Early aero-technical development analyzed as a social network, or as a knowledge system, developing over time

Introduction, including the simple and direct factor of geography

We are leaning towards ideas of growing knowledge systems, as opposed to an emphasis on social motivation, as such.

Naturally, physical location plays a role in the nature any social network. We have been systematically tracking and documenting the locations of inventors, companies of all varieties, patent agents, and all establishments, governmental and otherwise, associated in any way with the course of aeronautical innovation. We have been gathering data on communications of all kinds. If needed, see page location. In some cases, the location of the patent agent is the only location data we can specifically tie to some particular patent. In other cases it serves as complimentary information. This all plays naturally into the network analysis role(s) played by patent agent more generally, as we are articulating elsewhere.

Broad phenomena as gathered and tracked across our data

Industrialization

Atelier, workshop, communities of practice, apprenticeships, working groups, and groupe industriel

These are formalized patterns of cooperation, which we may track, and upon which there is literature. These are somewhat "social", and are very definitively proto-industrial. That is, they exemplify a thematically and actually pivotal role between the innovative role played by the individual inventor and the bringing of related processes up to corporate and industrial scale.

Company types

The relation between companies and individual inventors is highly variable.

• A given company may clearly spring from one inventor's decision to incorporate, in the bringing of his own initiative, and ownership, up, in terms of scale.
• Various patents clearly identify one individual, or more than one individual, as the inventor(s), with the inventor(s), assigning proprietary patent rights, often and perhaps usually via mesne assignment, to a company, though we have noted rights being assigned to individuals other than the inventor(s). We have one case of one inventor, one of three relative to a certain patent, assigning his portion of rights, to the other two.
• Regarding location, and particular companies, we've come across the American phenomenon of whichever company being a "Corporation of ______", with some American state being specified. This pattern bears variable relation to the physical location of the company or corporation in question. See company types for more on these and other phenomena. In the broadest strokes, we are sure of where incorporation, as such, stands, in terms of social network analysis, along the continuum between the as it were "merely" official, legalistically technical, and the dynamic and significant role played by communication, as a factor of deep influence on innovation.

The legal-administrative-technically-mechanical nexus

Complexes existing between inventors and witnesses and patent agents

Aside from seeing French patent agents acting as witnesses on American patents, we also have patterned data of highly active witnesses, some factoring in also as patent agents, and some witnesses being inventors in their own right. See Leonard H. Dyer and Dyer, Dyer, and Taylor and Dyer & Dyer, as well as witnesses, for particular examples of this. Regarding the surname Dyer, any connections to Chas. S. Dyer the author of Dyer, 1916, Wind currents are yet to be determined.

See Bœttcher et Kapp‎ and Henri Boettcher‎ and H. Bœttcher fils‎ and Brown, Hanson, and Boettcher‎ for definite Franco-American network phenomena in terms of agents-attorneys operating on behalf of particular inventors, and, less definitely, the suggestion of a French agent (or relative of one) later joining and American firm.

Inventor Henry Kleckler stands out neatly in this context. We have him in collaboration with John P. Tarbox, assigning rights to the Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Corporation. John P. Tarbox is also a patent attorney, prominent all through data on Glenn Hammond Curtiss himself as well as on Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Corporation. Henry Kleckler also files in collaboration with Glenn Hammond Curtiss.

Ridley J. Urquhart‎ also stands out, with status A.M.I.Mech.E., both an inventor and a patent agent, all in Great Britain, while also being the assignee of 1/2 rights to Patent US-1916-1210376‎‎.

C. C. Hines and Bennett S. Jones, patent agents-attorneys themselves, factor prominently, and together, as witnesses to patents on which Victor J. Evans is the agent-attorney. The activity of all three was connected via the Victor Building in Washington, DC.

Technical credentials shared across the spread inclusive of inventors and patent agents

We've seen both broad stroke semi-vague and very specifically traceable indications of this. Page patent agent is one of our per se occupation pages, reflecting a narrow range of data coming to us via certain routes, researched history as well as rare cases in which inventors self-declare patent agent as their occupation, for instance. The pointedly distinct page patent agents treats this as something treated in publications and so forth. Category:Patent agents offers the immense data gathered largely by way of the examination of original patent documents, featuring patent agents acting in that capacity on those patents.

In the nature of things, none of these developments could be truly assessed in mono-national terms. The breakdown below is based partially on specific patterns accreditation, which are often nationally specific, and based partially as well on the primary office locations of the firms and individuals involved.

Belgian phenomena

• A. Wunderlich & Cie, Ingénieurs-Conseils is a large-scale manifestation of this technical-proprietary nexus. As we have seen, Alfred E. Wunderlich, as an inventor, filed quite prolifically. This reflects both attentiveness to detail, in technical terms, and a quite fastidious approach to matters of legal and proprietary concern. All of this has to do with industrialization. As "Ingénieurs-Conseils" the firm brought both litigious and engineering expertise to its capacity as a firm involved in the representation of other inventors. This has to do with a bulk thrust and consolidation of the mass human process of innovation, and, of course, it has to do with the institutional and formal side of social network.AvionHerbert (talk) 17:26, 21 November 2024 (PST)

British phenomena

A formally traceable instance case type of this can seen on A.M.I.Mech.E.‎. A patent agent may have this affiliation and also be a "Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Patent Agents". These formally traceable phenomena vary in the depth of significance and also highlight broader phenomena were are illustrating via other approaches to data.

• Patent agent data we have around A.I.Mech.E. and A.Inst.Mech.E. and A.M.I.Mech.E., which currently all simply directs or redirects ultimately to A.M.I.Mech.E., with no report display on that page gets to some official reflection on the mechanically technical, as opposed to legal, expertise of at least some patent agents.
• James Grieve Lorrain also gives us M.I.Mech.E. and M.I.E.E.AvionHerbert (talk) 07:57, 17 November 2024 (PST)
• Edward Hayes, of Patent GB-1910-26027, has both M.Inst.M.E. and M.Inst.C.E.. He uses no patent agent when filing that patent.AvionHerbert (talk) 09:49, 2 December 2024 (PST)
• We have cases in which Edward Charles Robert Marks opens and writes the patent text, identifying himself as a Consulting Engineer, with Marks & Clerk identified as the Agents at the end of the document. Again, the point here is the emphasis on the credentials of the patent agent, in terms of engineering, rather than in terms strictly those of litigation. Being that Marks & Clerk has offices in New York, in addition to its British locations, the pertinence of the firm isn't merely British.AvionHerbert (talk) 16:46, 21 November 2024 (PST)

German phenomena

We also have the Dipl.-Ing. redirect to Ingenieur on German Wikipedia found via Otto Siedentopf und Dipl.-Ing. W. Fritz, Pat.-Anwälte and Patent DE-1917-307800. This "Dipl.-Ing." factors in elsewhere across our data.AvionHerbert (talk) 07:57, 17 November 2024 (PST)

Anglo-German Inventor-Agent-Studiengesellschaft Nexus

• See relations between William Edward Evans and Edward Evans & Co. and Motorluftschiff Studiengesellschaft m.b.H.

Collaboration

The word "collaboration" presently gets over 400 hits within our data. A minority of these pertain to collaborations between patent agents, but the overwhelming bulk has to do with inventors working with other inventors. This data comes to us largely by way of patent data and by way of other historical notation. We've initially missed a few in the case of auto-links from Espacenet, for instance, displaying only one inventor, with patent pages still needing to be fleshed out based upon examination of the originals. The data also comes to us by way of aero-historical data more generally

The word "collaboration" has often been used when inventor pages have been created, and a consistent or sporadic collaboration between inventors has been referenced to specific patents. Individuals also file in conjunction with companies, "applicant firms". This data will largely dovetail with phenomena of affiliations, though we are treating this latter field also in terms of membership in professional bodies.

Accreditations‎‎

This also serves as a variably trackable illustration of connection between inventors, this having to do with academic or otherwise formalized acknowledgement of pertinent expertise, and it also pertains to overlapping data on patent agents, as explored in the legal-administrative-technically-mechanical nexus referred to above. There is some tangle about treating memberships as affiliations, and these policies are not mutually exclusive, though the affiliations field often features specific businesses to which inventors are connected, along with affiliations between specific businesses. Numerous acronym-based status-markers, some academic and some not, have come to us, predominantly attached to the names of patent agents, though with some interesting incidence vis-à-vis inventors. Antique data sources often attach these acronyms of status to individuals or across names of grouped individuals, treating the status-markers in a manner of comparative interest. In any case, the status-marker interface between inventors and patent agents is of clear network significance.

The role played by official events and establishments

These data naturally dovetail with the factors we'd consider more per se "social", though this dovetailing, as such, may not be a priori documented. These data illustrate institutional and formal correlations of background, at the macro level, lacking the intimacy and detail we find among Letters between individual inventors.

Conferences

These are also key, in that they are documented, with much of their attendance being documented as well.

Documented examples of specific influence

Franz Wels' exposure to the aircraft of the Wright Brothers, which he saw in Paris, led to a split with Ignaz Etrich over the question of whether to build a monoplane or biplane.

Richard Rathbun of the Smithsonian Institution provided the Wright Brothers with literature by Chanute, Lilienthal, Langley, and so forth.

The Wright network is particularly well documented because so much attention has been paid to these inventors and their dealings.

Correspondence between inventors

Letters between inventors, or between an inventor and some other interested party, are of clear significance in that they explicate the direct exchange of ideas.

Pre-existing resources on social networks per se

Any inventor or organization may have a SNAC ARK ID.