JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1928

            An Alphabet of the Artificial as Seen in Patent Drawings

                  ”
I…can wet my Cheekes with artificial Teares.”–3 Henry VI, iii, ii, 184.

Using “artificial” as the word preceding a concept makes for some pretty interesting thought, especially if you remove it a bit from what the expected outcome is supposed to be.  So: creation. Intelligence. Harmomics. Society. Language. Consciousness. Person.  With the word “artificial” in front of these, they become captivating ideas both inside and outside of the realms of possibility.  (“Artificial creation” can have a definite hard sci-fi edge to it beyond genetic algorithms and trying to cook primordial chemical elements into the stuff of life in controlled environments; the “artificial person” more than just the person ficta of the law, although “artificial personality” wrapped around that gets to be very interesting as well.  The “Artificial society”has some Superman aspects to it from my 25-cent comics day, though the von Neumann/Ulam/Conway simplified paper grid cell creations are fr more interesting; artificial consciousness has a nice film-feel to it beyond machine/synthesis and cognitive robotics, where consciousness has somehow been identified and was controllable to a walking-around state. And so on.)

What I’ve pulled together below is a small sampling of patented items using the word “artificial” in its title, and presented them in a (near-complete) alphabet of artificial creations.

There is no patent on “artificial ideas” itself, though the idea of taking real issues like “artificial harmonics” and turning into something wholly unrelated to its intended use might be considered so. In any event, it would be an interesting thing to try to patent.

A