Unswerving irregularity
“The father of American literature” was known by the public for his satire, wit, and humorous prose. But Mark Twain also used his keen attention to detail to craft items that solved everyday problems, obtaining three patents over his lifetime. His invention journey was a tale in and of itself, one in which Twain served as both an active protagonist and a colorful narrator. This little-known aspect of his story reveals yet another layer that made up Samuel Clemens, the man behind the famous name.
18 min read
Each month, our Journeys of Innovation series tells the stories of inventors or entrepreneurs who have made a positive difference in the world. This month, Rebekah Oakes’ story focuses on literary giant Mark Twain, who received three patents for improvements to everyday items during his lifetime.
Do you know an innovator or entrepreneur with an interesting story?
In the year 1879, following a “misunderstanding conducted with crowbars” at his place of employment, Hank Morgan suffered a blow to the head. When he emerged from the darkness of his temporary oblivion, he found himself not in the Hartford, Connecticut arms factory in which he worked, but under an oak tree, surrounded by a lovely country landscape, and staring down the business end of a knight’s “prodigious spear.”
The year was 528 and this beautifully mysterious land, Morgan learned, was a place called Camelot.
In a “Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” Mark Twain provided a satirical view of the past while also offering criticisms of the perils of industrialization.
(Image courtesy of the Library of Congress)
It appeared that the injured man had traveled through time.
Filled with assured self-confidence and knowledge of the “modern” world, Morgan did not keep a low profile while in the past. After gaining the favor of King Arthur himself, the “Connecticut Yankee” led an industrialization effort in Camelot over the course of several years.
One of his first acts? The establishment of a patent office.
“The first thing you want in a new country, is a patent office;” Morgan explained upon his return to the 19th century, “then you work up your school system; and after that, out with your paper.”
Hank Morgan’s belief that a patent office should be prioritized before newspapers or educational institutions may have been a reflection of his creator, Mark Twain’s, own connections to the intellectual property system. For in addition to his legacy as an author of great renown, Mark Twain was also an inventor.
"…a country without a patent office and good patent laws was just a crab, and couldn’t travel any way but sideways or backways."
As Halley’s comet burned across the sky, the man who would become Mark Twain was born as Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835. His earliest years were spent in the “almost invisible village” of Florida, Missouri, where he claims that his birth “increased the population by 1 per cent.” When young Samuel was 4 years old, his family moved to Hannibal, one county to the northeast and nestled along the Mississippi River. A childhood spent in this rapidly developing region of the country served as inspiration for some of Twain’s most popular works.
As a young adult, Samuel Clemens trekked to many different places and experienced many different trades. Crisscrossing the U.S.— he lived on both coasts, Iowa, and Ohio — he wrote for various newspapers, including one run by his brother, Orion, and served as a river pilot on the Mississippi. During these years, Clemens bore witness to foundational transformations in how people lived, from the advent of the typewriter to the construction of the transcontinental railroad. He also initiated a transformation of a more personal nature. In 1863, he first adopted the now-famous pen name “Mark Twain.”
Following the Civil War, the newly-minted Twain experienced both literary and personal success. “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” his first work to receive true critical acclaim, was published in 1867, and he married Olivia Langdon in Elmira, New York in 1870. Their first child, a son, was born later that same year.
The pen name “Mark Twain” was a callback to Clemens’ work as a riverboat pilot. The call of “mark twain” by a crew member would indicate the water was 12 feet deep.
(Image courtesy of the Library of Congress)
By the time Twain moved to Hartford, Connecticut, in 1871, he was well-traveled, well-connected, and already known for his written works.
That same year, he expanded the scope of his creations to the world of invention and applied for his first patent for an adjustable garment strap.
The garment strap exemplifies the characteristics that appeared to define Twain’s invention philosophy: practical solutions to small annoyances, with a touch of humor. It also illustrates how patenting a new and novel invention is an iterative process with a number of steps. Even a famous figure like Twain, seeking a patent for a relatively simple invention, confronted the need for justification, clarification, and persevering through an initial failure.
In this case, Twain’s inventive journey began courtesy of his eye for fashion. Although Twain did not adopt his iconic white suit until much later in life, he held strong opinions about men’s clothing, as well as their wearers’ unwillingness to try something new.
“The men, clothed in odious black, are scattered here and there over the garden like so many charred stumps,” his friend Robert Bigelow Paine recorded Twain saying following a trip to Dublin. “I should like to dress in a loose and flowing costume made all of silks and velvets resplendent with stunning dyes, and so would every man I have ever known; but none of us dares to venture it.”
Twain did not go as far as modeling resplendent silks, but his patent sought to solve another fashion frustration: the use — and misuse — of suspenders.
According to Twain, he first conceptualized the idea for an adjustable strap years prior to receiving his patent, but he felt a new urgency regarding the invention following a December 1870 meeting with newspaper publisher Horace Greeley. During this meeting, Twain was distracted by Greeley’s trousers, which were purportedly, “half in and half out of his boots.” Determined to come up with a solution to help them “hang more gracefully,” Twain set his inventive mind to work.
By the following August, he was ready to share his plans for an elastic, adjustable, and detachable strap with a close confidant and fellow tinkerer: his brother, Orion.
On August 13, following breakfast, Twain showed Orion three sketches that illustrated the potential uses of his invention. One depicted the strap cinching the waist of a vest, while the second showed how it could be used as an alternative to suspenders to keep trousers in their proper place. A third drawing, added during the brothers’ conversation, highlighted the invention’s utility in women’s stays. Orion copied the sketches down into his own memorandum book, labeling them “Sam’s strap.”
After getting his plans out of his head and on paper, Twain moved quickly toward patenting his invention. First, he prototyped his creation on shirts and trousers around his home. Satisfied with their functionality, he planned to make his way to Washington to apply for his patent but was urgently called back to Elmira in late August. His infant son, Langdon, had taken ill.
Langdon’s illness set Twain back just a few weeks. By mid-September, the baby was once again “doing splendidly,” and Twain was determined to see his invention through. Hiring the Washington, D.C., law firm of Alexander & Mason, he applied for his patent and paid the initial $15 fee on September 9, 1871. That same day, his attorney requested that the requirement for submitting a patent model be dispensed with, as the drawing was sufficient in “fully illustrating the invention.” By September 11, Twain’s application was in the hands of a patent examiner.
Twain’s patent application file chronicles the back-and-forth between the Patent Office, his attorneys, and Clemens himself.
(Images courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration)
The patent application file documents how inventors must continue to improve on their inventions, even during the patenting process itself. The first amendment came from Twain’s attorney on September 11, suggesting that the line, “It is obvious that my adjustable straps may be made non-elastic as well as elastic without departing from my invention, but I prefer to make them elastic,” be added to the application. By September 23, Twain had received his first office action, a rejection on the grounds of prior art. The examiner had found another patent, granted in 1866, which invalidated some of Twain’s claims that his invention was entirely new and novel.
In response, amendments sent by Alexander & Mason on September 27 made several edits, including canceling the existing claims and replacing them with a new explanation for how the button-holed buds on the strap attached to the clothing.
While his patent was moving through the process, Twain had been trying to solve this exact problem. Writing to his brother on September 16, Twain asks for Orion’s advice on how to best attach the buttons to a pair of pants. This record of correspondence, in addition to the notes Orion had taken in August, proved very beneficial to Twain when another inventor, Henry Lockwood, claimed a similar invention which was also moving through the patent application process.
At the time, the person who invented the product first would have had rights to the patent, regardless of who was first to file. As part of the investigation into this matter, Twain wrote directly to Mortimer Leggett, the commissioner of patents, to make his case. In this letter, he included a copy of the page of Orion’s memorandum book containing the original sketches.
Despite Lockwood’s claims that he first conceptualized his invention in 1869, before Twain’s earliest recorded work on the strap, Alexander & Mason were successful in making their case, and Twain was granted U.S. Patent No. 121,992 on December 19, 1871.
"Samuel L. Clemens of Hartford (Mark Twain) has been granted a patent on an ‘adjustable and detachable strap for garments.’ Is it one of Mark’s jokes?"
Twain’s inventions were seen as a curiosity at the Patent Office museum. An article from 1893 states that his scrapbook patent is one of the items visitors most often asked to see.
(Image courtesy of the Library of Congress)
As Twain was already known for his literary works, the curiosity surrounding his invention was immediate.
Before the patent was even granted, an article in the Cairo Daily Bulletin describing a visit to the Patent Office in Washington, D.C., mentions it specifically. Despite the author’s claim that “one can spend weeks, months, and years” inspecting the patent models on display and “not see all,” he took time to inquire with the Office’s chief clerk to ascertain if Twain had indeed patented a “new suspender.” Closer to home, a Springfield, Massachusetts, paper reported on the issuance of Twain’s patent and incredulously asked, “Is this one of Mark’s jokes?”
Despite the seriousness with which Twain took the patent application process, his first invention never went to market. This could have, in part, been due to 1872 being a year filled with both joys and tragedy for the Clemens family. As Samuel and Olivia settled into their new community in Hartford, and built the home they would live in for the next several decades, they welcomed daughter Susy on March 19. Their time as a family of four was unfortunately short-lived, as their toddler son, Langdon, passed away on November 7, 1872.
But Twain, prolific in more than just his words, did not take time to rest. Just one year later, in 1873, Twain would patent a new product, this time with considerably more commercial success.
"I have invented and patented a new scrap book, not to make money out of it, but to economize the profanity of this country."
Despite the products being quite different, Twain’s self-pasting scrapbook initially followed a similar trajectory to his garment strap. It, too, began with an attempt to find a solution for a minor frustration.
The famed writer was also an avid scrapbooker, which was a common pastime for newspaper readers and authors in the 19th century. Finding the process of using adhesive to adhere materials to the pages of his scrapbooks vexing, Twain set out to invent a scrapbook that would not result in “barrels and barrels of profanity” when the user was confronted with dried paste or mucilage that “mingles with the ink” and renders the scrapbook unreadable.
Although he would not apply for his patent until the spring of 1873, Twain was working on his scrapbook design earlier. In a letter to Orion, dated August 11, 1872, he described his invention, complete with a rough drawing of the book. Twain specifically asks Orion to preserve the note in the event “some juggling tailor” comes along to “ante-date me a couple of months,” alluding to his experience with the garment strap. In this missive, Twain further expounds on his frustrations with having to manually paste items, calling it “tedious, slow, nasty, & tiresome.” His solution consisted of columns of gummed adhesive stripes which, when wet with a sponge, adhered to the scraps like a postage stamp.
This version of a Mark Twain scrapbook from 1883 shows the gummed adhesive lines.
(Image courtesy of the Digital Library at Villanova University)
Twain’s experience with the patent application process in 1873 also struck some familiar chords.
First, he once again retained the services of the law firm Alexander & Mason, seemingly satisfied with their handling of his first patent application. His application and fee were received by the Patent Office on May 7, 1873, and he received a rejection on the grounds of prior art by May 27. Amendments were submitted by his attorney on June 7, clarifying one claim and canceling another. With no “juggling tailor” appearing, the rest of the process went more quickly, and Twain was granted U.S. Patent No. 140,245 on June 24.
It appeared that Twain knew early on in the invention process that he wanted to market his scrapbook, as well as who he wished to do so with. In his August 1872 letter to Orion, Twain writes, “I’ll put it into Dan Slote’s hands.” Yet he went about making the pitch to Slote, a personal friend and former traveling companion, in an unusual way. In a letter to Slote, Twain appeals for the proliferation of his scrapbook not as a moneymaking venture, but as a matter of morality. Arguing that traditional scrapbooking results in unnecessary cursing, Twain claims that this “all can be saved and devoted to other irritating things… simply by substituting my self-pasting scrap book for the old fashioned one.”
With national registration for trademarks beginning in 1870, the trademark for Twain’s scrapbook was among the earliest granted by the Patent Office.
(Image courtesy of the Library of Congress)
The gambit worked. Slote agreed to market the scrapbook and even registered a trademark for the product in 1878. Advertisements appeared in newspapers and bookstores across the country, from Woodstock, Vermont, to Helena, Montana, touting the product as “the only convenient scrap-book made,” and “suitable for holiday gifts.” Consumers could choose from various styles, including cloth and gold covers and books with two or three columns.
By 1885, Twain had made around $50,000 from sales, and variations of the Mark Twain scrapbook continued to be sold until at least 1912.
From 1874 until 1891, Twain retired from his burgeoning career as an inventor to focus on writing and speaking, and it was during this time that some of his most famous works were published. Along with the additions of works such as “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “Life on the Mississippi,” he and Olivia welcomed two more daughters, Clara and Jean, to their family.
It was observing his children’s educational pursuits that led him to invent once more.
An article by Twain, written in 1899 and published posthumously by Harper’s Monthly Magazine in 1914, details the struggle his daughters faced attempting to memorize the dates of ascension to the English throne for 37 different monarchs.
“It was all dates, and all looked alike, and they wouldn't stick,” he explained. “Day after day of the summer vacation dribbled by, and still the kings held the fort; the children couldn't conquer any six of them.”
Twain’s solution was to gamify the material and make it visual. Creating a “roadway” to represent the more than 800 years of history, with each foot representing a year, Twain and his children drove a stake with the name and date of the monarchs along the road. This hands-on approach proved both successful and entertaining, and it led to a new idea for an invention.
In 1891, Twain received his third and final patent (U.S. Patent No. 324,535) for a memory builder game. The goal of this game, which he worked on while writing “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” was to encourage the memorization of historical facts and dates in an entertaining way. In addition to rules and a set of pins, it came with both a “player’s chart” and an “umpire’s chart” for reference. Players could choose to make the game easier or harder by selecting both the geographic and temporal scope for each session. Although the game never went into full production, a few prototypes of the game survive.
"We can't reach old age by another man's road."
As the 19th century waned, Twain faced both personal and professional challenges. Hit hard by the Panic of 1893, an economic crisis, Twain declared bankruptcy the following year. Briefly considering selling the rights to his published works, Twain was convinced by friends to instead pay off his debts with a global lecture tour.
Twain purportedly debuted his iconic white suit during his 1906 appearance before Congress. His friend William Dean Howells wrote, “Nothing could have been more dramatic than the gesture with which he flung off his long loose overcoat, and stood forth in white from his feet to the crown of his silvery head.”
(Image courtesy of the Library of Congress)
The Clemens family once again experienced tragedy when daughter Susy succumbed to meningitis in 1896. Olivia then died on June 5, 1904, after a bout with severe illness, leaving a grieving Twain to contemplate both his legacy and his remaining family’s future.
It was during this time that he began to vociferously advocate for stronger copyright protections for creators, arguing his case before the British House of Lords in 1900, and eventually, the United States Congress in 1906.
At the time, copyright terms for written works were for 28 years, with a 14-year option for renewal. A bill was moving through Congress that would extend this to 50 years following the author’s death, and although Twain actually favored a limitless copyright statute, he recognized that “copyright must have a term… because that is required by the Constitution of the United States.” This statement referenced Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution, also known as the intellectual property clause, which served as the foundation for both the patent and copyright systems in the United States.
Writing to the Speaker of the House on December 7, 1906, Twain requested to be able to advocate for the bill in person.
“Do accomplish this for your affectionate old friend right away; by persuasion, if you can; by violence, if you must,” he wrote, “for it is imperatively necessary that I get on the floor for two or three hours and talk to the members, man by man, in behalf of the support, encouragement, and protection of one of the nation's most valuable assets and industries--its literature.”
In his speech, Twain revealed that his motivations were to protect his children’s financial future, and to prevent others from using his name for their own financial gain. The bill did not pass, but his point was made. Seven decades later, a similar bill became law.
Standing in a white suit before the Congressional Committee on Copyright, Twain proclaimed, “In a few weeks or months, or years I shall be out of it. I hope to get a monument. I hope I shall not be entirely forgotten.”
In a speech to mark the occasion of his 70th birthday, Twain provided a few explanations for his longevity. Among them was, “I have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn't anybody left to sit up with; and I have made it a rule to get up when I had to. This has resulted in an unswerving regularity of irregularity.”
Papers related to Twain’s patent applications were included in an exhibit celebrating the 100th anniversary of his birth in 1935. The exhibit, held at the Library of Congress, contained 300 items and filled an entire hall on the building’s main floor.
(Image courtesy of the Library of Congress)
Although in many ways Twain’s patents are but a curious footnote in the life of a literary giant, in others, they speak to this philosophy of disrupting the mundane.
“I know half a dozen trades,” he told Congress, “And I can invent a half dozen more.”
And yet he turned his brilliant mind toward improving everyday dress, archiving newspaper clippings, and facilitating rote memorization. And, with humor and flourish, he helped make these everyday tasks a little easier. Today, Twain is primarily, and rightly so, remembered as the “father of American literature.” But his patents serve as small monuments to a different side of the man rather than the legend – that of Samuel Clemens, the inventor.
On April 21, 1910, Mark Twain left the world of the living at the age of 74. In a true testament to the regularity of irregularity in his life, Halley’s Comet once again lit up the sky.
Credits
Produced by the USPTO’s Office of the Chief Communications Officer. For feedback or questions, please contact inventorstories@uspto.gov.
Story by Rebekah Oakes. Contributions by Whitney Pandil-Eaton.
Graphic on the USPTO.gov homepage is by Gabriella McNevin-Melendez. The photograph of Mark Twain at the beginning of the story is courtesy of the Library of Congress.
References
“About Mark Twain.” The Mark Twain House & Musem. 2025. https://marktwainhouse.org/about/mark-twain/
Arguments Before the Committees on Patents of the Senate and House of Representatives, Conjointly, on the Bills S. 6330 and H.R. 19853, to Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright. June 6-9, 1906. United States: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1906.
Clemens, Will M. Mark Twain: His Life and Work. San Francisco: The Clemens Publishing Company, 1892.
“Famous Men Invent: Some Useful and Ornamental Things by Them.” The Weekly Constitution, April 4, 1893.
Fawcett, James Waldo. “Library Observes Mark Twain Day: Crowds Inspect Pictures, Books and Manuscripts of Humorist.” The Evening Star, December 1, 1935.
Fischer, Victor and Michael B. Frank, Editors. Mark Twain’s Letters: Volume 4. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Kaplan, Fred. The Singular Mark Twain: A Biography. New York: Anchor Books, 2003.
Helena Weekly Herald, June 26, 1879.
Howells, William Dean. My Mark Twain: Reminiscences and Criticisms. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1910.
“’J.U.E.T.’ An Interesting Letter.” The Cairo Daily Bulletin, October 3, 1871.
“Mark Twain’s Patent Adhesive Page Scrap Book!” Spirit of the Age, March 29, 1882.
“Mark Twain’s Scrap Book.” Carson Daily Appeal, December 19, 1876.
“Mark Twain’s Patent Scrap-Books.” Oxford Democrat, December 18, 1877.
Oswald, Brandi. “Mark Twain, Scrapbook Innovator.” West Virginia University Libraries. 2015. https://news.lib.wvu.edu/2015/02/23/mark-twain-scrapbook-innovator/
Paine, Alfred Bigelow. Mark Twain, A Biography, Vol. 3. United States: Gabriel Wells, 1923.
Records of the Patent and Trademark Office, 1836–1978. National Archives and Records Administration.
Springfield Weekly Republican, December 29, 1871.
Salamo, Lin and Harriett Elinor Smith, Editors. Mark Twain’s Letters: Volume 5. Berkeley: Univesity of California Press, 1997.
“Timeline of Mark Twain’s Life.” The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum. 2025. https://marktwainmuseum.org/learn-with-us/twains-timeline/
Tucker, Neely. “Origins: Mark Twain’s Famous White Suit.” Library of Congress Blogs. 2024. https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2024/12/origins-mark-twains-famous-white-suit/
Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1889.
Twain, Mark. “How to Make History Dates Stick.” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, December 1914.
Twain, Mark. Mark Twain’s Autobiography. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1924.
Twain, Mark. Mark Twain’s Speeches. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1910.
