Apr 07, 2022 - Sale 2600

Sale 2600 - Lot 220

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Estimate: $ 300 - $ 400
(SCIENCE & ENGINEERING.) Ezra Weld. Patent exploitation license for an early American washing machine. Party printed document, signed twice by Elias Weld and witnesses. 2 pages, 12 x 7 inches, on one folding sheet; minor wear at intersection of folds, minor foxing. Rowley, MA, 18 March 1800
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Additional Details

The first American patent was issued in 1790, and the number issued in following years was modest. Patent holders would attempt to capitalize by licensing their new discoveries to manufacturers across the country. The first American patent for a washing machine was issued to Nathaniel Briggs in 1797. Less is known about the second washing machine patent, issued to Ezra Weld of Braintree, MA on 26 June 1799. The original patent papers have long since been lost to fire. However, Weld had contract forms printed to set forth the terms of his standard agreement.

Offered here is one of Weld's license agreements for "the exclusive right and liberty of making, using, and vending to others to be used, his new and useful improvement, called Lavater and Wringer, for the washing and wringing of clothes." The license was granted by Weld's son Elias Weld (1772-1863) to Captain James Chute of Rowley, MA for a period of 14 years "in the towns of Rowley, Ipswich, Gloucester, Hambleton [Hamilton], Manchester, Wenham, and the parish of Byfield"--a large portion of Essex County north of Salem. For these rights, Chute paid a fee of $214 on 18 March 1800. A duplicate printing of the same form appears on the second integral leaf, featuring nearly identical license to Captain Chute--this time signed in Elias's hometown of Amesbury, MA, with a date of 4 June 1801 and a fee of $300.

The Rev. Ezra Weld (1736-1816) served for almost 50 years as a Congregational minister in Braintree, MA, but very little is known about his side work as a washing machine inventor--it is not mentioned in his lengthy profile in Yale's "Biographical Sketches." However, the invention seems to have found at least modest success. Weld's fellow minister Timothy Alden, in an 1801 sermon titled "The Glory of America. A Century Sermon,' mentioned in passing that Weld's washing machine was "a great improvement upon all other machines of the kind, and is coming into general use in many parts of the country." In the early federal period, when such a list was still feasible, his invention sometimes shows up in a list of all American patents, such as in the May 1806 issue of the Medical Repository, page 111-2. Weld was licensing the patent at least through 28 April 1804, when one of his other assignees ran an advertisement in a Rutland, VT newspaper: "To save labor and that of females, cannot here be unimportant. To spare the toils of the wife must be an object with any husband."

No other examples of this licensing agreement have been traced; it sheds new light on an obscure but significant early American invention.