Mark Twain, the InventorDecember 29, 2025

In addition to being “father of American literature”, Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel Clemens, also was the inventor on 3 U.S. patents in the late 1800’s.

Clemens was born in 1835 in Missouri, but also lived in Iowa as a young adult.  He adopted his pen name, Mark Twain, in 1863.  He filed his first patent application on an adjustable and detachable garment strap (i.e., suspenders) on September 9, 1871, which issued as U.S. patent 121,992 on December 19, 1871. The straps were made of elastic or non-elastic material, had button holes for detaching to a garment, and a buckle for adjustability. This invention was never commercialized.

In 1873, Clemens filed a patent application for a self-pasting scrapbook, which overcame the problem of adhesives which adversely interacted with ink and made scrapbooks unreadable.  This invention used a plant based adhesive, mucilage, on the scrapbook pages.  The mucilage is applied to the scrapbook pages and allowed to dry, and later moistened to make it sticky for pasting pieces, such as newspaper articles, to the page.  Patent 140,245 issued on June 24, 1873. This scrapbook invention was successfully marketed until at least 1912. 

Clemens’ third patented invention related to education, and particularly, a method to aid memorization.  His solution was a memory builder game, using different colored rows and columns of names, dates, and  other information.  This game was described in his patent application filed on October 9, 1884, and issued as U.S. patent 324,535 on August 18, 1885. Clemens developed prototypes for his game, but it failed to go into full production.

Clemens died on April 21, 1910, as a well known writer, and as a (not so well known) inventor.

Kirk Hartung is a member of the Mechanical Patent Practice Group at McKee, Voorhees & Sease, PLC., an intellectual property boutique law firm in Iowa, specializing in all aspects of IP law.  For additional information please visit  www.ipmvs.com or contact Kirk directly via email at kirk.hartung@ipmvs.com.