Patent Analysis: Duryea’s Road Vehicle

This activity can be used during a unit on transportation, inventions and innovations, and/or to build document analysis skills in younger students. For grades grades 3-6. Approximate time needed is 15-20 minutes.

Ask students to look at the partially obscured patent drawing. Without providing any context, model document analysis:

• Quickly scan this document. What do you notice first?
• Describe the document and the invention it depicts as if you were explaining it to someone who can’t see it.
• Based on what you can see, what do you think is the purpose of this invention? List evidence from the document to explain your opinion.

After some discussion, reveal that this is a patent drawing for an important invention. If students are unaware of the definition of a patent, provide a brief definition that a patent gives an inventor a temporary monopoly on his or her invention. Explain how in the United States, the Constitution gave Congress the power to “To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries” in Article I, Section 8.

Ask students to offer educated guesses as to the specific invention. If no one guesses automobile or car, provide the following clues from the inventor’s description of the invention:

• “The object of this invention is to produce [something] which shall be self-propelled, not unduly heavy, simple and easy of control and comparatively inexpensive…”
• “The invention more particularly relates to the construction and arrangement of parts for constituting the driving gearing and to the means for controlling the action…”
• “An improved manner of mounting the front…wheels upon the front axle relative to the running gear frame…”

Following a brief discussion and potential guesses, provide the following context for the invention. As you provide this information, ask if students can guess the invention.

This patent was granted to Charles Duryea on June 11, 1895, for which he and his brother Frank had developed.

 

The Duryeas produced the first successful American gasoline-powered version of this invention and later went on to help found the Duryea Motor Wagon Company, which produced 13 of these inventions in 1896.

After sharing the historical context, ask students to brainstorm how the automobile has been used in other ways in history and today.

• How and why has the design changed since the 1890s?
• What positive effects has this invention had over time?
• What negative effects has this invention had over time?