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The Ashes That Built a Patent System

The granting of the first United States patent to Samuel Hopkins on July 31, 1790

A Quaker chemist's method for turning wood ash into gold-grade potash earned the very first patent of the new United States. Behind the single page signed by George Washington lies a story of forests, gunpowder, and a mistaken identity that fooled historians for two centuries.

7 chapters · 12 sourcesBy HistoraiPublished July 31, 2026

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1790 CE

One Page, Three Signatures

First US patent: July 31, 1790
Signed by Washington, Jefferson, Randolph
Granted to Samuel Hopkins for potash
Only three patents issued that year

Ada: Picture a single sheet of paper on a desk in New York City, the summer of seventeen ninety. At the top, a formal salutation. At the bottom, three signatures — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Edmund Randolph. And the thing they've all just endorsed? A better way to boil wood ashes.

Theo: Wait — the President of the United States personally signed off on boiled ashes?

Ada: He did. Welcome to Historai, I'm Ada.

Theo: And I'm Theo. Today: the very first patent the United States ever granted, and the mystery about the man who earned it that fooled historians for two centuries.

Ada: The date is July thirty-first, seventeen ninety. The recipient is a Quaker chemist named Samuel Hopkins. His invention: an improved method for making potash and pearlash — potassium carbonate — by, in the document's words, a new apparatus and process.

Theo: And this is genuinely patent number one? The origin of the whole American system?

Ada: It is. In all of seventeen ninety, only three patents were issued. Hopkins got the first.

Theo: But why would the brand-new United States bother protecting a recipe for boiled wood ashes?

Colonial America

Gold From the Woodpile

Potash = crude potassium carbonate from boiled ashes
Used in soap, glass, gunpowder, fertilizer
America's first major industrial chemical export
Cleared forests gave farmers cash from ash

Ada: Because that recipe was money. Potash was America's first great industrial chemical, and one of its leading exports.

Theo: Potash. Which is literally what — ash in a pot?

Ada: Almost exactly that. You boil wood ashes in a pot, evaporate the water, and the crude residue left behind is potassium carbonate. Pot ash. Refine it further and you get a whiter grade called pearlash.

Theo: And what on earth do you do with a barrel of that?

Ada: Nearly everything. Soap, glass, bleaching textiles, dyeing cloth, fertilizer — and saltpeter for gunpowder. It was the workhorse chemical of the eighteenth century.

Theo: So a farmer clearing his land was basically sitting on cash.

Ada: Precisely. Colonists were felling enormous forests to plant crops, and all that burned timber left mountains of ash. A family could turn a nuisance into hard currency.

Theo: Free raw material, huge demand. No wonder Britain wanted it too.

Ada: They did — Europe's forests were tapped out. But raw ash gave uneven, dirty potash. To make an export worth patenting, you needed a better process. And Hopkins had one.

Late Eighteenth Century

A Quaker's Better Furnace

Hopkins born 1743 near Baltimore; Quaker; Philadelphia chemist
Calcined ashes in a furnace before leaching
Higher yield and purer potash
Designed an innovative roasting furnace

Ada: Samuel Hopkins was born near Baltimore in seventeen forty-three, to Quaker parents. At sixteen he was apprenticed to a Quaker merchant in Philadelphia, and Philadelphia became his home.

Theo: So a city man, not some backwoods ash-boiler.

Ada: Right — a chemist and manufacturer with an eye for process. Everyone else just leached the raw ashes straight and boiled the liquid down. Hopkins added a step.

Theo: What step?

Ada: He burned — calcined — the raw ashes in a furnace before dissolving them. Roasting them first drove off impurities and organic matter, so the potash came out higher yield and much better quality.

Theo: And he built a special furnace for it?

Ada: He designed an innovative furnace for exactly that purpose. It's not glamorous chemistry — it's a smarter oven and a rearranged sequence. But it meant more potash, cleaner, from the same pile of ash.

Theo: Better product, lower waste. That's the kind of edge worth guarding.

Ada: Which is precisely the problem. How do you stop a rival from copying your furnace? His timing was perfect — Congress had just invented a way to protect ideas.

First Federal Congress

Inventing the Patent Itself

Before 1790, inventors sought protection state-by-state
Constitution empowered Congress to protect 'useful arts'
Patent Act signed April 10, 1790
Granted 14 years of exclusive rights nationwide

Theo: So before this, an inventor had no protection at all?

Ada: Not nationally. You had to go state by state, begging each legislature for a monopoly. Hopkins had firsthand trouble with exactly that — a patchwork of promises that stopped at every border.

Theo: Exhausting. And useless the moment someone across the state line copied you.

Ada: The Constitution had a fix baked in. Congress was given power to promote the progress of useful arts by securing, for limited times, exclusive rights to inventors.

Theo: So the founders wrote patents into the founding document?

Ada: They did. And on April tenth, seventeen ninety, Washington signed the first Patent Act into law. It offered inventors fourteen years of exclusive rights across the whole nation.

Theo: Fourteen years — that number's oddly specific.

Ada: Borrowed from English practice: twice a seven-year apprenticeship, the idea being enough time to teach the trade and profit from it.

Theo: But there was no Patent Office yet, was there?

Ada: None. No building, no clerks, no forms. So when Hopkins applied, three of the most powerful men in America read his papers personally.

1790 CE

The Board of Three

Jefferson, Knox, Randolph reviewed applications personally
No Patent Office existed yet
Only 3 patents granted in all of 1790
Washington signed Hopkins' patent July 31, 1790

Ada: So picture it. There's no Patent Office, no clerks, no examiners. Just three men who read the applications themselves, in between running the country.

Theo: Wait, who exactly? These are cabinet-level people, right?

Ada: The very top. Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State, Henry Knox as Secretary of War, and Edmund Randolph, the Attorney General. The Patent Act of April tenth, seventeen ninety made them a board of three.

Theo: The Secretary of War is grading chemistry homework about wood ash?

Ada: Essentially, yes. And Jefferson, who was a serious tinkerer himself, took it seriously — maybe too seriously. He worried about handing out monopolies too freely.

Theo: So a patent actually meant something. It wasn't a rubber stamp.

Ada: Not remotely. In all of seventeen ninety they granted just three patents. Hopkins got the first, on July thirty-first, and George Washington signed it personally.

Theo: Fourteen years of exclusive rights to boil ashes his way. That's real.

Ada: Real enough that Hopkins immediately did something you'd expect from a modern startup, not a Quaker chemist in seventeen ninety.

1790s CE

Fifty Dollars or a Half-Ton

Pamphlet explained method and furnace design
Reprinted the Patent Act and his own patent
License: $50 or a half-ton of potash in casks
Early industrial self-promotion

Ada: Hopkins printed a pamphlet. He called it 'An Address to the Manufacturers of Pot and Pearl Ash.'

Theo: A marketing brochure. In seventeen ninety.

Ada: Exactly that. It explained his method, gave instructions for building the furnace, and — this is the clever part — it reprinted the entire Patent Act and the text of his own patent.

Theo: So the pamphlet doubles as a warning. 'Here's how it works, and here's the law that says you can't copy me.'

Ada: Both a sales pitch and a fence around the property. And the license terms are wonderfully of their time. To use his process, you paid fifty dollars — or, if cash was short, a half-ton of potash in casks.

Theo: You could pay the inventor in the very thing you were making. That's almost barter.

Ada: Frontier economics. Cash was scarce; ash and potash were everywhere. Hopkins met people where they were.

Theo: For a man that entrepreneurial, you'd think we'd know exactly who he was.

Ada: You'd think. But for two hundred years, almost everyone got one basic fact about this man completely wrong.

1990s CE

The Wrong Samuel Hopkins

Long misattributed to Samuel Hopkins of Pittsford, Vermont
Real man: born near Baltimore 1743, Philadelphia Quaker, died 1818
David Maxey corrected the record in the 1990s
1836 fire destroyed most early patents; Hopkins' survived as a copy

Theo: Alright, what did everyone get wrong?

Ada: For generations, history books said the first patent went to Samuel Hopkins of Pittsford, Vermont. A tidy story. It was also the wrong man.

Theo: How does that happen? Same name, wrong person, for two centuries?

Ada: There really was a Samuel Hopkins in Vermont, and someone matched the famous patent to him. It stuck. It got repeated in book after book until it was simply 'known.'

Theo: And nobody checked.

Ada: Not until the nineteen nineties, when a historian named David Maxey went back to the actual records. Our Samuel Hopkins was born near Baltimore in seventeen forty-three, raised Quaker, apprenticed at sixteen to a Philadelphia Quaker, and he lived and worked in Philadelphia. He died there in eighteen eighteen.

Theo: So the very first patent-holder of the United States was misidentified for longer than the country had existed at the time.

Ada: And it nearly vanished entirely. A fire tore through the Patent Office in eighteen thirty-six and destroyed most of the early records. Hopkins' patent survived only as a preserved copy.

Theo: Which is why they had to restart the patent numbers after the fire. His becomes the famous 'X-patent' — the first.

Ada: The very first. And I love where the American patent system actually begins. Not a steam engine, not a flying machine — a Quaker's clever furnace for burning wood ashes better.

Theo: There's something honest about that. The system built to reward ideas started with the most ordinary chemistry imaginable.

Ada: That's the whole story in miniature, isn't it? A brand-new government, inventing institutions from nothing, chose to protect a farmer's ashes — because ordinary usefulness was worth defending. And then it took two hundred years and one stubborn historian to give the real man his name back.

Theo: And if you want, there's a whole thread we didn't pull — the Vermont Hopkins who got the credit, and everything the eighteen thirty-six fire swallowed. It's one tap away.

Ada: Anytime you're curious, you can stop us and ask. This was Historai — where history answers back.

Research record