This Act, with the amendment, was, in 1836, swept from the statute books, and the Patent-Office was established on a surer basis, with an organization of a Commissioner, Chief Clerk, an Examiner, a Draughtsman, and some five clerks to conduct the examination and issues of applications. As the decisions of the Commissioner, who was then presumed to examine all applications, was not always impartial and right, an appeal was allowed to a Board composed of three disinterested and competent persons, who were appointed by the Secretary of State, as occasion required. The Patent-Office Building, which was at that time situated on the present site of the General Post-Office, was completely destroyed by fire in December, 1836, and all models, drawings and records were consumed. Congress appropriated money, and issued circulars directed to all who were thought to be interested in the restoration. The majority of the patentees sent in duplicates of their papers and models, but many were never heard from, and for this reason the office is unable to present a complete record of the grants. After the fire, the business of the Office was conducted in the City Hall building until the present building was erected for the Patent-Office, a few years later. In 1849, the Office was placed under the supervision of the Secretary of the Interior or Home Department, where it now remains. The fostering of invention encouraged home manufactures, one of the results most eagerly sought, after the war with Great Britain. So active became the inventive genius and so prolific of results, that Congress was compelled, from time to time, to increase the examining corps, and the little band of seven persons, who occupied the contracted rooms in the City Hall, has expanded into a corps of eighty examiners and assistants, more than two hundred clerks and other officials, all under the control of a Commissioner and an Assistant-Commissioner. The grant of one thousand patents in 1836, when the office was first regularly organized, has enlarged into one hundred and sixty thousand at the present time. And the latter number is scarcely two-thirds of the number of applications. With this enormous increase followed a corresponding labor and intricacy in examining so large a number of applications, but so perfectly has the system been developed, that very few mistakes are made in the way of wrongfully granting patents. Hon. S. S. Fisher, United States Commissioner of Patents, before the American Institute, New York City, September 28, 1869, made an eloquent address concerning the American system of granting patents, from which I make the following extracts: “The great Patent Act of 1836 established what is now distinctively the American system in regard to the grant of letters-patent.