Tulsa, Oklahoma and St. Louis, Missouri for the Frisco, but the Tulsa-Albuquerque portion remained unbuilt; the Santa Fe began to expand: a line from Barstow, California, to San Diego in 1885 and to Los Angeles in 1887. By January 1890, the entire system consisted of some 7,500 miles of track; the Panic of 1893 had the same effect on the AT&SF. In 1895 AT&SF sold the Frisco and the Colorado Midland and wrote off the losses, but it still retained control of the A&P.
The Santa Fe Railway still wanted to reach California on its own rails, the state of California eagerly courted the railroad to break SP's monopoly. In 1897 the railroad traded the Sonora Railway of Mexico to SP for their line between Needles and Barstow, giving AT&SF its own line from Chicago to the Pac
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major political parties in the United States. The GOP was founded in 1854 by opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which had expanded slavery into U. S. territories. The party subscribed to classical liberalism and took ideological stands that were anti-slavery and pro-economic reform. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president in the history of the United States; the Party was dominant over the Democrats during the Third Party System and Fourth Party System. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt formed the Progressive Party after being rejected by the GOP and ran unsuccessfully as a third-party presidential candidate calling for social reforms. After the 1912 election, many Roosevelt supporters left the Party, the Party underwent an ideological shift to the right; the liberal Republican element in the GOP was overwhelmed by a conservative surge begun by Barry Goldwater in 1964 that continued during the Reagan Era in the 1980s. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the party's core base shifted, with the Southern states becoming more reliably Republican in presidential politics and the Northeastern states becoming more reliably Democratic.
White voters identified with the Republican Party after the 1960s. Following the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, the Republican Party made opposition to abortion a key plank of its national party platform and grew its support among evangelicals. By 2000, the Republican Party was aligned with Christian conservatism; the Party's core support since the 1990s comes chiefly from the South, the Great Plains, the Mountain States and rural areas in the North. The 21st century Republican Party ideology is American conservatism, which contrasts with the Democrats' liberal platform and progressive wing; the GOP supports lower taxes, free market capitalism, a strong national defense, gun rights and restrictions on labor unions. The GOP was committed to protectionism and tariffs from its founding until the 1930s when it was based in the industrial Northeast and Midwest, but has grown more supportive of free trade since 1952. In addition to advocating for conservative economic policies, the Republican Party is conservative.
Founded in the Northern states in 1854 by abolitionists, modernizers, ex-Whigs and ex-Free Soilers, the Republican Party became the principal opposition to the dominant Democratic Party and the popular Know Nothing Party. The party grew out of opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and opened Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory to slavery and future admission as slave states; the Northern Republicans saw the expansion of slavery as a great evil. The first public meeting of the general anti-Nebraska movement, at which the name Republican was suggested for a new anti-slavery party, was held on March 20, 1854 in a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin; the name was chosen to pay homage to Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party. The first official party convention was held on July 1854 in Jackson, Michigan. At the 1856 Republican National Convention, the party adopted a national platform emphasizing opposition to the expansion of slavery into U. S. territories. While Republican candidate John C.
Frémont lost the 1856 United States presidential election to James Buchanan, he did win 11 of the 16 northern states. The Republican Party first came to power in the elections of 1860 when it won control of both houses of Congress and its candidate, former congressman Abraham Lincoln, was elected President. In the election of 1864, it united with War Democrats to nominate Lincoln on the National Union Party ticket. Under Republican congressional leadership, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution—which banned slavery in the United States—passed the Senate in 1864 and the House in 1865; the party's success created factionalism within the party in the 1870s. Those who felt that Reconstruction had been accomplished, was continued to promote the large-scale corruption tolerated by President Ulysses S. Grant, ran Horace Greeley for the presidency; the Stalwart faction defended Grant and the spoils system, whereas the Half-Breeds pushed for reform of the civil service. The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act was passed in 1883.
The Republican Party supported hard money, high tariffs to promote economic growth, high wages and high profits, generous pensions for Union veterans, the annexation of Hawaii. The Republicans had strong support from pietistic Protestants, but they resisted demands for Prohibition; as the Northern postwar economy boomed with heavy and light industry, mines, fast-growing cities, prosperous agriculture, the Republicans took credit and promoted policies to sustain the fast growth. The GOP was dominant over the Democrats during the Third Party System. However, by 1890 the Republicans had agreed to the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Interstate Commerce Commission in response to complaints from owners of small businesses and farmers; the high McKinley Tariff of 1890 hurt the party and the Democrats swept to a landslide in the off-year elections defeating McKinley himself. The Democrats elected Grover Cleveland in 1884 and 1892; the election of William McKinley in 1896 was marked by a resurgence of Republican dominance that lasted until 1932.
McKinley promised that high tariffs would end the severe hardship caused by the Pa
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. A patent gives its owner the right to exclude others from making, using and importing an invention for a limited period of time twenty years; the patent rights are granted in exchange for an enabling public disclosure of the invention. In most countries patent rights fall under civil law and the patent holder needs to sue someone infringing the patent in order to enforce his or her rights. In some industries patents are an essential form of competitive advantage; the procedure for granting patents, requirements placed on the patentee, the extent of the exclusive rights vary between countries according to national laws and international agreements. However, a granted patent application must include one or more claims that define the invention. A patent may include many claims; these claims must meet relevant patentability requirements, such as novelty and non-obviousness. Under the World Trade Organization's TRIPS Agreement, patents should be available in WTO member states for any invention, in all fields of technology, provided they are new, involve an inventive step, are capable of industrial application.
There are variations on what is patentable subject matter from country to country among WTO member states. TRIPS provides that the term of protection available should be a minimum of twenty years; the word patent originates from the Latin patere, which means "to lay open". It is a shortened version of the term letters patent, an open document or instrument issued by a monarch or government granting exclusive rights to a person, predating the modern patent system. Similar grants included land patents, which were land grants by early state governments in the USA, printing patents, a precursor of modern copyright. In modern usage, the term patent refers to the right granted to anyone who invents something new and non-obvious; some other types of intellectual property rights are called patents in some jurisdictions: industrial design rights are called design patents in the US, plant breeders' rights are sometimes called plant patents, utility models and Gebrauchsmuster are sometimes called petty patents or innovation patents.
The additional qualification utility patent is sometimes used to distinguish the primary meaning from these other types of patents. Particular species of patents for inventions include biological patents, business method patents, chemical patents and software patents. Although there is some evidence that some form of patent rights was recognized in Ancient Greece in the Greek city of Sybaris, the first statutory patent system is regarded to be the Venetian Patent Statute of 1474. Patents were systematically granted in Venice as of 1474, where they issued a decree by which new and inventive devices had to be communicated to the Republic in order to obtain legal protection against potential infringers; the period of protection was 10 years.. As Venetians emigrated, they sought similar patent protection in their new homes; this led to the diffusion of patent systems to other countries. The English patent system evolved from its early medieval origins into the first modern patent system that recognised intellectual property in order to stimulate invention.
By the 16th century, the English Crown would habitually abuse the granting of letters patent for monopolies. After public outcry, King James I of England was forced to revoke all existing monopolies and declare that they were only to be used for "projects of new invention"; this was incorporated into the Statute of Monopolies in which Parliament restricted the Crown's power explicitly so that the King could only issue letters patent to the inventors or introducers of original inventions for a fixed number of years. The Statute became the foundation for developments in patent law in England and elsewhere. Important developments in patent law emerged during the 18th century through a slow process of judicial interpretation of the law. During the reign of Queen Anne, patent applications were required to supply a complete specification of the principles of operation of the invention for public access. Legal battles around the 1796 patent taken out by James Watt for his steam engine, established the principles that patents could be issued for improvements of an existing machine and that ideas or principles without specific practical application could legally be patented.
Influenced by the philosophy of John Locke, the granting of patents began to be viewed as a form of intellectual property right, rather than the obtaining of economic privilege. The English legal system became the foundation for patent law in countries with a common law heritage, including the United States, New Zealand and Australia. In the Thirteen Colonies, inventors could obtain patents through petition to a given colony's legislature. In 1641, Samuel Winslow was granted the first patent in North America by the Massachusetts General Court for a new process for making salt; the modern French patent system was created during the Revolution in 1791. Patents were granted without examination. Patent costs were high. Importation patents protected new devices coming from foreign countries; the patent law was revised in 1844 - patent cost was lowered and importation patents were abolished. The first Patent Act of the U. S. Congress was passed on April 10, 1790, titled "An Act to promote the progress of
