Nikola Tesla Patents
movements through the natural media of space would have been regarded as a pure chimera, as a flight of fancy, which had no place in the useful arts. When such a suggestion, however, is accompanied by an intelligent demonstration of how such a result can be accomplished, even though the means be largely borrowed from the known available resources of the prior arts, the proposal at once rises to the dignity of a discovery, which in its results is probably as far reaching as any of modern times. Suppose that with the solution of the problem before us, it have the appearance of obviousness, this, however, is no test of the quality of the invention which was required to evolve it, for the results do not seem to us to be analogous to any heretofore attained. The most that can be said of previous efforts is that they resulted in the mere repetition of the sare effect which was utilized as a means of conveying information to an intelligent being, but there is a wide difference between the idea of utilizing such means to convey intelligence merely, and the conception of the utilization of such means for extending to remote points the controlling influence of the operator over an inanimate but complicated mechanism. The method which the office criticises is confined to but a part of the operations which the invention involves, and is not what the claims seek to cover. No bodies capable of free movement in space have ever been directed and controlled by the methods which Marconi and others employed, so far as we know, and we submit that the claims are clearly patentable if the full significance of the fact be realized that the inventor has done something which has -30283
