What does it take to be an inventor? What kind of work goes into patenting something, how do you gain recognition for your work, and what kinds of challenges could impede progress? Answers to questions like these and more lie buried between the pages of the Benjamin F. Miessner papers.

Introducing Miessner

Named after one of America’s most successful inventors, Benjamin Franklin Miessner was a radio engineer and inventor from Huntingburg, Indiana. Growing up, he watched his father and two uncles bring electricity to Huntingburg, through the founding of the Huntingburg Electric Light Company. With this formative upbringing, Miessner became enamored with electricity, and chose to pursue a career in it. Upon finishing high school, Miessner enrolled in the United States (U.S.) Navy, where he studied to be a wireless radio operator at the United States Navy Electrical School in Brooklyn, New York.

After three years in the Navy and two years working with Dr. Fritz Lowenstein and fellow inventor John Hays Hammond, Jr., Miessner continued his studies at Purdue University (1913-1916), where he pursued an electrical engineering degree. By the time he enrolled at Purdue, Miessner had already been credited with inventing a “cat whisker” detector for crystal radios, and had helped develop radio-controlled torpedoes and an “electric dog” device which could be powered and moved using light.

After leaving Purdue, Miessner returned to the U.S. Navy and served as an Expert Radio Aid for Aviation for two years, where he helped develop the first radio communications equipment for aircraft in the U.S. Leaving the Navy in 1918, Miessner spent the next 41 years working as an inventor and radio engineer for various companies, including 32 years as president of his own company, Miessner Inventions, Inc. During this time, Miessner pioneered developments in Alternating Current (A.C.) radios, directional microphones for aircraft and submarines, electronic musical instruments, phonography, and radio dynamics.

Inventing Process

The inventing process is recorded throughout the Miessner papers. Early in his career, through the suggestion of his part-time employer Fritz Lowenstein, Miessner began documenting his work in laboratory notebooks. These notebooks, which Miessner continued to use throughout his life, contain everything from initial ideas and early design sketches, to the specifications for and results of experiments that he conducted. They provide a detailed glimpse into the work that went into testing and refining Miessner’s concepts, and give a timeline for how long the process could take. Miessner’s notebooks also served a very important function of providing evidence to protect his patents from infringement suits.

One of the most informative types of primary source documents for conducting historical research is correspondence. It provides invaluable glimpses into the thoughts of the individuals who write them, and is sometimes the only source for events that they were involved in. Miessner’s papers are no exception, with a large bulk of the collection dedicated to his business correspondence. These include discussions with fellow engineers and inventors, in which Miessner and his recipients suggest to each other new avenues to explore, discuss whether an idea has already been developed by someone else, and debate whether the science behind their theories is sound. A more formal version of this process documented in the collection, and one necessary for patenting inventions, involved patent searches. With a patent search, lawyers specialized in patent law work with would-be inventors to find existing patents and relevant literature on the subject being worked on. This entailed the lawyers consulting with the inventor on the technical details of their idea, then scouring libraries and reaching out to patenting offices across the world, gathering as many patents and as much literature related to the subject as possible. Once all the relevant material had been gathered, the inventor and their lawyers would compare their patent ideas against it, determining whether they were likely to succeed in the patenting process, if revisions were necessary, or if the idea had to be scrapped entirely.

After completing a thorough patent search and any necessary revisions, Miessner and his patent lawyers could begin a patent application. Here, Miessner’s patent ideas were submitted to a patent office for review and approval; usually in the United States, but also in some foreign countries, including Canada and France. This could be a long and drawn out process, and one that didn’t guarantee success, as Miessner’s papers demonstrate. Miessner’s U.S. application No. 255,383, for example, was first submitted to the Patent Office on November 8, 1951. It was reviewed by the Commissioner of Patents, who sent back a list of claims in the application that he felt were unclear, not novel, or unsupported. Miessner and his patent lawyers filed amendments to his application in response, to clarify or overturn the claims and put the application back on track for approval. This back-and-forth continued until late 1957, when a final rejection was given for Miessner’s application. Miessner and his lawyers appealed the decision in 1958, as a last ditch effort, putting the claims before a Board of Appeals. In this case, the Board confirmed the examiner’s decision in December 1958, killing the application.

Selling Patents

For patents that have been awarded for an invention, the next problem facing any inventor is how to make money from them. When Miessner was an engineer working for companies, his salary served as a reward for inventing things that benefited the company. As a solo inventor, Miessner had to convince companies that his patents were beneficial to them and worth investing in. Like a telemarketer, Miessner solicited every company he could think of with examples of his patents and how they could make or save the company money. Many times, a company would decline these offers, either because they weren’t interested in the venture, or because they felt the patents weren’t novel enough to replace those they already owned. Sometimes, however, a company would express interest in one of Miessner’s patents. From here, the company and its lawyers would work with Miessner and his lawyers to reach an agreement that both sides were satisfied with. For Miessner, this often took the form of a licensing agreement. This license allowed a company to use Miessner’s patents in one or more of their products. In return, the company paid Miessner royalties based on how well the product sold, usually in the form of a percentage of the company’s profit. Companies with which Miessner had licensing agreements included the Zenith Radio Corporation, Splitdorf Radio Corporation, Everett Piano Company, and The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company. By 1930, Miessner estimated that he had earned roughly $200,000 in royalties from his radio-manufacturer licensees – approximately $3.7 million adjusted for inflation.

Another option for Miessner was to sell his patents to a company outright. This method could yield a greater monetary settlement in the short term, but didn’t provide long-term financial stability for the inventor. Furthermore, selling a patent took away the inventor’s rights to their inventions, taking from them the ability to control how their patents are used. As a result, Miessner often chose to license his patents over sell them, but he did still sell his patents on occasion. One example was in 1930, when he sold the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) approximately 50 patents for a total of $750,000 ($14.1 million in 2024). Miessner sold another 14 patents and a single patent application to RCA in 1936 for a more modest $6,000; approximately $135,772 in 2024.

Legal Troubles

While there lay great potential for Miessner to make money with his patents, he also ran the risk of losing money. Even after a thorough review of the existing patent landscape, and passing the Patent Office’s inspection, there was always a chance that two patents would have overlapping claims. There was also the possibility that a company would produce a product that utilized patent techniques or parts without acquiring the rights to the patent, whether intentionally or by accident. As a result, an inventor and the companies that had stakes in their patents had to remain vigilant for possible legal suits. This reality also encouraged inventors to keep detailed records of their inventing process, including when they first conceived their invention, how they created it, as well as which individuals and companies they disclosed their inventions to and when, in order to support their claims in legal suits.

As an independent inventor financially dependent on companies acquiring and using his patents, Miessner kept an active eye out for any products he felt infringed on his patents. He maintained a detailed scrapbook of advertisements and articles that might have infringed on his work, as well as files organized by company, which he used to pursue the companies and individuals involved. Rather than start with legal action, which could be lengthy and very costly, Miessner often chose diplomacy. He would reach out to a company by letter, lay out the areas where he felt his patents had been infringed, then offered to sell a licensing agreement to them. In some cases, the company would accept the offer, and Miessner could both avoid a lengthy legal battle, and acquire another licensing agreement. At other times, the company would refute Miessner’s claims, and legal action became necessary.

Such was the case in 1940, when Story and Clark Piano Company, despite having licensing agreements with Miessner Inventions, Inc., produced and sold an electronic piano in conjunction with the Radio Corporation of America instead. They denied any use of Miessner’s patents in the piano, and thus refused to pay Miessner royalties, forcing Miessner to take the issue to court. Luckily for Miessner, this case proved to be relatively short, with Story and Clark folding in March 1941 and paying him royalties for all pianos sold up until that point. They would pay Miessner one more time, for royalties on pianos produced up until June 30, 1941, before terminating their agreement with Miessner.[1] In total, Miessner received $8,192.95 (approximately $181,918.69 adjusted for inflation) in royalties from Story and Clark for 1939-1941. The suit cost Miessner $435.04 (approximately $8,681.55) in legal fees to his lawyers, and another $351.15 (approximately $7,007.46) to the judge presiding the case.

Of course, Miessner was not immune from facing such infringement charges himself. In the mid-1950s, Miessner faced an interference suit from Frank H. Slaymaker and Willard F. Meeker, who claimed that a patent application made by Miessner in August 1955 infringed upon a patent awarded to them in September 1954. The case was settled in 1958, when the courts ruled that Slaymaker and Meeker’s patents had priority over Miessner’s.

Most of Miessner’s legal troubles with individuals and companies were one or two-off affairs. This was not always the case, however, as Miessner also had a long-running feud with former employer John Hay Hammond, Jr., which spanned several decades and led to repeated debates and legal disputes. Tune in next week for the next installment in this three-part spotlight on the Benjamin F. Miessner papers, where we will explore Miessner’s feud in greater detail.

The Benjamin F. Miessner papers are available for research in the Purdue University Archives and Special Collections reading room.

MSP 2, Benjamin F. Miessner papers, Purdue University Archives and Special Collections, Purdue University Libraries.

[1] After their royalty payment, they would have to pay Miessner again for the number of pianos in production on July 1, 1941, as part of the licensing agreement’s stipulation for terminating the contract.