Exhibitions & fairs
The collection is not permanently on display. Selected documents travel to a small number of international fairs each year, where they can be examined in person and discussed with the curator.
18–20 September
2026
Berlin
Kronprinzenpalais · Unter den Linden 3 · Berlin
The inaugural edition of Rare Books Berlin, the closing event of Berlin Rare Book Week (14–20 September 2026), hosted by the Verband Deutscher Antiquare and ILAB. On show: nineteen first-print German imperial patent specifications, 1877–1898 — among them the document recognised by UNESCO as the birth certificate of the automobile, shown in the city where it was filed.
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November
2026
Vienna
Messe Wien, Halle D · Trabrennstraße 7 · Vienna
Austria's principal book fair, and the collection's appearance in the city where it is kept. A small selection is shown alongside the antiquarian trade, with the curator present for conversations on the documents and the method behind their attribution.
Dates to be confirmed
15–18 April
2027
New York
Park Avenue Armory · 643 Park Avenue · New York
The collection's next appearance in the United States. The selection and the accompanying catalogue will be announced here in advance of the fair.
Details to be announced
Further international appearances are announced on this page. For a private viewing outside these dates, please write to us.
A first glimpse
Long before an invention becomes a product, it becomes a document. The patent specification is the moment an idea is first written down, drawn, dated and made public — the earliest surviving record of a thought that went on to change the world.
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A specification is filed before the invention exists in the world. It captures the idea at its earliest provable state: the claim, the drawings, the date, the office stamp. Nothing that comes later is closer to the origin.
02
Patents can be reproduced endlessly — later editions, library sets, photocopies. Only the first print is the state in which the document left the patent office at the moment of grant. It is distinguishable, and every item here has been checked.
03
Alongside significant individual patents, it is above all the thematic groups that attract international interest. Each is offered as a coherent whole, researched and attributed item by item.
1802–1975
Span of filing years
From the collection
The collection reaches into the laboratories where the twentieth century was decided. Its documents record research at its very frontier — at the moment it was first made public.
US 2,981,894 · Filed 1956 · Bell Telephone Laboratories
In the first half of the century, Planck, Bohr and Einstein laid the foundations of quantum physics. Henry Scovil’s specification for a three-level maser shows the moment those ideas became a working device: an amplifier driven by stimulated emission. Its first page cites Planck’s constant and Bohr’s law.
The maser is the direct forerunner of the laser. Scovil’s ruby masers became the quietest microwave amplifiers of their time — sensitive enough for Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson to detect the afterglow of the Big Bang, work honoured with the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics.
US 2,759,951 · Filed 1951 · Syntex, Mexico City
Vienna-born Carl Djerassi, with George Rosenkranz and Luis Miramontes, describes a new steroid, three to five times as potent as natural progesterone. It is steroid research at its peak, set down in four structural formulas.
Ten days after this application was filed, the same laboratory synthesised norethindrone. It became one of the first active ingredients of the contraceptive pill and is still prescribed today, more than seventy years later.
Publications
Each appearance is accompanied by its own catalogue — a curated selection, researched and documented item by item, with printer, collation and provenance recorded for every document.
Catalogues are published as digital editions and read in the browser. Printed copies are available at the fair.
Stewardship
The collection is curated by an Austrian antiquarian, an internationally recognised specialist in the printed heritage of science. He spent much of his career in the art trade before turning to historical patent specifications, a field in which he is among the very few authorities worldwide — consulted by collectors and institutions on attribution and provenance, and the author of the published method used to distinguish a first print from a later reprint.
That method is applied, item by item, to every document held here. He selects what travels to each fair, writes the catalogues, and answers enquiries personally.
“Every great invention has its origin in the mind and is published first and foremost as a patent.”
Origin
The strength of a collection is not only what it contains, but knowing exactly where it came from.
What the market almost never offers is a body of patents covering the same subjects across the patent systems of several different countries.
The collection is held by a private foundation, which preserves it, makes it accessible through exhibitions and publications.
Full provenance documentation is available to serious enquirers under confidentiality.
Contact
Enquiries are answered personally and treated confidentially — whether you are considering an acquisition, planning an exhibition, or researching a specific document.
Please include the document or theme you are interested in.
Requests for private viewings outside fair dates are welcome.