And the cost was to be three dollars and seventy cents, plus the cost of copying the specifications at ten cents a sheet.
The first inventor to avail himself of the advantages of the new Patent Act was Samuel Hopkins of Vermont, who received a patent on the 31st of July for an improved method of "Making Pot and Pearl Ashes." The world knows nothing of this Samuel Hopkins, but the potash industry, which was evidently on his mind, was quite important in his day.

Potash, that is, crude potassium carbonate, useful in making soap and in the manufacture of glass, was made by leaching wood ashes and boiling down the lye.

To produce a ton of potash, the trees on an acre of ground would be cut down and burned, the ashes leached, and the lye evaporated in great iron kettles.

A ton of potash was worth about twenty-five dollars.

Nothing could show more plainly the relative value of money and human labor in those early times.
Two more patents were issued during the year 1790.