Patents: Another way to publish

Some scientists, including physicists, think that there is something rather crassly materialistic about being interested in patents, and that patents are usually given for clever trivialities. Edwin Land, the founder and chairman of Polaroid, who recently received his 500th patent and was at the same time inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame, said on that occasion that “an inventor is thought of as an ingenious man who puts a date roller on the chicken so that each fresh egg will receive a date stamp.”