What's more fun than looking up old patent and trademark information? The answer is, just about anything. Going through those moldy books page-by-page is about as much fun as a stab-in-the-eye with a sharp stick. And driving to the state capitol library is no holiday either, never mind the ten dollar parking fee. And try stuffing an eight-pound book into a copier—fine if you have three arms. You could hire a patent attorney to do a search for you but who can afford it? How much do you think he'll charge for a twenty hour search? Fortunately, all this has changed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office online site. That's particularly good news for talking board aficionados like us who have just been just dying to see what was going on in the heads of early talking board inventors. Not that we're any wiser now.

The USPTO site is particularly easy to navigate and search; obviously someone other than a government employee designed it. You may search in a variety of ways and you can cross-reference until you're cross-eyed. The site only carries patents back as far as the 1870's, but who's complaining? We're grateful for what they have, and so should you.

So now is your chance to see the patents of E. Bond, W. Fuld, C. Kennard, F. Black, and H. White. Who were F. Black, and H. White? Well, we don't know, but they made some great looking talking boards. If we hadn't done some digging we would have missed them altogether. Expect to see some really weird stuff: electric planchettes, sound emitting talking boards, strange pendulums, mechanical spirit boards, it's all there.

To get you on your way (no need to thank us, folks), we've listed a few dozen talking board patents by number, date, type and inventor at the bottom of this page. And we weren't too particular, either. If it looked strange enough, we put it down. What more could anyone ask? If you see one that intrigues you, copy the patent number to your clipboard, go to the USPTO site search page. Enter the number and before you can say "William Fuld," there will be the patent in all its glory. It just doesn't get any better than this. Our list is by no means exhaustive so if you find something really interesting, and we've missed it somehow, give us an email and tell us about it. We would really appreciate it. And tell Yogi, the Hindu Mastermind that we sent you.

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