Samuel Hopkins

(Wikipedia) Samuel Hopkins (December 9, 1743 – 1818) was an American inventor from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Pittsford, Vermont. On July 31, 1790, he was granted the first U.S. patent, under the new U.S. patent statute just signed into law by President Washington on April 10, 1790. Hopkins had petitioned for a patent on an improvement "in the making of Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process." ... the second child of Quaker parents, was born just north of Baltimore, Maryland. At about the age of 16, he was apprenticed to Robert Parrish, a Quaker tradesman in Philadelphia. Continued