Papers, Patents & Priority Disputes
Aperture publishes when Aperture has finished, and not before. This is occasionally described by others as secrecy. We regard it as tidiness, and this sheet is the complete record of what we have been tidy about.
A paper published in the middle of an experiment is a paper that has to be published twice, and the second time it is an apology. This company has published nine papers in twelve years, and every one of them was published after the thing it described had been built, run, and sold to somebody.
The outfit in New Mexico publishes four times a year and has yet to finish anything. I have their publications in a cabinet on the second floor, all of them, and I read every one, twice, and I have pencilled in the margins of a few, and Records has been told that the cabinet is not to be opened by anybody but me.
Papers
Publications of Aperture Science Innovators, 1947 – Spring 1959
| Year | Title | Author | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1947 | On the weighted hem: a note | C. Johnson | Published |
| 1949 | Grommet spacing and the twelve-grommet standard | C. Johnson | Published |
| 1951 | Vinyl in prolonged military service | Materials | Published |
| 1953 | A curtain observed in two rooms | Withheld | Withheld by the author |
| 1954 | Conservation of momentum across a bounded field | Applied Sciences | Published |
| 1955 | A dietetic pudding substitute: preliminary trials | Materials | Withdrawn by us |
| 1955 | A dietetic pudding substitute: revised findings | Materials | Withdrawn by us. Same week. |
| 1956 | Meteoritic conductors and field retention | Applied Sciences | Published |
| 1957 | Notes toward a theory of the aperture | Applied Sciences | Published |
| 1957 | On certain rooms not appearing on drawings | Facilities | Suppressed |
| 1958 | The lunar substrate: procurement and preparation | Materials | Published, price omitted |
| 1958 | Storage of a personality: a proposal | Computation | Not for publication |
| 1959 | The Enrichment Sphere as an instrument | Operations | Published |
‘Suppressed’ is a Records classification meaning the paper exists, was set in type, and was ordered off the press by the Office of the President on the day of printing. There has been one.
Patents
- Shower curtain, weighted hem
- U.S. 1946. The foundation patent. Renewed.
- Shower curtain, twelve-grommet
- U.S. 1948. Ten was small thinking.
- Curtain fabric, spatially displaced
- U.S. 1954
- Aperture, fixed emplacement
- U.S. 1955
- Aperture, portable
- U.S. 1957. Not a door.
- Gel, repulsive, industrial
- U.S. 1956
- Gel, propulsive, industrial
- U.S. 1956
- Substrate suspension, conductive
- U.S. 1957
- Plate, aerial, faith
- U.S. 1958
- Grill, emancipation, material
- U.S. 1958
- Storage cube, weighted
- U.S. 1956. The examiner asked what it stores.
- Counter-manoeuvre, Heimlich
- Applied 1958. Pending. Examiner unwell.
- Others
- Nineteen, on the curtain line, the grommet press and the hem.
Priority
Three disputes. All with one party. All concerning work this company completed, ran and sold before the other party published a preliminary note about it, and all of them ongoing, because the other party has a federal budget for correspondence and I have Caroline.
Priority disputes, Aperture Science Innovators v. a certain facility in New Mexico
| No. | Subject | Ours | Theirs | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bounded-field conservation | 1954, published; 1953, built | 1955, preliminary | Ongoing |
| 2 | Conductive substrate retention | 1956, published; 1955, on the bench | 1957, preliminary | Ongoing |
| 3 | Sample containment | 1958, unpublished. They are ahead of us here. | 1957, published | Ongoing |
The President has pencilled in the margin of dispute three and Records has set the margin note as printed. The President has been informed.
“Forty names on a paper and not one of those forty men has gone through the hole personally.”
The 1953 paper is in my second drawer. It has been there since November. He asks me once a year whether I still have it and I say yes and he says good and that is the whole conversation. — C.
Form ASI-406. Reprints of published papers are available from Records at no charge. The dietetic pudding papers are not available, having been withdrawn, and Records will not discuss them, and Records has been asked about them more often than about any paper the company has actually published.